The Never Ending Tunnel

It had been days since I had experienced fresh oxygen. I was trapped inside a mine which smelled of just Methane. My lungs would have exploded had there been any spark in the vicinity. I was trying to reach the end of the mining tunnel from the past 36 hours and was surviving by eating spiders and wild rats, uncooked and unwashed. It was like I had become a living drain. My body was a live wire stinking pot that smelled of methane, urine and some other foul smelling substance that I could not identify. It was dark inside the tunnel and I did not know why I thought there would be an exit to the tunnel in the particular direction I was walking in. Perhaps it was because I knew everything good or bad has an ending. My logic was always retracted but hysterically they worked always. With each step in the direction I took, my hopes faltered, my energy produced due to the digestion of spiders inside me flickered and I was in no mood to laugh about it. I was not Spiderman, in fact I was spider-eating-man. I did not even remember how I got here!!! It was all a mist covered cynical truth I was trying to escape from.

My mother splashed some more water on my face as she screamed at the top of her voice in ultra-high frequency” Get up my king. It’s already late”. She loved being sarcastic. I hated it frankly. I woke up from my dream, a terrible dream. I smiled and thanked my mom for waking me up. She smiled back. My smile was due to anger, her smile due to the satisfaction that she was successful in waking me up one more day. I yawned with my mouth wide open and felt something tingling inside me. My tongue was being poked by eight needles at the same. It was quite creepy. I pushed my blanket away and stood up in front of my mirror, opened my mouth and observed. There was nothing. I turned back and looked at my bed. It was heaven, a sleeper’s heaven but I had to get back to work. So I turned again and looked at mirror and yawned. Something jolted me from inside. It was unexpected. There was a huge spider inside my mouth trying to make its way out. I fell on my bed. A huge rat made its way out of my night Pyjamas. It was a horrific scene. The rat literally wagged its tail against my scrotum as it made its way out of Pyjamas. I jumped and ran to the bathroom. The windows had been painted black. My mother had told me about that a few days ago but I never noticed. I switched on the lights. I opened the shower and stood beneath it hoping everything was just my mind playing games with me. The smell came back, methane and urine combined. It gave me shivers. My shower was leaking out methane gas. I could see spiders creeping up through the small drainage hole. A rat swiftly moved across the panorama, then another and another. They just kept running in front of my eyes. Out of sheer fear, I opened the door and saw a never ending tunnel. It had found me. There was no room, no mother. It was not my mind playing games with me. It was something else. Something unexplainable!!! I had seen my future in my dream. I had also seen how to survive and how to escape. I thanked my dreams. I was not in a mood to ponder over what had just happened or where I was? I never thought about those things. I just lived the moment and found solutions to survive. As I placed my first step into the tunnel, I looked back. There was no bathroom. Just darkness all along!!!

I widened my eyes and spoke to myself” What the fuck man?!?” and there was silence and darkness.