THE DIRT TUNNEL continued endlessly. It twisted right, and then left, it dipped down, it doubled back on itself, it rose upward. It continually divided, giving Adam myriad choices of which tunnel to take, and he just took the closest one, not caring, not thinking, just moving forward on tortured feet.
Nothing assaulted him. He found no crazy rooms, no mysterious doors, and he needed no magic. He just walked on feet that were raw, it seemed, to their very bones.
And on he walked.
He ate the banana, and the giant pumpkin seed.
Little flickers of movement continued out of the corner of his eyes, but he no longer startled at them. His heart no longer pounded with the thought of someone else being in the tunnel with him, real or imagined. He no longer cared. He had no energy to spare. He was beyond exhausted, and his feet were so beyond repair that he didn’t even feel them anymore. The skull-cracking pain in his head returned with every beat of his laboring heart, with every agonizing step.
He just walked.
His tongue swelled, his lips cracked with thirst. Occasionally, he sucked moisture that trickled from the dirt wall, but it just resulted in a mouthful of gritty mud. Now and then he pulled a root from the roof or wall of the tunnel and chewed it for moisture and for something to taste. They, too, tasted like dirt.
He preferred the dirt tunnel to the black glass tunnel that led to Oliver and his crazy dinner party. This dirt tunnel seemed real. When he was in the dirt tunnel, he had the tiniest twinge of hope that some time, some day, he would exit this misery and be back up above ground.
On he marched, for days, it seemed, miles upon miles, until his steps grew unsteady, his leg muscles cramped, and still he managed to put one foot in front of the other until he stumbled and fell, face first, onto the ground.
The little blue flame winked out.
He lay still, too exhausted to move.
This is it. I shall die here. Chrissie, Lisa, Sonja, Mouse, I love you all. I love you and I failed you. Forgive me.
Adam slowly pulled into a fetal position, closed his eyes and waited to die.
Memories flooded over him, and he let them come.
This is what happens when you die.
Your life flashes before you.
He remembered meeting Chrissie, their whirlwind romance, their wedding in her parents’ living room, small, intimate, to save money for their extravagant honeymoon in Ireland.
He failed to keep the vows he made that day, the first of which was fidelity, and that didn’t take long.
The miracle of Lisa, growing in Chrissie’s tummy. Chrissie would put Adam’s hands on her belly when they were in bed together, and he would talk, sing, tell jokes to the little thing growing inside. It was so magical.
Even so, while at a conference, he got a twenty dollar blow job from a hooker in the hotel elevator while his pregnant wife slept upstairs.
And when Lisa was born, he could not believe his good fortune. A perfect baby, a perfect wife, a good job, a nice, modest apartment, a small car, they lived within their means.
He had amassed tremendous secret debt. Chrissie would find out about it when he died.
Chrissie had wanted another baby right away, and Adam did not. He wanted to spend time with the baby they had. They argued. “In time,” he said, over and over again.
In time, he said. (When he paid off his gambling debts.) They would have another baby in time, let’s enjoy Lisa while she’s little.
“It’s time now,” she said, more than once. “I want the kids to be close, to have a relationship. My brother is six years older than I am. We were never close.”
“We have time,” Adam said, more than once. “Let’s get a little more financially secure, first.”
Chrissie punished him. She would not accept finances as his reason, and he couldn’t tell her the real reason. So she darkened their utopia. Shadows came between them, cold rain fell on their meals together, on their family outings. Even Lisa, after she learned to walk, would walk one to the other and take their hands and try to get them to sit together, to sit next to each other, but they did not. Would not.
And then one night, sick of the cold shoulder, Adam gave in.
He reached for her in the night, and she was only too eager to accommodate his desire, then, and every opportunity thereafter until she conceived. It wasn’t love making, it was baby creating, and these acts of biology without closeness left Adam lonelier than ever. He spent all his time with Lisa, while Chrissie prepared for the new baby, a girl. Sonja.
He gambled more, and fell deeper into debt.
Their parents were delighted with the new granddaughter, of course, and set up college funds for both girls, but all Adam saw when he looked at Sonja was money flying out the window. More music lessons. More dance lessons. More clothes. More expensive weekends away. More babysitters.
He saw only his failures as a husband, a father, a provider.
He paid his gambling debt with their college funds and then tried, desperately, terribly desperately, horribly desperately, to refill those funds. But the craps table, the blackjack table, the poker table, the smug cashier on the other side of that little brass cage took it all. Took all the girls’ money! Took it all and then more and more upon more. He could barely live with the horrific secret. He wanted to fix it before he had to confess. And now, Chrissie would find out.
He had only cared about himself.
That’s why he went to Congo. To get away. Away from the family, away from the casinos. Away from his sins, away from his indiscretions, away from his responsibilities. He needed to get away from it all.
He needed to get away from himself.
And now here he was, dying, with only the company of himself. His own wretched self.
He’d done other things, too. When Lisa got a ferret as a gift, he took it to the woods and let it go, telling her that it had escaped its cage and got away. He watched her cry for days with a hard heart, but he’d be damned if he’d have a weasel in his house. Lisa tearfully begged for another, and even Chrissie joined in, but Adam flatly refused.
Ditto Sonja’s ant farm that she got for Christmas from his parents. No insects in his house on purpose for God’s sake. Why would anybody bring ants into the house on purpose? Ridiculous. He just threw it out and disavowed knowledge of its fate. Chrissie, Lisa, and Sonja turned the house upside down looking for it, and he had stood by with what he hoped was an innocent look on his face, shrugging at the mysterious disappearance.
Eventually, Sonja decided one of her little girlfriends had stolen it, and despite Adam’s earnest counsel against shunning the accused, the little girls’ sweet, innocent, Barbie doll friendship ended in heartbreak for both of them.
Such small things he’d done caused such unnecessary grief to those he loved.
And then Mouse.
Oh God, Mouse …
Grief, sadness, and regret gripped a handful of his gut and squeezed. The pain curled him up into a ball of pain and misery, and he began to sob.
Oh God, Mouse.
* * *
“Is it alive?”
“Shhh. Yes, it’s alive, but it’s old and sick and very, very sad.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure.”
Adam didn’t know he’d been asleep until he was awakened by whispers, and something sliding around on his legs. He lay very still, listening. Maybe it would be best if they thought he was dead. Or still sleeping. Certainly they could see he was not a threat to them.
“Will it hurt us?”
“I don’t think so.
“Do we kill it?”
“No, it is dying on its own.”
Startled, Adam drew his legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his knees. “Hello?” His voice sounded weak and scratchy.
“It speaks!”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Who’s there?” he asked.
“We are here,” one soft, faintly female voice replied in the darkness, and again, something slithered around him.
“Are you snakes?”
“Are you snakes?” the voice repeated.
There was much discussion among them in hushed whispers. Then: “What are snakes?”
One of them slithered past Adam’s head. He reached out and pushed it away. It felt like a snake. He shivered with the thought that he was sleeping in a nest of snakes. Talking snakes. Oh, God. Was this real? “What are you then?”
“We are people,” the voice said. “We live here. What are you?”
“I am a human, and I don’t live here,” Adam said. Hope rose. If they lived here, perhaps they would know how to help him get back to the surface. “I live above the ground. In the sunlight. I came here by accident and don’t know how to get back.”
He sensed the snake things retreat from him, their dry slithering a raspy, strange, musical sound. Again, they whispered softly to one another.
Adam sat up and scooted to the side of the tunnel, resting his back against it. If they were going to attack him, best to have his back against the wall.
He heard rustling and then the one spoke again, closer to him than he realized.
He flinched, it was so close to his ear.
“Are you God?” the snake asked.
Adam considered this. Could he be a god to these people? Would they help him if he said he was?
Could he manipulate these simple people by claiming to be their god?
Stop it. Stop manipulating people! Have you learned nothing down here?
But he would do anything …
But then how could a god need the help of those he supposedly created?
As tempting as it might be to call himself a god to a race of sentient snakes, it wasn’t true and to do it wasn’t right.
“No,” he said. “I am lost.
“Are you dying?”
“Yes,” Adam said. “If I can’t get back above ground into the sunlight, I will die.”
The snake thing retreated and the whispering again commenced.
Adam began to cough, a harsh, rasping, lung-ripping cough that hurt his ribs and scorched his throat. His dehydrated lower lip split down the middle and the tang of blood flooded his mouth.
“I need water,” he gasped.
Again the slithering, but this time, when the snake thing spoke, Adam was prepared for it to be close. Still, closer than he expected.
“We can take you to water,” she—it—said.
“Please,” Adam choked out.
“But Oliver said—”
“Oliver?” Adam fell again to coughing. As soon as he regained his breath, he responded. “FUCK OLIVER!”
When he heard himself say that, he remembered the last time he said those words with that wrath.
It was all he could do to keep from thumping that smug fuck at his fancy dinner table with all those weird people. But assault hadn’t seemed to be the answer to his situation, so he had restrained himself.
But here he was again. Oliver. Oliver had something to do with his being here. Oliver had his smelly little fingers in every aspect of Adam’s life, even here! It seemed like there was nothing Adam could do to rid himself of goddamned Oliver.
What else did he have to sacrifice to that sorry bastard?
Desperately sorry for his antagonizing outburst to these snake things, these “people,” he calmed himself and again addressed those weird creatures who could take him to the life-saving water. “Please,” he said. “I’m so sorry. Can you take me to the water? Can you save my life?”
“Oliver said you would be worth saving, if you yourself believed that to be true,” the snake said.
“Is Oliver your god?” Adam asked.
“No, Oliver lives here. He is people, like us.”
“He is not like me?”
“No, he is people, like us.”
Adam tried to remember Oliver sitting at the head of that ostentatious table. Had he been a snake thing? He was certainly a snake, but was he an actual serpent, like these people? Did he have legs? Feet?
Did he have a tail? Did he slither when he moved?
As dream memories go, he could not quite remember if Oliver was a serpent with a head, arms, and hands sitting in that chair. Did his tail curl under the table?
What about the others at that weird dinner party? Were there serpent bodies beneath those fancy clothes? Did Oliver’s tail wind around the tails of others at the table? Were they communicating in that way while he innocently ate their food and tried to take them at their word?
Could have been.
In the ways of dreams, Adam could barely remember Oliver’s face. Only that he knew it, he knew that face as well as he knew his own.
Fucking Oliver.
Spent, Adam let his head hang and let the hot ball of emotion rise through his chest to the back of his throat. He was out of food, out of strength, out of energy, out of hope. “I don’t know if I am worth saving,” he said softly. “I am a wreck.” He pulled the remaining shirt sleeve from his waistband—the other having been lost long ago—wiped his face and blew his nose. “But if you help me, I will work to be worthy of your trust.” He sucked in a ragged breath. “Oliver has no right to judge me.”
Oliver. That shit. That marriage-wrecking piece of worthlessness. He was the one who held the keys to Adam’s fate? Oh, that’s good. That’s rich.
“You tell Oliver …” Adam paused. He did not want to alienate these creatures who could help him. If ever there was a time to be truthful, to be real, to be whole, to be honest and not manipulative, this was it.
What was the truth? Fuck Oliver? That was the truth. But that wasn’t going to get him out of here. He sighed in resignation. “Tell Oliver I will be grateful,” he said.
“Oliver wants your magic,” the voice said.
Of course he does. He wants everything.
Adam patted his shirt pocket that held the few remaining cards. “I will give you half,” he said. “And when I get out, I will leave behind what I have not used.”
Again, the serpents conferred.
“We will lead you to water, but you must carry us.”
Their slithering sounds made a certain chorus as the whole pack of them approached him. He had doubts about his ability to carry himself, much less heavy-bodied creatures.
Slowly, painfully, Adam got to his feet and stood stoically, gritting his teeth as serpents nosed around his screaming, swollen feet, ankles, and then began to wind their way up his legs. There seemed to be many of them, wrapping around his waist, winding up his torso to his arms, around his neck. He gritted his teeth against his compulsion to slap them off, to run screaming into the darkness, but after a few moments, they settled.
They were very heavy.
Adam began walking. His feet were so swollen they seemed like hot baked potatoes on the ends of his legs.
Still, he limped along, bent over, carrying what seemed to be tons of thick, living ropes draped around him, tightening, loosening, sliding, moving relentlessly around him.
Unnerving didn’t begin to describe it.
He was tired. Exhausted. Dehydrated.
One of the snakes whispered directions in his ear, but he was certain he was no closer to water than he had been when they started out.
He began to stumble, and when he did, the snakes shifted, writhing around him.
“Are we nearly there?” he asked.
“Nearly there?” was the reply. “Are we nearly there?”
Were they asking him? Why would they ask him? They were the ones giving directions. “Please,” he said. “My feet … I am so tired … I don’t think I can …”
Just as he thought he could not bear another step, he heard it.
Water.
Thundering water—a waterfall—echoing in a giant chamber.
Had they come upon it suddenly, or had he been so caught up in his own misery he failed to hear it?
How could he fail to hear this?
Maybe Oliver—that fuck—took him to his absolute breaking point every time.
Had Oliver orchestrated all of this? Had Oliver ordered his kidnapping, given him the magic cards, made him walk through endless tunnels for miles, for days, skirting death at every turn?
No, of course not. Oliver was not in Congo. He was back in Minneapolis.
Chrissie was back in Minneapolis, too. He had left her alone there for three months while he came to Congo to escape responsibilities. To escape himself, he had left his wife at home in close proximity, very close proximity, to Oliver.
He couldn’t blame Oliver for this. Truth be told, he couldn’t really blame Oliver for anything.
Not even Mouse.
Adam shook off his supreme annoyance at himself and leaned forward, hoping the weight of the snakes would help propel him toward the water.
Water!
Adrenaline shot through him and gave him energy to make final steps.
“Turn left,” the voice said.
He obeyed, and cool water sprayed across his face.
One by one, in some apparent order, the snakes descended sliding their loops down and off him. They rustled gently, pooled at his feet.
Adam reveled in the feeling of mist wetting his shirt, his pants. He let it run in rivulets down his face. He opened his mouth, and though he couldn’t catch enough to swallow, it soothed his parched lips and tongue.
He wanted to laugh, to shout out that he was still alive into the misty cavern but first, he had business to conduct.
In the total darkness, Adam couldn’t see the creatures that had brought him here, couldn’t see the gigantic cavern he sensed in front of him, couldn’t see the waterfall, but he could hear it.
Water was life. Water meant safety, water was transportation, and water inexorably flowed to lakes, rivers, oceans. If he could get into the water, he could be saved. He would be saved.
He closed his eyes and held his arms out to embrace the icy spray that wet him.
“Thank you,” he whispered in gratitude.
“You owe us the magic,” the serpent said.
As before, when Adam considered telling them he was their god, he now considered reneging on the deal to give up half of his precious magical cards.
He paused, thinking about it.
He didn’t really know what lay ahead of him, but he knew this was the end of his association with the serpents. What could they do if he failed to keep his part of the bargain? Besides, it was Oliver who wanted the magic. They were doing his bidding. What did he owe Oliver?
Nothing. Not a goddamned thing.
And yet … they had kept their part of the bargain. This was their realm, their home. They knew this place, and he did not. It could be that they could do him real damage if he skated from his obligation.
And yet … the magic. It was only by the grace of the magic he was able to stay alive this long in this hellish place. What if he needed it?
If he needed it and he didn’t have it, he would die.
Did Oliver care about that?
No. Oliver didn’t give a shit.
Maybe he would just give up a few cards. They didn’t need to know how many he had.
He sat down on the damp ground. The serpents assembled around him, crawling around his feet, his legs, over his lap, restlessly moving as if they could read his mind and knew of his hesitation to keep his part of the bargain.
What was he thinking? They could see. Of course they could see in this darkness. They could see how many cards he had left. They could see that he was more of a snake than they were, his temptations to cheat them were the temptations he had to cheat everybody, all the time.
The serpents closed in.
Was this an aggressive move?
Adam recoiled, but they had him surrounded. There was no escape, except to jump into the waterfall that was so close the spray wet his clothes.
The snake things were more eager to get the magic to take to Oliver than they were to wrestle him for it.
They could probably do great damage to him if he tried to cheat them. At minimum, they would get some of the magic, and perhaps they knew how to use it better than he did. At worst, he could lose all the magic and be stuck here with nothing.
Surely Oliver knew how to use the magic. He was an asshole. A snake. The king of all snakes.
And by even considering cheating on the deal, he saw himself as the snake he was, too. In comparison, actually, Oliver was not so bad.
Adam unbuttoned his shirt pocket and removed the remaining cards. He counted out eight then put four back in his pocket.
He blindly held out the other four, and a soft hand gently took them from him. Small fingers grazed his own.
A hand! With fingers! What were these creatures, anyway? What did they look like in the light?
Once they had the cards, the snakes retreated. Adam had a moment of panic at the thought of being left alone again. They were not such great company, but at least they were company.
He needed to see the water, the waterfall, the whole situation, so he would know how to proceed. They got him to water, but he still had to get back to the surface of the earth. Back to the village. Back to his family in Minnesota so he could make his confession and then make his amends.
He so desperately needed to make his amends.
He took one of his four remaining cards and flicked it into the cavern.
The concussion was lost in the enormous grotto, but the flash of blue concentric circles illuminated what lay ahead just long enough for him to see that he was sitting on a rock outcropping. A very thin ledge.
To the left of him, a stunning waterfall fell from enormous height, and fell hundreds more feet below him. There was nothing but emptiness to the right. Behind him, the dark black, endless tunnel.
They had taken him to water, but he had no access to it, except to jump to his death.
Tricked. Again. Tricked.
Fucking Oliver.
As his eyes again grew accustomed to the dark of the cavern and tunnel, he saw that even though the magic card had not given him access to the body of water way below, it had again gifted him with the slight blue flame. It burned on the ground right next to him.
He was grateful for the flame, the one almost-constant in this ridiculously long and twisting underground ordeal. And now the two of them were together again for the end.
Adam and his blue flame. Together forever.
He picked it up between his thumb and forefinger and held it above the serpents who were slithering back into the tunnel.
“Hey!” he called after them. “What now?”
One of them turned back to look at him. In the pale blue light, Adam recognized her face. She had sat across from him at Oliver’s dinner party.
“Hey,” the serpent replied, then glided into the darkness. “What now?”
Yes, yes, now he was certain he had lost his mind.
Adam inched closer to the edge of the precipice. He held the light out over the abyss, but its light was swallowed up by the mammoth cavern.
Adam got to his knees, and braced with one hand on the wall of the tunnel, got to his horrifically painful feet. They were so raw and swollen he thought they might burst with the pressure of his weight.
He held the little blue flame up, but it illuminated only his immediate surroundings. He saw nothing but the ledge he stood on and the walls of the tunnel. Ahead of him was the great unknown.
As he stood facing the enormous cavern, the thundering water to his left, the pool, or river, or whatever, way below him, he contemplated his miniscule importance in the world, both above and below ground.
He was inconsequential to everyone but himself. This waterfall didn’t care. Those snake things didn’t care. The tunnels didn’t care. The magic didn’t care.
And Chrissie didn’t care.
When he had put the four of them on the plane to Minneapolis, he knew that was the end of their marriage. He just hadn’t wanted to face it until now, until just this minute. He hadn’t had the courage to face it until just now, right now, as he faced death and was about to meet his maker. Having his girls come to Congo was a last-ditch effort to save his family, and he had failed.
Failure.
He had lost them. All of them, by being a prick.
And now, here he stood on the precipice. Again.
Clearly, he had two choices: go back into the tunnel, or go forward, dropping most assuredly to his death hundreds of feet below. Chances are, he’d be smashed to pieces on rocks before ever hitting the water and drowning in the freezing, crushing, churning, maelstrom.
There was no choice, not really. He couldn’t go back.
His chances of surviving in the water were perhaps one in a million, but he had no chance at all if he returned to the tunnel. In the tunnel he would starve, die of infected feet, die of thirst.
He wanted to sit and wait, to torture himself further by reviewing his life, to make promises to God, to pray, to try to make himself right with his life, to make himself right with his death.
But that was just postponing the inevitable.
“God save me,” he whispered, cupped the blue flame close to his chest, and leaped off the ledge.