Bumping Uglies

Chapter Thirty One

It's rare these days that we get to experience total darkness.

Whether it is the chemical glare of street lights and vehicle headlights, or the persistent glow of phone screens, there is little escape from at least some dim ray of comforting light. Even out in Pebble Deeping, where traffic could be scarce and there certainly aren't any lamp posts, the light of the moon and the stars is almost always enough to navigate by.

Once Ty had swung the steel door to the Lapal Tunnel closed behind us, it became dark. Not dark exactly, but absolutely pitch black. Thin shafts of daylight pushed through the cracks around the edge of the door, but Ty dug his paddle into the water and kicked us into the depths of the tunnel. After about ten metres I might as well have had my eyes closed.

After several powerful strokes, Ty stopped and tapped me on the shoulder to do the same.

I was suddenly feeling a crushing weight upon my lungs, my stomach was performing the Fosberry Flop and my heart rate was elevated.

Claustrophobia.

The walls were out there, just out of touching distance, only I couldn't see them. The roof of the tunnel, the one that been prone to collapse a hundred years ago, let alone now, was up above my head somewhere.

I felt a flutter of panic rising within me and suddenly needed to reassure myself of where I was. I reached out with the blade of the paddle until it tapped against the tunnel wall. I repeated the action on the other side.

The walls were there alright, and worryingly close.

What the hell did we think we were doing? We were trapped in the tunnel.

I lifted my paddle from the water and began to stretch upwards in an effort to check that there was a roof. The movement caused the kayak to wobble slightly and Ty leaned forward and clipped me around the ear.

"Keep still, you fuckwit," he hissed from the darkness behind me.

"I'm freaking out a bit here," I whispered back, the noise echoing off into the invisible distance ahead.

"Just open your eyes, breathe deeply and listen," Ty tried to calm me.

"What for?" I couldn't hear anything.

"Anything. Everything," Ty replied unhelpfully. "We need to take a moment to acclimatise here."

That seemed sensible, but all I could focus on was the remorseless passage of time. We had agreed that we needed to be out of the tunnel and getting the fuck out of Dodge by four, latest. We had finally got into the damn tunnel, hours later than planned, and now he wanted us to sit about and enjoy the ambiance.

"How long?" I persisted.

"Shh," Ty replied.

I tried to follow his advice and took deep breaths in an effort to calm my body. I soon regretted using my nose. The air in the tunnel was dank and fetid, likely caused by the lack of movement in the dark water that lay beneath us, and that which dripped from the roof and ran down the walls.

After a minute or so, I began to hear noises that had not been there before. There was the faint splash of droplets hitting water, there was a low whistling breeze passing through the cracks in the door and there, beneath it all, was the occasional vibration of distant traffic. It all seemed to be more of a sensation than a noise and the longer I sat, the more I began to visualise the space around me.

Even my eyes began to perceive shapes and shade. The deepest of the darkness represented the surface of the water which held God-knows-what beneath its calm surface. I even gained a grey and shapeless impression of the walls on either side of the kayak.