Ganama

Day ???.

I woke with my with my face on the ground in serious pain. I felt the resistance of thick sticky blood pulling me in as I pulled my head away. I slowly sat up, fighting the urge to lie back down and sleep, while looking around seeing the world around me as a blurry mess. With the feeling of my head ringing again, and the rest of my body cold, consciousness was slowly restored as my vision started to clear.

I stared forward into a large tunnel, and turned my head to a wall behind me with a small hole in the bottom that lead somewhere dark. It looked like I was back at the cave entrance, although the lack of small tunnels branching from the path in front convinced me otherwise. As my mind settled I could tell this was an entirely different place than before. The walls and floor were completely flat smooth black stone, and they met on rounded edges making the tunnel a shape of a long rounded rectangle. The whole area was filled with red light but there was no lightsource, nor were there any shadows.

"You're finally awake..." a weak voice beside me spoke.

I turned to my seide to see Andon. His legs were spread out and his upper body curved upwards with the floor meeting the walls.

"Where's Meg..?" he asked.

I slid myself to the adjacent wall and sat down to see him. He was holding a hand over his chest, ineffectively trying to stop the flow of blood which ran down the bevelled edge he was sitting against and pooled onto the floor. I had never seen so much blood before in my life.

"She's dead" I replied, feeling my chest start to convulse with sadness.

"I'm sorry. I screwed up, I should have stayed with you"

"It's alright" I gasped for air as I started to sob. "Nothing could have been done".

I looked at Andon, wiping away my tears,

"What happened?"

"Not much further ahead of you guys... of you... I found the end of the cave" he spoke in a quiet raspy way like he had lost his voice. "When I reached the end, there was a small hole that led on to another room. I couldn't hear the sound of running anymore and I panicked, and the guilt of leaving you set in. I turned back to see you face down on the ground, and Meg nowhere to be seen. I picked you up and took you to the hole. I thought it would be best to put a wall in between us and whatever that was."

"What's with the blood?" I hesitantly asked. I knew I didn't wanna know the answer. I wasn't sure if it was all his, but even though I felt like all the blood should have been mine, I had the feeling it wasn't.

"After I got you in here, I slipped on the smooth floor. My gun was in my pocket and it misfired from hitting the ground and... yah..."

He sat there for a few moments in disappointment as he replayed the events that would be responsible for his death.

"But I'll be okay, don't worry about me." We both knew he was going to die, it was no secret, but neither of us wanted to admit it. Losing the two people in my life that mattered most to me was something I never wanted to experience, but here I was.

"What's up ahead?" I asked Andon with false optimism as I watched him bleeding in front of me.

"I don't know. This was as far as I made it.".

We sat silently in each other's company for a long time.

"Go on ahead." he spoke as he coughed up blood, "I'll catch up".

He looked up and smiled at me, "Don't worry, I promise".

I could see blood was also running down from his nose and mouth now in a constant thin stream.

"Alright, just make sure to catch up sooner than later." I said as I held in my tears.

I stood up avoiding the blood on the floor, that was now clearly from my friend. He smiled at me.

"Good luck." he said between heavy difficult breaths.

"Thanks...".

I turned from Andon walked further down the hall. While walking I could hear his heavy breathing fade to silence about a minute later. I couldn't hold back my tears, but I moved forward.

Slowly walking for about half an hour, the hallway narrowed down into a small opening to another hallway. This happened multiple times until I came to an opening with dark blue neon light coming from inside. The light cast from the opening came with the comfort of casting shadows, and even seemed to flicker like some bizarre candle. I crawled through to meet an empty dark blue room the size of a baseball field, with no ceiling. I would have thought I was outside if there weren't the large smooth black stone walls that expanded infinitely upward. The ground was covered in freshly trimmed grass, and in the middle of the room was a ring of pine trees taller than buildings. I walked towards the ring of trees enough to tell there wasn't another opening on the other side, and laid down. Half-way inbetween the entrance and the trees, feeling the soft grass on my skin, I slipped away.