Torch Lit

I'm unsure of the amount of time in which I've spent unconscious in this chasm.

I woke with a horrible fright, next to a mattress that may have saved my life, so stunned and in disbelief of the unimaginable events that had just happened to a whole city. I wish I hadn't survived the fall and had instead been shattered among the cold stones along with the rest of my home.

For a long while, I sat,  struggling to be hopeful that a ray of light would shine down, a savior, but nothing came. For a great long while, all there was was the screaming and lamenting of the injured people and those looking for help and survivors.

The torches that those people lit were running frantically about as they looked for supplies and equipment to care for the injured and places to put the deceased.

Recovering, I made myself a torch and began searching for anyone or anything that may have made it out alive or may be stuck under the rubble, clinging for life.

The barking of a dog in the dark caught my attention. I considered how much my nerves could handle and I went in that direction to see if there was anything I could do to help it.

As I walked, I discovered most of the once grand city I knew so well was flattened and thinly scattered along the cold stone floor around me.

My home was once a great utopia. Happy people found residence in a place so far away from others that it became its own. The only flaw in this beautiful city was that it was built over a thin layer of rock where below a mighty river once flowed.

Its current had long retired, halted by a geological disruption long ago, dried up, and was now just a vast underground canyon, said to be at least a mile deep.

When the city was first built they vowed not to construct more than a small town. But this was a place where once you came, you were happy and people who could afford the journey came to the town, and the town became a city, and the city began to grow skyward.

When I came, the city was already a monolith on a vastly flat landscape and I made my home in an upper level of the tallest tower right in the middle of it all.

Then the day came when the news spelled tragedy for our metropolis. Readings from small tremors had revealed a cracked earth beneath. We needed to evacuate soon, but soon wasn't enough and the ground below gave out first.

That very night, the city fell to where it is now- a mile down, shattered on a mighty riverbed.

The air is unmoving. Every sound in the hollow cavern is amplified. Every movement, be it human, animal, or something stirring just beyond the light of each torch's glow, audible in the inky darkness.

The dog became silent for a while. I thought it might have passed on, died, but a few moments later, started up again,  louder and more anxious.

I quickened my pace for fear the animal may be suffering and tripped over something that would nearly tear my sanity right from its bones.

It was a body, mangled beyond recognition, so much so that it couldn't possibly have been done by the fall. No, this body had parts of it gnawed and torn, it was indistinguishable whether it was formerly male or female. In the blood, there were tracks unlike anything I've ever seen. I could feel my nerve slipping away from me, like a rope would slip through a wet hand.


I rose and my head swam. The dog was making a horrible racket. Growling and screaming into the darkness, it let out a piercing, searing cry, one that was felt deep in the core of every soul. As it traveled the length of the cavern, all went silent.

Not a body moved, even the crumbling buildings were silenced with the tension of fear.

Quickly I went back to my mattress, covered it with a torn curtain and secured a broken refrigerator with some food and water inside...

It's been a few days and I have slept poorly through the nights since. Every few hours a fire goes out and screams echo throughout the canyon.

Because we're not the only life in this cold and lonely maw.

I'm writing this to calm my shattered nerves, because I can't see any more lights, and I can hear them, coming closer, with each passing night.

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