Beyond The Bridge [ONC 2023] // Longlisted

Chapter Eighteen

The tunnel is lined with more rocks than we expect. Small ones jut out of the ground and trip us up whilst large, sharp ones stick out of the wall and make it harder for Levi to use as leverage to keep moving. He returns to my shoulder and we move at a slower pace so we don't trip over the rocks or fall flat on our faces.

My shoes rub my heels and I'm tempted to take them off and abandon them, but with the rocks on the floor, I decide it best to keep them on. The last thing I want to do is pierce my foot and struggle to walk. We need at least one of us to be able to walk properly, and Levi is not capable of doing that with his leg.

"I have a joke for you, Gracie," Levi says. He's out of breath from the effort it takes us to walk through the tunnel.

"Please don't."

He ignores me. "When is the soup most likely to run out of the saucepan?"

"I don't know. When?"

"When there's a leek in it."

Through the flickering candlelight, I see him grinning and it takes every piece of self-restraint I have not to slap him. I groan and shake my head. Levi has always been known for telling appalling jokes that only he thinks are funny and I did hope I might have escaped them, but it seems that even he has grown annoyed at the silence that swallows us.

He giggles to himself and I know that the delirium must be hitting us harder than before because that poor excuse of a joke was not something to giggle like a young girl over. I get the feeling that by the time we escape the tunnels, we're both going to need to be taken to a lunatic asylum, me more than him if I have to listen to any more of his terrible jokes. There is no way we are going to emerge from the underground with a semblance of our sanity intact.

We continue through the tunnel with Levi seemingly resisting the urge to tell another poor joke. I can see the slight smile on his face as we move over rocks and slip on the sand beneath our feet. When there is one bad joke, there are usually about fifty more to follow and I begin to regret my previous thoughts about being glad to be with him rather than alone. Had I been trapped alone, I wouldn't have had to deal with his terrible sense of humour.

"Here's another one." He clears his throat and I roll my eyes. "How do you make a jacket last?"

"I don't know."

"Make the trousers and waistcoat last."

I snort, almost choking on my saliva at the unexpected punchline. It was still a bad joke, but it was far better than the first one and definitely not one that I had heard before. Levi chuckles and does a small celebratory dance in the low light, something that causes me to roll my eyes and shake his head. It amazes me how childish he can be, but for once I didn't mind.

"My cousin told me that one and I've been dying to tell it to someone else since then."

"Speaking of jackets, do you want yours back? I've been wearing it for ages and you must be cold by now."

"No, I'm fine." He shudders. "See?"

I shimmy his jacket off my shoulders and hand it to him, raising an eyebrow. "Take it. It's yours after all."

"If you're sure you'll be alright without it."

"I'll be fine. You can always give it back when you warm up."

Levi accepts the jacket and swings it onto his shoulders, securing the buttons to keep the cold out for a little while. "It looked better on you than it did on me, even if it was a little big."

Heat rises in my cheeks and I duck my head even though he cannot see me in the fading candlelight. Small butterflies take off in my stomach, but I do my best to ignore them, as I know full well that nothing can happen between the two of us. Levi and I are friends, as we have been for our entire lives, and that is the way it must always be.

We continue through the tunnel, both of us having to rely on the walls on either side of us to keep from tripping up. I run my hand along the wall with the candle in front of us so we can track where we're stepping. The ground beneath us continues to be uneven, and it grows worse the further up the tunnel we travel. It also starts to feel as though we are going uphill, potentially a good sign.

My hand catches on several rocks as Levi's does on the other side of the tunnel. This time, there is no suggestion that the tunnel might face imminent collapse, at least not yet. I listen to the sound of our footsteps on the dirt and stones beneath our feet; the sound echoing through the confined tunnel. After all this is done, I never want to be in a tunnel again, if possible.

I glance down at the ground, keeping an eye on the rocks as they grow larger around us. The candlelight starts to fade as the second of three candles starts to burn down to the wick, leaving us with one candle left and an unknown amount of tunnels to move through until we reach our final destination.

With my attention directed to the ground, I don't notice the large rock pointing out the wall until I pierce the centre of my palm on the edge. I swear, almost dropping the candle as I pull my hand off the wall. Blood trickles down the palm of my hand as the pain spreads and seems to move down my wrist.

"Gracie? What happened?"

"I wasn't looking. The stupid rock went through my hand."

"Let me look." Levi carefully takes my hand and holds it up to the flickering flame to get a better look, but it's hard to see with all the blood. "If we had enough water, I'd wash it, but we need to preserve it."

"I'm sure it'll be fine. With the number of rocks increasing, we cannot be too far from the cave."

"We should at least wrap it to try to stop the blood."

Levi grabs the bottom of his shirt, the whole thing having come untucked, and tugs on the corner sharply. A loud ripping sound echoes through the tunnel as he tears a long strip of fabric from his shirt. He carefully uses it to bind the wound on my hand, tying it as tightly as he dares and apologising when I react.

"Typical. My head starts to feel better and I end up impaling myself on a rock." I shake my head.

"That should do it." Levi ties the strip into a knot. "Come on, I think you're right about us not being too far from the end."

I nod and we continue on, bloody pooling on the strip of fabric.

~~~

First Published - March 15th, 2023