Blue Sludge Blues & Other Abominations

by Shannon Lawrence

  The tubing sloped downward, disappearing from sight. The sides were thoroughly sealed. He thought about working at the edges, trying to pry it loose, but he feared he was underground, that he might suffocate if this was the only thing giving him oxygen.

  He didn’t want to suffocate. What would it feel like? Would he panic? Even when he just held his breath a little too long, it caused him to feel desperate for air. Lungs bursting, cells screaming, mouth gaping. That’s what it would be like. Gasping and clawing, but never getting the needed oxygen to make it stop.

  No, he definitely didn’t want to suffocate. So for now he wouldn’t mess with the tubing. There had to be another way.

  Brand climbed atop the table and set his head back on the wall. He scanned the room, looking for anything he might have missed. The vent wasn’t big enough to have gotten him in here, so there had to be something he wasn’t seeing. What was he missing?

  He closed his eyes, thinking about what it could be. How did they get him in here? In his mind, he ran over each corner of the room. The only entries he could see were a faucet and a vent, both obviously way too small to have afforded access to this cube. His mind wandered back to his family. To the way each of them had looked at him through everything. Their eyes were all the same, deeply disappointed in him. That same look mirrored in face after face.

  ***

  Brand jerked awake, his legs shooting out and splashing into the water surrounding the table.

  “Shit!”

  How long had he been asleep? He slid off the table, plunging into hip-deep water. The icy cold shocked him, and he gasped. The time on the clock was almost enough to make him vomit into the water, but he held it back. Just barely.

  Three hours. He’d slept for three hours up on that table, as the water crept higher and higher, overtaking him while he was zonked out.

  4:11

  What an idiot. He’d stayed awake longer than 48 hours before, and his life hadn’t depended upon it then. So why now, when his family’s life depended on it, had he fallen asleep? It must be the cold getting to him.

  He flexed his fingers, now a frightening blue in color, and withered. No blood came from the wounds he’d suffered earlier. This scared him more than anything. It was like looking at a movie corpse, one that had been found floating in water, all shimmery white and absent of signs of life. They felt stiff as he moved them, and they wouldn’t bend all the way. And they ached. He could feel that ache up into his wrists, the pain was so deep.

  Tucking his hands under his arms, he climbed back onto the table. After all that time, he’d probably been dry when he first woke up. He should have stayed out of the water. It did him no good to know how much time he had left, yet he’d sacrificed being dry to do so.

  “Stop beating yourself up, Brand. You need to straighten yourself out and think. How did you get in here?”

  Once again, he stood to look at the ceiling more closely. The seams at the edges were smooth, no sign of a hatch. The rest of the ceiling looked as though it had been carefully rubbed with silk. Seriously, he’d never seen a ceiling so flawless.

  The walls were next. Still nothing. Not one thing to indicate something more, a doorway, window, hatch, anything. They obviously hadn’t put him in here with magic, which meant there had to be some way in or out.

  Wait, the air tubing had gone down, not up. He couldn’t be underground if the vent led down instead of up, right? So what did that mean? He was above ground somewhere, or so he figured. No idea what that should tell him. The cold made him feel sluggish, slow. His mind struggled to work the problem out. Above ground, yet no windows, no doors.

  He had a thought and, taking a deep breath, he sunk into the water, the cold hitting his head like a physical punch. He swam downward, so weak the water buoyed him up. His fingers found the seam along the ground; it felt rough. For some reason, the seam along the ground was rougher than the seam around the ceiling. Did that really mean anything? Maybe, maybe not.

  Diving three more times, he found each wall felt the same. It was as if the ceiling had been poured at the same time as the wall, so as to make them one unit, yet the ground was a separate entity. In fact, he hadn’t noticed it before, but the ground had patterns in it which the walls and ceiling lacked. It was textured.

  Back above water, he roared his frustration. It was time to wake up, take control of this slow brain and figure a way out of here. But it was getting harder and harder to concentrate. He knew this meant something, but couldn’t pinpoint what that might be.

  He wanted out of here. No part of him could process why his family would have done this to him. Or to themselves. This was unbelievable. Had he been sealed inside concrete with no actual way out? Maybe that was it. Maybe there was no entry because the cement had been poured around him. But no, that couldn’t be. They would have had to have something to hold the structure together, to make this shape, and they couldn’t have removed that through the vent any more than they could have squeezed him through it.

  He grabbed a crowbar and went to the wall with the faucet, slamming the iron into the concrete over and over and over. His hands began to sting again, but he didn’t care. There was no way out of this ridiculous cube. He was going to die in here, no matter what he did, and all he was doing floundering around in here was putting on a show. Yet for who? There were no cameras, no peepholes. He’d checked every inch. They couldn’t know what he was doing in here, so that must mean they wouldn’t know if he’d done something right. If he screamed out that he wanted to live, they wouldn’t hear it. How was he to prove he’d had a real change of heart if they couldn’t see him?

  The crowbar flew out of his hands, hitting the water with a splash he could barely hear above the blood pounding in his ears. They’d never know how badly he now wanted to live. Not because of his family, though they were the reason he couldn’t give up. But because he genuinely wanted to survive. Suddenly, things on the outside didn’t seem so bad. At least he’d had a warm, comfortable, DRY bed. He’d had food. He’d had a job. Sure, it made him miserable, and his boss was a phenomenal suckass to the higher ups, but it had been a paycheck, and one that involved solid work.

  Yet again, he regretted having broken that baby monitor. He hadn’t thought it through, and there was a good chance he’d signed his death warrant the second he smashed it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, laying his head against the wall near where the air vent had been.

  As he stood there, his head against the cold cement of the wall, he heard something. It was a faint noise against the background of the rushing water, but it was there. He had no idea what it could be, but it came from the vent.

  He went to the vent, deciding now was the time. A glance at the clock showed his time to be 3:32. What was the difference between drowning in three-and-a-half hours and suffocating now? Not much, that was for sure. The water had risen too high for the table to keep him dry, and the shelves were too shaky. There was nowhere else to go except out, and this was the biggest exit he could find.

  His hand fit into the tubing with room to spare, and he shoved it in, pushing at the sides of the tube to try and knock it loose. He pushed sideways, down, up, every which way, but the tube didn't move. He put his forehead against the wall again, thought about everything that lay on the tables and shelves. There was so much crap, but there had to be something he could use.

  Oh yes, a box cutter! He remembered seeing it before. Now just to find it. It had been on the table, but the water had covered the table. He ran his hands over the table, under the water. With his fingers so numb, he found it impossible to tell what he was touching. He started using both hands, lifting items up to examine them then placing them back where he’d picked them up from.

  “Where is it? Where is the damn thing? Come on!”

  At last, he picked up the box-cutter, unsure he’d be able to grip it well enough to cut his way through the tubing. He had to try, though. He'd run out of ideas.

  It took some tim
e, but he was able to grasp the box cutter enough to put the blade through the tubing. He couldn’t feel what he was doing so much, and was terrified if he dropped the box cutter it would slide away into oblivion. So he sawed slowly, despite the overwhelming urge to rush.

  Suddenly, he saw light. Just a bit, but it was brighter out there than in here. Had he broken through to the outside? He kept cutting, his speed picking up. When that proved too slow for him, he chucked the box cutter toward the table with a kerplunk and used his hand to push, pull, rip, nudge. Everything he could possibly think of to do to the tube, he did, until, at last, light touched his hand, and the tube fell away.

  Pressing his face to the hole, he tried to see what was outside, but the light was so bright after the darkness inside that it blinded him. The noise he’d heard earlier had grown louder. He still couldn’t make out what it was, but it seemed to be an electrical hum. Maybe a generator? Was that how he had light via the one bare bulb in the room?

  “Help me! Is there anyone out there? Please, help!”

  He jerked back when a face appeared on the other side of the hole. It was a man, pale, with light, well-groomed hair. When he spoke, Brand recognized the voice from the baby monitor.

  “And why should we help you, Mr. McKenzie?”

  “I want to live!”

  “Why?”

  “Why? I don’t know how to answer that. “

  “Hm, well, I imagine it’s because you want to save your family.”

  “Well, yes, but I don’t think that’s all. Not anymore.”

  “I see. Would you feel more at peace if I told you I’d lied to you, that they would be perfectly fine if you died right now?”

  Relief filled him, flooded his being. He felt it in his chest, his throat, his stomach.

  “They’re going to be okay?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, thank God.”

  “Yes, well, if that’s all, I’ll just go back to what I was doing.”

  “No, wait!” Brand pressed his face to the hole so hard he could feel the edges digging into his face. He didn’t care, though. This was life or death. “Please, let me out.”

  “So you do want to live then?”

  “Yes, yes I do. If this is what death feels like, I don’t want it. My life isn’t so bad. And I can change the parts I don’t like. I know this now. Won’t you let me out?”

  “How do you suppose we do that? I’m sure you’ve noticed there are no doors.”

  “Yes, but I…I don’t know. All I could find was the seams around the bottom, and I don’t unders…wait. Wait! The hook in the ceiling, the seams on the floor. Does it lift up? Can you lift this off me?”

  “Very good, Mr. McKenzie. Let me consult my partners.”

  His face disappeared from the hole, and Brand felt panic welling up in him. “Wait! Don’t leave me here. You’re coming back, aren’t you?” He didn’t want to be alone, to die alone in here.

  The face reappeared. “I’ll be back, Mr. McKenzie, no matter what is decided among the council.”

  Brand stood there, waiting, shivering. He felt like his body should have given up by now, like this shaking would surely break bones if it went on any longer. He was so ungodly cold and tired.

  A loud beeping sounded from outside, and he heard the sound of heavy machinery.

  “What’s that? Mister, where are you? What’s happening?”

  Something loud slammed into the top of the cube, vibrating into his aching head. He moved away from the middle of the room, pressing his back against the wall. The sounds of machinery continued, a racket occurring above him. It sounded like the cube would be torn apart any second.

  In fact, he could feel it shaking, see it on the surface of the water. Something was happening.

  With a loud crack, one wall lifted up, tilting the others, which cracked and split, as well. The fourth wall held a moment longer, but then lifted with the rest of them, the cube swaying as it began to rise into the air above him.

  He watched in awe as it went up, up, up. The water flowed out, away from him, washing out in all directions. He stumbled with the force of it, falling to one knee as the water emptied.

  When he raised his head to look, the brightness overwhelmed him, but he blinked and worked to focus on something, anything, that wasn’t cement.

  Above him, the cube stopped lifting, instead swaying in place above him. He stepped out, off the cement floor and onto a grated one. The water had flowed easily down the grate, leaving behind puddles that bespoke of the chilling water he’d been in for so many hours.

  A woman ran up to him, her feet clanking across the grated floor. She held a large blanket, which she wrapped around him. As he turned, blinking, he saw the numbers on the clock. He still had 2:45 left.

  As he watched, the number changed to 2:44. The countdown continued.

  Maelstrom

  As I sit listening to the crash of waves outside my hotel window, the fan tap-tapping away above my head, I wait for it to come for me. I realize it’s inevitable, but part of me wants to continue running. I’m exhausted, the fight gone out of me. The cursor taunts me from the computer screen as I type this.

  Though the creature has followed me from the mountains of Colorado to the craggy, black rocks of the Oregon coast, its visage is not yet known to me.

  How do I know it’s following me? This is a tale that won’t take too long to tell, so why not fill these last hours of mine? If it is, in fact, hours that remain to me.

  It began in a pine forest, on a rocky hill. I’d set out on a hike with my good friends, Nathan and Syracuse. No, that wasn’t his real name, but it’s what we all called him. He had a full collection of shirts with Syracuse written across them, an artifact of an uncle who had gifted him the first one then died shortly after.

  And Nathan was just Nathan. He possessed book smarts, but came across as a space cadet sometimes. Most people know someone like that: high IQ, low showing of brain matter.

  I was wrong. This might not be such a short tale after all. We’ll see how far I can get before it comes along.

  We liked to hike on the weekends, so long as one of us didn’t get called into work. Nathan was a rocket scientist (I kid you not). Syracuse was in finance. And I was a software engineer, or computer geek, as they liked to call me. (Though what of the rocket scientist? I’d say Nathan was one step higher on the geek meter than me.) I still am. Don’t know why I’m talking about myself as if I’m already gone.

  Colorado Springs boasts many trails, varying from easy enough for small children to intense rock climbing levels. We liked it closer to the rock climbing end of the spectrum, though just shy of actual scrambling most of the time.

  On this particular day, we had chosen an intense seven-mile hike that didn’t really involve any climbing. We’d heard there was a hot spring at the end, right next to a waterfall. Fairly hidden, it wasn’t overly popular, so we could enjoy some nice quiet hiking.

  We ended up taking a wrong turn somewhere, finding ourselves deep in the woods, facing a steep drop-off into a valley. A stone face loomed above us since we were just below tree line, where the altitude becomes too much for trees. Below was the plentiful alpine growth we’d just come through.

  We sat on a rock outcrop hanging out over the valley. I swung my right foot, knocking the heel back against the rock and sending little cascades of gravel down into the brush below us. Nathan photographed the view with his phone, while Syracuse held his up, trying to find a signal. You’d think a signal would come in well that high up, what with the unadulterated open air, but nothing came through at all. A dead zone.

  I peered out, trying to find some sign of the path, the waterfall, anything that might lead us back where we needed to go or to where we had been heading in the first place. We’d lost the path ages ago, pushing forward instead of going back as we should have. It had been gradual, the path changing in quality, but there still seemed to be an obvious line to follow. So we did.

 
Eventually, I looked down to find we were walking on a carpet of pine needles gone brown. The detritus of the forest was deep, showing us this wasn’t a well-traveled area. The undergrowth crowded closer and closer, until we were pushing away branch after branch that threatened to stab eyeballs or gouge cheeks. Turning around afforded us nothing, no obvious path where we’d come from. No twinkle of light to show us where the forest thinned. We were well and truly lost.

  Maybe you’re asking yourself why we didn’t have a compass. Maybe that seems like an obvious need to you. Since we typically went on marked paths, compasses were unnecessary, novelties more than anything else. Our supplies consisted of backpacks, a tent, some dry clothes, warm layers, fresh socks, water bottles, simple food, supplies for a fire, etc. No compass.

  I digress. Back to that overhang.

  As I sat there, swinging that foot and dropping those shards of rock below me, I looked down. And as I looked, one of those very shards fell with a clatter into an opening below us. A cave? Something’s den?

  I figured we might as well look around and make an adventure of it.

  Nathan and Syracuse were both game, so we strapped our packs back on and headed down the slope, clinging tightly to the rocks. We hadn’t brought any rock climbing equipment, rope, nothing, not expecting there to be a reason on this particular trip. But we were accustomed to scrambling when we came across random hills to climb. It was part of the fun.

  It didn’t take long to get to the opening. Rather, the cave. Slightly shorter than me standing at my full height, it was still sizable for a cave. Typically, we didn’t find anything more than a couple feet high. This was about five feet in height at its center. I stuck my head inside, but couldn’t see the back. Nor did I smell anything that might indicate a predator. There was no musk, no scent of any kind. Just dirt, minimally stale air.