Attempt at 2nd Person narrative. Enjoy.
Today marks the eight-year anniversary of your job as an Archeologist. You get out of bed with your normal routine, taking a minute or two to pry yourself from the entangling sheets and manage to look in the mirror. The image is familiar, the same two eyes you always see, the same nose that is just a little to obtrusive, and the same uncanny half smile you try to give yourself, but can’t manage in your tired state. You get dressed for your work. You got a phone call from your boss the night before saying that an oil mining company stumbled across something amazing, in your line of work however this could mean anything from a fossilized dinosaur excrement, to the lost city of El Dorado. So, you don’t really know what to expect. The phone rings again, it’s your boss, you’re late.
A quick shuffle through the kitchen leaves you with a light breakfast, a bagel with no toppings, just to hold you until lunch time. A quick drive to the airport leads gets you to your flight in time, your boss has cared enough to show up in person for this dig. You begin to think that this might actually be something special.
“Good, you made it,” Your boss says to you as your flight begins to take off. “You are not going to believe what these guys found.” He says excitedly.
You have never seen your boss worked up before. Normally, he is a ragged man of Sixty-Three years with a head full of gray hair and the kind of self-centered attitude that would make most Hollywood celebrities jealous, but today he seemed so genuinely interested as to have forgotten his sour nature. All you could do was ask him exactly what he thought you would dig up there.
“They found a cave system filled with hieroglyphs of an unknown origins. They asked us to explore and document it. This could the remnants of some ancient civilization, we might be the first people to lay claim to a piece of history which could reveal some forgotten part of history.”
You would express your concerns that the cave system could be anything, but the boss seems ecstatic so you decide to hold your tongue. Perhaps once he calms down a bit about the whole thing. Soon enough however the flight comes to an end on the shores of Liberia. You transition to your helicopter. The quickest way on and off of the island oil rig. You move your gear from the plane to the helicopter. You brought climbing rope, as well as your flashlight and emergency whistle should someone get injured in the caves. Soon you arrive on the island at a large vertical shaft in the ground with its edges marked in orange and white caution tape. You crack a glow stick and toss it down into the hole counting the seconds it falls. You stop at 20 seconds when the glow disappears convinced that you must have missed the sound of it hitting the ground. You repeat the experiment, again the glow stick disappears without a clear stopping point.
Without an accurate judge of distance, you rely on the oil drillers’ readings. They claim that the cave extends to just above 2800 meters below the surface at this point, but they’re not sure about much else. The only miner that went in there wanted out almost immediately. You volunteer to go in first. The harness system they use could only support one person at once and your boss was busy interviewing the guy who went down before. The crane wench gradually drops you down into the abyss soon the natural light from above is barely visible. The walls were rough and rugged from the mining, but suddenly go smooth as they widen. You are no longer in the drill tunnel, but in the open space of the cave. Your boots touch ground and you unhook yourself from the harness flicking on your flashlight. It flickers for a moment, but ultimately stays lit allowing you to observe the repeated scratches on the walls. You look around for a moment, something feels wrong, but you can’t quite place your finger on it. That happened a lot as an archeologist and your experience told you it was nothing, but you can’t help but notice that something is off. The sound of jingling metal breaks the silence, the harness starts to move again, back toward the surface to let your boss down. For the time being, you are stuck here, but staring back at the entrance you realize what was nagging you. The glow-sticks you dropped are nowhere to be found. You shine your light over the floor thinking perhaps they simply rolled to the edge of the room or down a tunnel, but they are nowhere in sight. On close inspection, you realize there are only two exits two this room. The one you came in through, and one slightly behind it on an upward slope. You are in the lowest point in the room, but the glow-sticks aren’t here. You take a loud step toward the second entrance. It echoes through the room, then goes silent. A few more steps revealed a curve. You find the glow-sticks behind the curve, in normal situations you might think that you simply misjudged the slope of the room, that in reality this was really lower than the rest and the sticks had simple fallen here of their own accord, except they aren’t on the floor. They are resting on an ancient table top laying parallel to each-other. Something had put them there, and it is in here with you. You shine your flashlight in every direction in attempt to reveal the perpetrator. Beyond the table is an intersection. You run back the way you came creating loud echoes around the room as you curve around the corner. You look up, your boss is still on the way down.
“There’s something down here!” You call out to him, but he can’t hear you. Something new troubles you though. You focus on your surroundings. Something is here with you; something is in this cave and you have no way out. Every detail matters, you become acutely aware of yourself. You could count how many times you blink in this minute, you count how many steps you make as you pace around circle waiting for rescue, each step is followed by a solid echo threatening to through off your count, but you don’t let it, instead you resume searching everything. You’re tongue touches the tip of your teeth as you search around the room in more frantic craze. Think, Think, this could be life or death if you don’t figure it out. Your hear your breathing and realize just how exhausted you are. You are painfully aware of everything and yet feel so unnervingly blind. You take a step toward the lift to safety, you hear it echo behind you. You are sweating profusely; you just can’t figure it out. You call again for help, this time yelling at the top of your lungs that he hurry, that you don’t want to be here anymore. That’s when you realize it. Your voice isn’t echoing. It hadn’t echoed since you got here, why should it. The cave walls are curved inward in focusing arcs, that would cancel out most sound. It would be impossible to get a decent echo in here, but if this cave doesn’t echo then who’s footsteps did you hear, and why weren’t they stopping?
Today marks the eight-year anniversary of your job as an Archeologist. You get out of bed with your normal routine, taking a minute or two to pry yourself from the entangling sheets and manage to look in the mirror. The image is familiar, the same two eyes you always see, the same nose that is just a little to obtrusive, and the same uncanny half smile you try to give yourself, but can’t manage in your tired state. You get dressed for your work. You got a phone call from your boss the night before saying that an oil mining company stumbled across something amazing, in your line of work however this could mean anything from a fossilized dinosaur excrement, to the lost city of El Dorado. So, you don’t really know what to expect. The phone rings again, it’s your boss, you’re late.
A quick shuffle through the kitchen leaves you with a light breakfast, a bagel with no toppings, just to hold you until lunch time. A quick drive to the airport leads gets you to your flight in time, your boss has cared enough to show up in person for this dig. You begin to think that this might actually be something special.
“Good, you made it,” Your boss says to you as your flight begins to take off. “You are not going to believe what these guys found.” He says excitedly.
You have never seen your boss worked up before. Normally, he is a ragged man of Sixty-Three years with a head full of gray hair and the kind of self-centered attitude that would make most Hollywood celebrities jealous, but today he seemed so genuinely interested as to have forgotten his sour nature. All you could do was ask him exactly what he thought you would dig up there.
“They found a cave system filled with hieroglyphs of an unknown origins. They asked us to explore and document it. This could the remnants of some ancient civilization, we might be the first people to lay claim to a piece of history which could reveal some forgotten part of history.”
You would express your concerns that the cave system could be anything, but the boss seems ecstatic so you decide to hold your tongue. Perhaps once he calms down a bit about the whole thing. Soon enough however the flight comes to an end on the shores of Liberia. You transition to your helicopter. The quickest way on and off of the island oil rig. You move your gear from the plane to the helicopter. You brought climbing rope, as well as your flashlight and emergency whistle should someone get injured in the caves. Soon you arrive on the island at a large vertical shaft in the ground with its edges marked in orange and white caution tape. You crack a glow stick and toss it down into the hole counting the seconds it falls. You stop at 20 seconds when the glow disappears convinced that you must have missed the sound of it hitting the ground. You repeat the experiment, again the glow stick disappears without a clear stopping point.
Without an accurate judge of distance, you rely on the oil drillers’ readings. They claim that the cave extends to just above 2800 meters below the surface at this point, but they’re not sure about much else. The only miner that went in there wanted out almost immediately. You volunteer to go in first. The harness system they use could only support one person at once and your boss was busy interviewing the guy who went down before. The crane wench gradually drops you down into the abyss soon the natural light from above is barely visible. The walls were rough and rugged from the mining, but suddenly go smooth as they widen. You are no longer in the drill tunnel, but in the open space of the cave. Your boots touch ground and you unhook yourself from the harness flicking on your flashlight. It flickers for a moment, but ultimately stays lit allowing you to observe the repeated scratches on the walls. You look around for a moment, something feels wrong, but you can’t quite place your finger on it. That happened a lot as an archeologist and your experience told you it was nothing, but you can’t help but notice that something is off. The sound of jingling metal breaks the silence, the harness starts to move again, back toward the surface to let your boss down. For the time being, you are stuck here, but staring back at the entrance you realize what was nagging you. The glow-sticks you dropped are nowhere to be found. You shine your light over the floor thinking perhaps they simply rolled to the edge of the room or down a tunnel, but they are nowhere in sight. On close inspection, you realize there are only two exits two this room. The one you came in through, and one slightly behind it on an upward slope. You are in the lowest point in the room, but the glow-sticks aren’t here. You take a loud step toward the second entrance. It echoes through the room, then goes silent. A few more steps revealed a curve. You find the glow-sticks behind the curve, in normal situations you might think that you simply misjudged the slope of the room, that in reality this was really lower than the rest and the sticks had simple fallen here of their own accord, except they aren’t on the floor. They are resting on an ancient table top laying parallel to each-other. Something had put them there, and it is in here with you. You shine your flashlight in every direction in attempt to reveal the perpetrator. Beyond the table is an intersection. You run back the way you came creating loud echoes around the room as you curve around the corner. You look up, your boss is still on the way down.
“There’s something down here!” You call out to him, but he can’t hear you. Something new troubles you though. You focus on your surroundings. Something is here with you; something is in this cave and you have no way out. Every detail matters, you become acutely aware of yourself. You could count how many times you blink in this minute, you count how many steps you make as you pace around circle waiting for rescue, each step is followed by a solid echo threatening to through off your count, but you don’t let it, instead you resume searching everything. You’re tongue touches the tip of your teeth as you search around the room in more frantic craze. Think, Think, this could be life or death if you don’t figure it out. Your hear your breathing and realize just how exhausted you are. You are painfully aware of everything and yet feel so unnervingly blind. You take a step toward the lift to safety, you hear it echo behind you. You are sweating profusely; you just can’t figure it out. You call again for help, this time yelling at the top of your lungs that he hurry, that you don’t want to be here anymore. That’s when you realize it. Your voice isn’t echoing. It hadn’t echoed since you got here, why should it. The cave walls are curved inward in focusing arcs, that would cancel out most sound. It would be impossible to get a decent echo in here, but if this cave doesn’t echo then who’s footsteps did you hear, and why weren’t they stopping?