Ominous Stories

Crawl

Here are three men standing at the intersection of a sewer. One of them is very lean and very tall. In fact he looks too tall and seems to sway on his feet, as if ready to topple at the whim of a strong gust. He grips a burlap sack in his left hand. The tall man has provided the firepower.

Next to him is a greasy mustache. The mustache belongs to a stocky Mediterranean-looking fellow with shifty eyes. He digs into his backpack with concerned intent. The mustached man has provided the intelligence and the tools.

Standing apart from the first two men is the clown. Wrinkled columns of green-yellow-blue support an ashen face of sweat and greasepaint. He wears a white glove on each hand. Thick locks of crimson explode from his head, aggravating the sweating. His face is on the verge of melting. The clown has provided the distraction, but he does not look happy.

The three men face a brick wall with a hole in the center. It is less a hole than a black gaping chasm, maybe a couple feet wide and stretching to infinity. Mustache maintains that this will lead them directly beneath the bank.

Clown is not so sure. He questions the men's collective planning. Tall Man did not bother to load any of the handguns, ensuring them that a show of force will be more than enough. Mustache has apparently forgotten to bring a single flashlight, and curses. And Clown himself wonders why he chose to dress in full clown regalia before venturing into the sewers.

The sewers are filthy, as sewers ought to be. A noxious gas of human excrement floods each nostril with every breath. Layered above this stench is something more, something sickly sweet. Barely noticeable, but there. Pale green light bounces from the drainage channels as rats and other scurrying things patter along the rim. Clown stumbles on the walkway in comically oversized shoes.

Tall Man avoids the sight of Clown. He harbors a lifelong distrust of clowns, a distrust so deep it ventures into the realm of irrational fear. To make matters worse, this particular clown's breath smells like sour milk. It's nauseating so he keeps his distance. From the corner of his eye he thinks he sees Clown glaring at him. Glaring, or smiling? Tall Man can't be sure in this dreary dungeon. He, too doubts the wisdom of Mustache's plan.

Mustache defends the strategy. There were bound to be setbacks, he says, but the hole in the wall still offers the best chance for a clean escape. They will have to enter one by one and crawl on hands and knees to see the other side. Once inside the tunnel, turning around will likely be impossible. Tall Man asks how long it goes. Mustache answers that it should be long, but not too long. Tall Man asks how they are supposed to see anything in the tunnel with no flashlights. Mustache answers that they don't need to see anything, they just need to crawl. All the same, he does have a book of matches which he offers to Tall Man.

Tall Man interprets this as his cue to go first. Something about the tunnel bothers him, but he would rather get on with it than suffer the continual glares (or smirks?) of Clown. He accepts the matches and faces the hole.

A soft breeze and low howl whisper from the opening. Behind him, Clown stares while Mustache runs some fingers through his oily hair. Tall Man teeters for a moment, turns around, and retrieves three 9mm pistols from the sack in his hand. Easier if you take these now, he says. All three men tuck the weapons into their waistbands. Not weapons, Clown reminds himself. Merely a show of force.

Tall Man turns back around. The bricks in the wall are the color of money. The water flowing through the channels is the color of money. Even the stripes in Clown's suit are money-colored. Tall Man sees money everywhere, except in that black hole yawning before him. That is the only way to the actual money. Lots and lots of it, the kind you can touch and smell and trade for things that make you happy. Money is the prime motivator for Tall Man, for all of them. It is worth crawling through a slimy stinking hole for, he must tell himself.