The Permutation

Breakthrough (Part 15) Michelle

Friday, November 4th, 9:30 p.m.

It's hard to breathe in the absence of light. In the recesses of Earth where even light ceases to travel. The air becomes corporeal and covers everything like a heavy blanket. Deep breaths feel like they need to be followed by a spurt of coughing to expel the stale air, because in these places, the air doesn't reach the outside world. An invisible barrier prevents the air from being replaced, it's either unable or unwilling to leave its dark crevices.

Michelle hadn't known all this when she and Ron had scaled into the pit that swallowed their van. Armed with flashlights and beef jerky, they thought they were prepared for what lay in wait, but by the time they descended into the pit, it was too late to change their minds. Michelle urged Ron to wait for her on the outside to keep watch just in case Perry or something else of note stumbled by. He agreed with unbridled enthusiasm eager to escape the suffocating darkness. That proved to be a problem.

The entrance consisted of a fifteen foot vertical drop onto a packing of loose dirt that softened their fall, but hastened their descent into the depths. The scree followed an angled path to the bottom. While the hill had been easy and a little fun to go down, climbing back was not so simple. The loose dirt shifted beneath Ron's feet at every step pulling the ground out from under him as if it were taunting him, giving the illusion of progress like a treadmill. When he reached the top of the steeped slope, the lip of the outside world taunted him, just out of reach. Climbing the fifteen foot wall bore no fruit, because the wet, loose dirt crumpled when he let it hold his full weight.

Michelle considered waiting by the entrance with Ron, but not for long. Her curiosity got the best of her, while Ron waited for eventual help to come by. Michelle promised to scratch X's into the dirt to mark her path, and not to venture too far away from the entrance. She knew she would go as far as it took, but Ron wouldn't understand. The dark tunnels beneath the drive-in were nothing compared to her unquenchable thirst for knowledge.

Michelle Trick #5 - There's no such thing as obstacles, just challenges.

She plunged into the darkness with a high beam flashlight and half their supply of food, and two bottles of water; one of which she'd already drank, but she wasn't about to leave manufactured plastic in the Earth. She tried not to think of the rumbling she'd heard earlier that day, but she was confident that she could outrun it if she was put to the test. She spared a brief moment for the deer she'd seen that morning, and hoped that she wouldn't see it's spirit alongside Cade Jahns and the little boy with no eyes when she laid down to rest.

Michelle was presented with several forks in her path, and she chose right with consistency to prevent becoming lost in what she was beginning to suspect would be a labyrinthine maze. The creature that had dug these tunnels had to have been massive and tireless, never ceasing it's churning of the earth, creating a trap for unsuspecting prey that got lost in its depths. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Michelle noted that her path tilted downward at no more than an angle of five degrees, but after what she gauged to be thirty minutes, she worried that depth was adding up.

The journey uphill would be another challenge, but she would deal with that later.

Time started to have less meaning the deeper she went. Michelle didn't realize how much she had come to take her phone, the sun, and even her internal body mechanisms for telling time as a given. A darkness this deep confused the body, tricking it into believing she was traversing endless night, and that statement felt partially true. Light would never shine in these passages.

After what she judged to be the ninth fork in the passage, she noted that the left tunnel had an upward tilt to it. She marked as many X's on the ground as she could and chose left. The passage turned back in on itself, and the path pointed back the way she had come.