Depth

1. below

     The sun stood at high noon. A grid of light painted the floor above her head. Her fingers fell into grooves of the stone wall to her right. She pulled herself from her stiff prone position she had slept in. Her joints creaked. The rocky floor sparked visions of clouds, except the clouds were pristine mattresses; the sky an Egyptian cotton sheet, 500-threadcount.

     She sat upright, rubbing sleep from her eyes. The sunlight lit up the minimal layout of her cavern. A long wall opposite of her, the mouth of a hose fixed near the ceiling, an inch-wide pipe just below it, empty and meaningless. The light barely reached the short wall beyond her feet; one of its corners served as a waste area. The ceiling was sheet metal, dull and grey and dirty, and in the corner was a sturdy grate.

     She had tested the grate the first day. She was barely tall enough to reach her fingers up and out to the second knuckle. It had been nice, though, when she tried. The soft summer breeze wove through her fingers. It had been almost enough to imagine having the strength to hoist her body upwards and draw a clean breath of air. She had gotten used to the stagnant air below the grate, ripe and oily with her filth.

     She had withdrawn her fingers with great urgency when a set of sharp edges closed tightly around her pointer. A grungy man had stood above her. He had on a sweat-stained trucker's cap and a dirty wifebeater. His hands were clasped around the orange, rubberized handles of a pair of hedge clippers. He snapped them shut with a gut-wrenching sound, sincere intention to take her finger painted in the lines of his face. Before her questions could scrape up her throat and past her chapped lips, he disappeared to the left.

     It was now almost two weeks since that first day. Tears had long dried and screams had been silenced after falling on no ears.

      She pulled herself upright and stood beneath the grate, staring upwards, daydreaming of sunburnt grass and fresh air. The sky was oppressively blue, a violently deep color that she swore painted the inside of her lungs when she breathed. Crows flew between her and the unbounded sky. She closed her eyes and let the warmth soak into her skin.

     A few minutes passed. A stark shadow cut into the rays cast over her face. She scrambled to the other side of the cave. Footsteps went by overhead, slow and deliberate. Something dropped to the floor under the grate with a wet sound. Another object followed it. Footsteps retraced themselves and dissipated. Thirty seconds went by and the mouth of the hose began to spit and sputter before a steady trickle of water began to fall.

     She ignored the food under the grate, and went straight to the water. She drank three big gulps of water and rinsed the grime from her face and hair and drank some more. Next, she stripped off her shirt and shorts and soaked them before wringing them out and hanging them loosely from a couple seemingly useless footholds on the wall.

     The foodstuffs were little more than scraps: a piece of raw meat with a wide ribbon of fat and a half loaf of stale bread with large, green spots of mold growing on the cut end. The bread was inedible to her, so she tossed it into her waste collection area.

     The meat was coated in grime from hitting the floor. She ran it under the water, but some dirt particles were lodged in the contour between the fat and muscle, so she gave up. It didn't smell quite right, but raw meat never really did. Once she determined there was no overwhelming rot smell, she stuffed the whole thing in her mouth.

     It was easy to detach herself from her sense of taste, but the texture made it near impossible to get down. She chewed fast and hard until it was just soft enough to swallow almost whole, and shivers ran down her spine as she knocked back gulp after gulp of water. Calories were calories, and no meal, no matter how small, was guaranteed. Relying on her captor to adhere to her dietary requirements was a near death wish. The water began to recede as she was drinking to fill her stomach. She rubbed the last few drops over her hands to be rid of the meat residue.

     It had been a difficult decision to make to stick with her normal diet. It had been almost 24 hours after she had found herself trapped before she was fed anything. A half an apple and two scraps of bread crust were dropped through the grate. She had scarfed the apple, core and all, in a matter of seconds to quell the hunger pangs that had been consuming her abdomen. The crusts made it halfway to her mouth before she had stopped to assess the situation. She could eat the bread and expect incredibly painful intestinal discomfort within the hour, and it could last for days. Or, she could avoid it at all costs and spare her the severe damage bread would do to her body.

     The bread was tossed in her waste containment area and it did a pretty sufficient job sopping up the wetness and stifling some of the pungent odors. So she continued in that practice. If she was going to die, she would of hunger, not of excruciating intestinal damage. And if she were to be rescued, she didn't want to live with the damage caused by irrational decisions.

     She sat down in the residual light as the sun fell farther away from noon. If she stood on her tiptoes, she'd still be able to get direct sunlight on her face, but her stomach felt distended from the large amount of water she drank, and she didn't want to move. Her stomach lurched, but she passed it off as water bloat.