Doctored Chance #NaNoWriMo2019

4|Rebirthday

Tobias had described the hours that passed as a waiting game, and one that he refused to lose. Claustrophobia, the fear of small spaces, overwhelmed me completely on the day I flew to the island for my research. The place in which he hid remains there to this day, now one cracked narrow tomb. I crawled inside to understand what it felt like to be so trapped but couldn't stay. It was impossible to breathe. Crevices pocked the floor where magma streams had cooled over time. I found what remained of his left leg, mottled and beyond recognition. I felt the large dip in the hardened shell where the shield's cover transitioned to the flimsy blankets and was scraped by the stalagmites where the molten liquid dripped through. My fingers traced the long motto that had imprinted permanently in the rock, pressed in by his shield, "Saepe ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit."

Often, it is not advantageous to know what will be.

I could barely fit in, and so I peeked and pulled out.

But, Tobias MacClain could not pull out. He lay there, with two legs, in silence, and minded that his breathing remain steady. Even as magma sloshed from beneath him and slipped underneath his blankets. Even as the blanket became too hot to hold, but too dangerous to release. Even after lava seeped through the gap in his cover and started to paint on his face. Tobias, though he wept, though he couldn't help but cry out, grit his teeth and tried to conserve his oxygen. He could see that the lava would slow and cool in one hour from now, at the most, and he focused on that in increments.

Just another ten minutes, he'd think. Just another ten minutes.

And gradually, as the air thinned and the pain numbed to so unbearable that his senses gave up on bearing it, he felt the molten movement overhead thicken, thicken, and eventually come to a stop. His shield stuck in what had become rock. He released the last remaining scraps of his blankets and brought his trembling, swollen, black-holed fingers to tap at his watch. He winced and shuddered with the movement. His shield blinked out, and he could finally lower his shaking right arm.

His breathing shuddered in short gasps. He couldn't sit up, his left side pinned beneath the low hardened shell of lava, now basalt. He couldn't turn his head, one half encased in a crust. His good hand fumbled blindly to reach his behind his back and undo the buckle, then struggled with the zipper. The pair of scissors clattered on the floor and his fingers found the right way. Jaw tensed, he gripped the instrument and drove it point like a hammer at the crust around his face until it gave in and he cheek was freed. Air rushed through his opened mouth, but not enough oxygen was left in it. It squeaked into his lungs and rasped out. The scissors fell out of his grasp and his fingers wrapped around an oxygen mask and pulled it desperately to his face. The plastic face was already warped, but it functioned just well enough. He inhaled deeply. His lungs ached, burning with the same fires that surrounded him.

He couldn't stay in this trap. The lava on top was thin enough that it had cooled, but if he waited longer, he had no way of knowing if a new eruption would bring on another layer, if he would be buried forever, if all he'd suffered through thus far was for naught.

He picked up the scissors once again and drove them into a stalagmite. It crumbled. Another three followed. Filling his vision with nothing but black dust. The flimsy basalt wall where the blankets had covered cracked.

Chink. Clink. Thud. Tobias drove the scissors at it, drew back, and thrust again over and over and over, arm scraping with each motion against the tomb. Cool air spilled inside, sending relief throughout his body until it all heated in the cramped space and the only fruit of his labor left was a small peek of daylight. He resumed the chiseling, forcing the crack to widen from a creek, to a stream, to a river, and eventually to a gaping lake, a hole wide enough for him to crawl through.