Dark

Dark

Several of the men have already fallen victim to the heavy layers of dust that line their lungs. Others have simply succumbed to the exhaustion that punishes their bones mercilessly, day and night. The sum they are being paid to do this dangerous job is larger than any of them could ever hope to earn in a regular job, but what good is money if you don’t live to receive it? 

No one can tell exactly how long they’ve been digging, or what they’re looking for exactly. Some have even gone so far as to say that they’re looking for nothing. That the man who hired them just wanted to watch hundreds of men suffer in caves, digging for a rock they will never fine, chasing after money that they will never get to see. 

Suddenly, the sound of digging stops. The only sound that remains is the steady drips of sweat that land against the hard barriers they’ve pressed themselves against for so long. The men can’t tell what they are sensing exactly, but they know that something is coming. No one makes a move for the ladder that will take them back to the world of the living, the men hardly even dare to breathe out of fear of upsetting the earth they’ve damaged so badly. Then it happens. It one small movement, one small puff of air that one man takes in happens to upset the balance of a tiny pebble sitting in his vicinity. The men point their flashlights in the direction of the rock, watching it fall. As the stone breaks on the hard rock beneath their feet, the men all take in a collectively large breath of air. They wait for seconds, minutes, half and hour, nothing happens. Slowly, the men edge towards their posts and resume their digging, releasing the breath they held in for so long. As the first man digs his pick into the ground, the floor disappears, and hundreds of men fall, as useless as the rock they tumble with. 

Only few are alive. The few that are, find themselves so badly damaged that they can’t help but cry out. The lights have long since gone out, those who were not broken in the fall are now wrestling madness in the complete darkness they’ve been thrust into. 

They cry out, begging for someone to save them. Calling out into the darkness, barely hanging on to the slim string of hope they’ve been given. At this point, the men are dying from hunger. Their bellies remaining empty, no matter what they put into them. The darkness tempts them further by tampering with their already destroyed minds, tricking them into believing that the stones around them are home cooked meals, waiting to be eaten. 

Days of wailing and screaming has made the air in the tiny room they all occupy tainted with stink. The few that were dwindling before are reduced to numbers so small, one would hardly believe they were a party of so many before. The men don’t know if their cries have been heard, and they don’t care. In fact, the men hope that their wailing somehow pierced through the miles of hard rock and dirt. They hope with all of their remaining strength that they tormented those above with their deaths, they hope that the man that hired them can hear their cries. They hope that their deaths will change something. 

As the last few pockets of air are quickly swallowed up by the dying men, they all hold on to one last thought. No, one last wish. As they all slowly begin a descent into the unknown, the men all silently wished that their deaths would be the end to the greed that sentenced them to their graves in the depths below.