Deep's Cave

1.

Waking up in the cave was completely senseless. At 600 hundred feet below the surface opening my eyes was worthless. The darkness, the numbness, the tinnitus- there was nothing else. 

The ringing grew. It blew up inside me. It got faster and louder and higher. It pushed through my eyes, it popped my ears. It inflated in my skull, evolving in its rage until the engine finally exploded. And then the crescendo broke.

The first input wasn’t the pain. It was the sound. My ragged breath, the echo of my heartbeat off the water, the sickly sticky snapping as I moved my arm. The congealed blood stretched, then broke. The bonds between rock and skin quietly cracked as I grabbed at my lamp. Only then, hand pawing at my helmet for my light, did the pain hit.

I didn’t scream. That needed some consciousness I didn’t quite have yet. Instead, my rough breath sped up. I could only get a mouthful of the cold air into my lungs at a time. I just couldn’t get my chest to take in any more. It was like the weight of all that darkness above me was determined to choke me out. 

Gasping, I made my mangled arm stay focused. There! I could feel the lamp. I squeezed it, as hard as I could, but my fingers refused. They scrabbled at the buttons but I just couldn’t get any force behind them. I felt them slip off the rubber bumps, then down the glass, and then they smeared a thick warm gel across my helmet and onto face. 

I tried to turn- to free my other arm and try its luck, but a sudden spike of pain cut my breath short. Something deep- ancient rose up inside me. Some unknown adrenaline response- not to fight, or even to run, but to just empty myself.

I puked. The pain faded and there was nothing.