Waste Deep chapter 22: "I've only gone and forgotten."

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The humming stopped. Dibbuk glanced around. There was nothing. Not a sound left when she woke up. Was she awake?

She looked for some sort of evidence that she was still there. There was none. Not a trace. The darkness of the void was all that she could comprehend in the space around her. 

'What was that voice? Monkey. That's what Blaithin had called the voice in the darkness. But that hadn't been the voice I'd heard before. This last one had been crass, angry, evil even. Filled with hatred and venom.' Dibbuk thought, leaning down to feel the sand beneath her feet. 

Now there was nothing. No cart. No ants. No Botu, no Blaithin. No Dibbuk. No Harvel. No Yiddek. No mum or dad. No Boris-Valka. 

The only thing she knew was there was the ringing of the bells. And at the moment there were more than there had been before. Millions to be not quite exact. Most, again, were faint, but a few more than before were loud. Excruciatingly loud. 

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Captain Lier unhooked himself from the line. This was a new type of screwed up. The orange substance running through the surrounding earth was not entirely foreign to him. He'd seen it before, poking through in dark dilapidated tunnels in his youth. It had been a very long time since he'd been this deep in the system.

Wicksomme and Mary lowered themselves down behind him as he moved deeper into the cavern. Lier picked up a couple of buunchal wrappers that were lying on the ground before the mouth of the cave. They were still slightly sticky with sugary preservatives. 

"Well, seems she didn't have time to think about environmentalism." lier commented, pointing his flashlight down the length of the tunnel. 

"Can't say I blame her. I personally wouldn't want to spend any more time down here than I had to. That being said, can we get the fuck on with this?" Mary said, helping Wicksomme unhook himself from the cable. 

"Yeah. Alright. No need to sit around with our thumbs up our asses eh?" Lier agreed, placing one of the wrappers in his pocket.

"No sir, I don't think there is." Wicksomme commented, staring incredulously back up the cable. Scores of yards above them clinking sounds could be heard originating from the rest of their party.

"Boy, if you don't hurry it the fuck up I'm gonna kick you down this god forsaken hole meself!" Don complained, pausing to take a sip of thisky from his flask. It was currently his only solace from the grim venture they might be embarking on. He could tell from the weight that it was beginning to run dry.

Merely a yard below his feet Selby propped himself against the wall, his knees shaking so violently you could have written a samba with them. If it hadn't been the heights that were giving him pause, it would have been the orange rubbery substance his boots were embedded in that would have stopped him. He could feel it sucking at his legs with every short drop.

"Sorry. Sorry. I just... I need a minute." Selby explained, attempting to control his breathing. He was remembering exactly the thing the voice in the dark had showed him. 

It hadn't been dizzying heights. It hadn't been death, or danger. It hadn't been that nightmare he normally had about being in a cafe near his parents house with the man in the wheelchair and the three geese. It was a moment. 

A moment he was getting closer and closer to having to accept had happened. A moment that he needed, deep down to have never happened. Years ago his mind, his life in fact, had changed. 

Selby had lived his entire life with absolute certainty. Every moment of every day had been without question. And then that moment had changed him. And Harvel was at the end of it all. He was at the end of a deep, dark, enclosed part of Selbys existence that he never wanted to admit was there.   

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