by R E Swirsky
"No," he replied. "There is nothing any of us can do."
Anita slowly pulled herself away from Chris again. "So who is going to go find Vincent?
CHAPTER 28 Day Four - Monday 5:37 PM
It was impossible to erase the salty taste.
"I can't believe I actually did that." He stared at the half-empty bottle. As he waited for the taste to dissolve, he realized it was really only moderately disgusting and had practically no taste whatsoever. He couldn't deny that the ache in his belly had receded and he knew he had to consume the rest of the bottle.
He fought hard to push aside the image of drinking his own urine. His body didn't care at all about what it was he was drinking and simply screamed that it wanted more. He decided quickly, pinched his nose, and chugged back the rest of the bottle. He almost puked and retched after each swallow but only because he knew he was drinking his own urine. It really did not taste as bad as he first thought. There was another bottle somewhere, and after entirely finishing the first bottle, he knew he could drink that second one if needed.
Vincent remained seated on the muddy surface and waited for the uncomfortable salty taste to fade away enough for him to focus back on what it was he was fighting for.
His desperateness in the search for Aaron's knife stormed its way back in. Vincent lifted himself off the mud covered stone and placed his butt down onto the stool to reason out what to do about the missing knife. The knife must be around somewhere.
He was sure he had overturned every single rock and felt across every square inch of the muddy bottom.
"Where else could it be?"
He lifted Aaron's bag and set it off to the side to look underneath. He really didn't want to start moving every single stone one by one all over again. And then, for no specific reason, he slipped his hand inside the end pocket of the bag. All he found was Aaron's phone, which he had forgotten completely about. He pulled it out and performed a quick inspection. He knew immediately it was broken as his fingers slipped across the shattered glass face. The stone he named Darrel did more damage than just the destruction of the water bottle. He pressed the button to turn it on, but nothing happened.
"Fuck! Aaron's gonna be so pissed about this," he said. "But that's just too effin bad! If you would've come back for me, you’d have your damn phone!" He shouted. He wanted to crush Aaron's phone and smash it to bits but he just placed it back in the end compartment to save his energy.
He plunged his hand down in the middle compartment of the bag and ran his hand across the bottom. He expected to find nothing inside but his hand fell on the handle of the knife immediately. He cursed.
"For fuck sakes! Seriously? What were the odds of it falling exactly into the bag?" he asked himself, but he dared not think too hard. If not for the search for the knife, he may not have accidentally drank his own urine and gained the much needed liquid for his survival.
Vincent felt a new resurgence of energy. He tucked the knife into his back pocket, hoisted himself up onto the rope, and ascended up the wall to remove the next stone. He had lost a good amount of daylight but pressed higher and higher towards the opening.
As each stone fell away to the bottom, the newly created footholds brought him closer to the surface and into a brighter part of the well. Up near the top, frequent gusts of fresh air wafted down to where he was poised, and he welcomed each breath. It carried the promise that he would soon be free of the musty dankness that lived at the bottom.
He worked as hard as he dared and was exceedingly careful. A fall from this height would certainly leave his body crumpled horribly upon the stones below, but the darkness crept upon him quicker than he had hoped. His hands felt raw and stung everywhere, but he continued to claw away. He was soon forced to stop and descend to the bottom for what he was sure would be his last night.
"Only about four more footholds to go," he mumbled quietly as he made his way carefully down to the bottom. "Only four more and I should be able to reach up to the top."
He rested his tired body against the stony wall, craned his neck, and lifted his beaten hands up at the tiny hole above him. To leave a friend to die like this was a treacherous and despicable act.
"Aaron, I don't know why you did this to me. I will certainly never forgive you. This I promise. And Roger, we've known each other since we were ten. How could you ever be a part of something as cruel as this? You were my best friend! You and me! It was always just you and me!”
He punched a fist weakly into the air. “Why? Why, Roger? Why? You will both wish you were dead when I finally get out of here."
CHAPTER 29 Day Five - Tuesday 5:57 AM
It was nearly impossible for Vincent to sleep leaning against the stones for another night. Every part of his body now ached, and every rock that touched his body caused irritation deep down to the very bone. He drifted off and on throughout the night, restlessly looking skyward for any sign of morning. When it finally came and the sky was bright enough for him to see, he stood up and immediately went dizzy. He leaned back against the wall and waited for the spell to pass. He reached his hand under his shirt and felt across his disappearing waist and protruding rib cage.
"This is really bad,” he mumbled softly.
He sat back down and pulled out the other bottle of urine he located before going to sleep, and without thinking too hard, opened up the bottle, pinched his nose and gulped back a few good swallows. He resealed the bottle and wiped the dribble across his arm.
"Yuk!"
He tried to spit out the remnants of the urine, but he could not produce any saliva.
He tried standing again, slowly this time. Some light-headedness still returned, but it wasn't as bad. He grabbed hold of the rope and very slowly lifted his foot up into the first notch in the wall and hoisted himself up into the next hole.
"Oh my God," he said, as he wrestled himself up onto the wall. He could not believe how little energy he had left. It was going to take him much longer to climb the rope like this. He checked his back pocket for the knife. It was there, though he didn’t even remember picking it up, and that was only minutes ago.
"I've only got to make it a few more hours. Just two more hours, maybe three."
He reached and slid his blistered and battered hands higher up the rope. Some of the wounds on his finger tips and palms split open immediately and began to weep blood. He ignored the pain and continued sliding his hands up the rope with each step higher. He continued the process for a long period of time, stopping every three or four footholds to catch his breath and when he felt the light-headedness worsen. His light-headedness scared him.
By the time he was up to where he removed the previous stone, the sun was fully up, and less than eight feet separated him from the top. He welcomed the fresh air that gusted down.
He pondered for a moment why the crow didn’t return this morning like it had every other. It bothered him. Was it a sign?
He carefully pulled out the knife ready to dig out the last few stones, but the wall up here in the light of day appeared much different from what he had worked on last night in the darkness. Up until now, all of the stones were free-laid to allow water to flow freely between the stones. But up near the top, the stones were laid differently.
"What the hell is this?" he called out dumbfounded. They appeared to be set in some kind of cement or mortar.
He scraped the blade lightly across the mortar and the knife seemed only to scratch the surface.
"No way," he said. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He scratched even harder with his knife, lifted the knife away, and then studied the impression left behind. Barely a trace of a scratch marked the mortar between the stones.
“Arrgh!” he shouted.
Vincent looked up at the blue sky above him. It was inconceivable that he could be so close to his own deliverance and yet was unable to continue. He wanted to cry. He tucked the knife back into his pocket and reached up with one hand as high as he could towards the opening while keeping the oth
er holding onto the rope but that only brought him two feet closer to freedom. He remained there with that one hand stretched up as high as he could possibly make it go, reaching and stretching and wishing.
He suddenly thought of Aaron's cell phone as he looked up at his outstretched arm. He realized if the stone named Darrel hadn't crushed the phone, he would be making his call to freedom at this very moment. It was another crushing thought that suddenly weakened him. His arm dropped limply and his weight shifted completely to his left foot.
Suddenly, the wall supporting his left foot gave way. A great number of stones broke free and tumbled down. His foot slipped with the stones and he began to plummet down the rope.
"No!" he screamed.
He was falling.
CHAPTER 30 Day Five - Tuesday 7:22 AM
"...of course the casket is going to be closed," Sandra said to Darrel. "He was burnt pretty badly wasn't he?" She looked at Chris. He could only nod his agreement. His mouth was full of hash browns.
"I thought they always made them up. You know, with makeup and stuff to make them look okay," Darrel replied.
Charlie and Barbara arrived at first light, followed closely by Darrel and Sandra, to help with whatever they could in preparation for the funeral and gathering afterwards. The funeral was set to start in only a few hours and Anita, with Arlene's assistance, prepared a hearty breakfast for everyone. The conversation evolved quickly from the gathering later in the day to the funeral and Vincent's death.
"I don't think they can do much with burns," Anita said. "I would rather remember him just as he looked the last time I saw him."
"No one needs to see him the way I saw him," Chris added.
Darrel was helping himself to seconds of the bacon and toast. He asked, "Did they do an autopsy on him?" No one had asked that question before.
"Do we really have to talk about autopsies while we're still eating, Darrel?" Arlene piped up. Darrel sneered back. He, like the rest of his family, had accepted the fact that Arlene was staying at the house, but he did his minimal best to tolerate her presence.
Charlie stopped chewing. "They didn't really do an autopsy on him, did they?"
"No autopsy," Chris replied. "Autopsies are only required automatically for suspicious deaths. If he was under a doctor's care and died as a result of cancer there’s no autopsy required. However, If he died from some unknown biological cause or sometimes even an unordinary suicide then the autopsy is required."
"Suicide?" Barbara questioned and looked around the room at everyone.
"This was a car crash. Simple as that," Chris replied.
"And so? Did you ask for one? An autopsy?"
"What the hell for? He died in a car accident," Chris answered. "Everyone knows how he died. It was bad enough on the outside. What's an autopsy going to show us on the inside?"
"Can you just stop talking about autopsies?" Arlene insisted. "I am still trying to eat over here!"
Darrel pointed his finger at her and chuckled. He turned to Chris. "Well, just maybe the boys were high on something and..."
"Darrel, please," Barbara responded. She was embarrassed by her son's suggestion. "That was really unnecessary. He's not even been laid to rest yet."
"I'm just saying, maybe there's a reason they didn’t stop in time and slammed into that truck at full speed."
Chris raised his arms to slow everybody down. "Okay, okay. Listen up, everyone. First, there were tiny beads of this resin stuff all over the road. That stuff made it impossible for Vincent to stop his pickup. Second, there was no autopsy done because I did not want one done. But there was toxicology tests performed on both boys. The police took blood and urine samples."
Darrel snickered. "How do you get a dead guy to pee in a bottle?" He began to laugh. "Do you squeeze it out?"
"That really isn't funny, Darrel," Sandra replied. Both Barbara and Arlene frowned their disapproval at Darrel.
"You're sick," Arlene said.
Darrel simply shrugged and continued to smile.
"They poke a needle into the bladder, that's how, Darrel," Chris said directly. "I'm told they test for all kinds of drugs to see if there was anything present at the time of death. These results won't be back for about a week, so for now we are going to lay him to rest believing Vincent was not high on any kind of drug. I certainly don't think Vincent was using anything."
"Liquor maybe?" Darrel asked. "He's eighteen, on a Friday night. If it was me..."
"But it wasn't you, Darrel. It was Vincent," Barbara responded. "Would you stop this negative talk already? If you can't say anything nice about Vincent..."
"What did I say? I'm just saying..."
Chris nodded at Darrel. "Maybe he did have a drink or two, Darrel. But Dean never mentioned them finding any liquor bottles in his truck. I am sure Dean would have told me if he found something."
"Fair enough."
"Either way, we have to bury the boy in a few hours. And I know I'll miss him every single day." He started to tear up.
"We all will, dad," Charlie added. He looked at Arlene expecting her to add some comment, but Arlene simply looked away and furled her brow.
CHAPTER 31 Day Five - Tuesday 7:27 AM
“No!” he screamed as he continued to fall.
Vincent squeezed the one already tender and blistered hand he had around the rope as hard as he possibly could to stop his descent and flung his feet wildly apart out to the sides against the stones of the wall, hoping to catch a foothold and slow his fall. His feet pressed and banged against the jutting stones.
Both hands screamed in agony as the rope tore into his tender palms. He pushed both feet awkwardly out to the sides as hard as he could. They banged and bounced until his left foot miraculously wedged against some protuberance from the jagged rocks and stopped his descent.
He had only dropped about twenty feet, but Vincent felt like he was about to hit the bottom. He could feel the burn on the inside right of his groin and knew he had damaged something. His right leg remained poised at a right angle to his body. His foot was nearly above his shoulder.
He searched frantically for any of the footholds in the wall and quickly spotted one of them. His left foot was precariously resting on the ridge of an opening. He shifted his weight and slid his foot fully into the hole and then pulled his right leg down from the wall and set it in one of the other footholds.
Vincent gasped. The pain in his groin and torn up palms was excruciating, but the fear he had just experienced was much worse. He had now become desperate, and all logic and reason left him. The fear of being trapped in the well forever consumed him. Adrenalin pounded through his veins and his heart felt like it was about to explode. He feverishly pushed himself back up the steps as high as he could towards the top. There was only one way out: up.
He stared for a few moments into the hole where the many stones broke free and fell away. The wall had certainly begun to collapse. A three-foot-wide, cavernous hole now appeared above where the foothold once was. He looked into the shadows inside the hole and didn't like what he saw. It was wet, earthy, and utterly revolting. He blocked the vision from his mind. This wasn't the time to allow such deviant thoughts to infringe upon what little focus still remained. Death was now much closer than he had ever imagined. He dropped his head and gazed down to the dark bottom. He could see clearly what was down there and what rested down there scared him deeply. He became dizzy again, and the well seemed to spin beneath him. He closed his eyes and tried to think of what it he was he was supposed to be doing.
"Focus," he whispered. "Just focus."
The fear of certain death at the bottom was overwhelming. He knew now that if anything forced him back down to the bottom, he was certainly never going to ascend back up the rope again.
"Jesus, I'm scared. I am so scared right now. Gramps, I'm sorry. I am so sorry for all of this."
He tried to cry, but no tears came.
He squeezed his sore, blistering hands into the rope once more.
He cringed from the pain. The skin was torn open on both palms and fresh blood eked out from his clenched fingers and down his wrists.
"I am not going to die down here! I'm just not!"
He thrust one hand upwards and clutched higher onto the rope with all of his might. The pain screamed through the cuts and bleeding blisters, but he did not care.
"I'm not staying in here anymore!"
He retracted his lower foot away from the foothold in the wall, let it dangle below him, and reached higher up the rope again with his other hand.
"Unh," he moaned from the unbearable pain.
Again he reached up, and his other foot fell away from the wall so he was left to dangle freely from the rope by just his hands.
He grimaced, squeezed with all of his might, and then reached up again.
His early unsuccessful attempts to climb the rope thundered in his thoughts. He shut his eyes, smiled despairingly from the pain, and coaxed himself upwards.
He clawed two more grasps higher.
Roger's doubt in his ability to climb the gym class rope popped into his head.
“Fuck off, Roger,” he whispered through his clenched teeth.
He tried to turn the negativity into something positive and reminded himself that he had nearly made it a third of the way up the entire length of the rope before he fell. This was only eight feet.
He reached up again while his feet continued to dangle below his body. He had little arm strength left, but Vincent refused to give in. He could feel the blood dribble down his wrists from the broken blisters, the reopened cuts, and abrasions on his knuckles and finger tips, but there was no going back to the darkness. It was make it up to the top or die trying.
His upper hand slipped from the blood that flowed from his wounds, and he felt himself lurch down a few inches. He screamed out, gripped even tighter, and stared at his hand until he was sure it was not slipping down anymore.