"Come-on then! Let's see how long you can dance!" The man who's trying to stomp the life out of me doesn't let up. He's hitting the ground so hard the whole tunnel is shaking. I roll over something wet and squishy.
Flesh.
Tepis?
Sierra?
Rita?
"Ahahaha I see you found your friends! But they can't save you now!" My mortal foe hollers as he chases me around the cave. Every time, the boot lands just close enough to my head that the shockwave is deafening. He's doing it on purpose now. I stumble over another body and I pray that whoever it is, is just unconscious, but I have no time to check.
Can't even take care of myself right now.
*BOOM*
*BOOM*
*BOOM*
"DANCE RAT! DANCE!"
*BOOM*
*BOOM*
*KACHA?*
That's when it happens. Right after one last stomp. The back of my head hits a wall, and I know I'm out of room. But his stomp sounds different this time. Something's changed. Like the ground is weird.
No...not weird...hollow!
*KAAAAAAACHAAAAAA*
I know what it is before it happens.
My body remembers even if my brain hasn't caught up.
Arms cover head, legs tuck into a ball.
Then we're falling, rocks all around.
CAVE IN?!
#
*Thud*
*Tssss*
*CRACK*
*Tssss*
*Boom*
*Rumble*
Things hit me.
Chaos reigns.
My gut drops out from under me.
I'm flipping every-which-way.
The darkness turns me around and spits me out like a laundry machine.
Water splashes on my face.
Rocks smash on my skull.
Down!
Going down!
Under!
How long have I been falling?!
*CRACK*
Something hard and heavy hits my shoulder and I feel my collarbone bone snap. White-hot agony joins the throbbing pulses being sent from my skull with each hit. I don't know what to hold, everything is under attack. The world is falling, no I'm falling, it's all coming down!
*Whoosh*
I keep smacking into new things. A ledge here, an outcropping there. Bouncing around, I'm like a pinball inside the machine, just getting absolutely battered by anything that comes near me. Some part of me wants to wonder why this is happening.
Surely, I've been falling for too long?
*Whump*
But then I hit another ledge and anything resembling coherent thought is smacked right out of me.
