Descent

7 - "The spot that's just for you"

"Once you've found your spot, the spot that's just for you, I'd like you all to focus on your breathing.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Now breathe in using only your nose.

And breathe out through you lips, like you're blowing up a balloon.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

As you breathe in, feel the breath traveling down your throat and filling your lungs.

Breathe out.

Breathe in and let the air fill your lungs, then let the air keep filling your belly.

Breathe out.

Breathe in and let the air fill your lungs. Then your belly. Then all the way down your legs and fill the bottom of your feet.

Breathe out.

Breathe in and feel the floor under your back, let your weight settle down into the floor. Feel your body sink down into the cracks in the hardwood or the spaces in between the weaves of the carpet.

Breathe out.

Breathe in and feel your body expand out into the room, through your toes and your fingers and your shoulders and even the top of your head. Feel your body fill the room all the way to the walls, then outside the walls, and into the floor and the roof, then past the roof into the sky, and under the floor, deep, deep under the floor, to the earth.

Deep.

Deep under the floor.

Deep.

Deep.

Deep now, under the house, under the dirt, where the roots grow, where the roots of the trees reach out into tangles of wooden fingers, digging.

Digging deep.

Digging deep down under the earth.

Digging deep down where the worms crawl under the house.

Now, down in the earth, deep and digging down, you find someone.

Deep.

Digging deep.

You find someone under the earth now.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Deep.

You find someone lying there under the earth.

Deep.

You see their whole body and you sink, deep, deeper, closer to them.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

With each breath you dig deeper, you grow closer to the person under the earth.

Breathe in.

Closer.

Breathe out.

Closer.

You're face to face with them now, nose tip to nose tip, you could feel their breath if they were breathing.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Push into them.

Breathe in.

Inside them.

Breathe out.

Inside them.

Deep.

Push deep inside them.

Deep.

Deep.

Clara opened her eyes slowly, and felt a great pressure behind her nose and a wetness on her face. She tried to make sense of what she was seeing, but her head pounded and her vision shook. She felt a tightness in her chest and around her legs. What she was seeing didn't make any sense. She tried to look around and realized she had been staring down at the ground. In the dim light of... wherever she was, she could only barely make out that she was bent over someone's shoulder. Another look down confirmed that whoever was carrying her was naked, his hairy and muscular legs striding back and forth in the dirt. Clara squeezed her eyes shut, half in pain and half in embarrassment.

When she opened her eyes again she risked another look around. They were in some kind of tunnel made of dirt. She guessed they were underground. Wispy roots grew like sparse hairs from the tunnel walls. She felt heat on the right side of her body and saw whoever was carrying her held a torch.

"Father?" It came out in a whimper.

His head jerked towards her but he didn't look at her, not quite, his eyes stayed fixed on the path ahead. She could only see the back of his skull, the skin pulled tight around his short hair, the muscles of his jaw pulling back and forth beneath the flesh, like he was chewing something. He was grunting softly as he walked. His strides were long and purposeful and Clara bounced on his shoulder and every step a stab to her empty stomach.

They passed holes dug into the dirt, doorways that revealed nothing beyond their threshold but a suffocating darkness. The light of the torch illuminated almost nothing, more hot than bright, though if she rose her head to see where they had come her father's wet footprints glinted orange in the torchlight in the dark.

They came to a larger room or chamber, dug like the tunnel straight into the dirt. There was an empty sound in here indicating a vastness she couldn't see. Father put the torch down and she felt his rough hands on her waist, then he hauled her off his shoulder and dropped her straight onto her back. She gasped and sucked in nothing but hot, dusty air. Coughing, she turned onto her side and nearly rolled off the edge of a terrible abyss in the earth.

Father seized one of her shoulders in his massive hand and rolled her onto her back. His eyes were wide and wild and though his lips were closed his mouth chewed. He loomed over her and slowly descended down so they were face to face, her on her back lying inches from a fall down a bottomless hole deep in the earth. His lips parted to reveal teeth soaked in blood, then those opened too and thousands of ants crawled out of his mouth, through his teeth and over his lips, up his nose and across his open eyes. Each ant held in its jaws a tiny bit of raw, red meat and Clara realized they were pieces of his tongue. She screamed.

Tommy screamed. He was wet. He was lying on his back and he was drowning so he sat up and coughed and water flew everywhere, off his hair and out of his mouth and onto the people who surrounded him. He coughed and coughed and wiped water from his eyes and softly said, "Fuck."