*
Lunch was plain, but good. There was the cake, of course. There was a humble ham sandwich, which is not worth describing further. There was also a cold, buttered bread bun, which is a simple food I have always loved. I lay back on the bed and partly closed my eyes, with one hand behind my head and one hand holding the bread, occasionally bringing it to my mouth. I thought about when I was a child.
My brother, Benjamin, who was eight years older than me, often attempted to steal food from me at mealtimes or snack times. He would never do it directly, since if he had I would simply tell my mother about it; then he would be punished and I would get my food back. Instead, he devised schemes of food-thievery, each more elaborate than the last. The first time I can remember it happening is when I was a baby; I know not how old I was, but I was sitting in a baby’s highchair, with food on the tray in front of me – I only recall it as being orange and green, which I imagine probably means that it was mashed up carrots and peas. My brother, and others, would sometimes play what they called a game with me where they would ask me where they were, briefly wink out of existence, and then reappear, shouting, “Here I am!” and making horrible gurning faces. It was frightening, but I could not yet speak and knew no expressions to convey my fear, so I only laughed nervously hoping that the moment would soon pass. My laughter would often turn hysterical and too loud, which they mistook for my extreme enjoyment. There was no way to make them stop. It was a terrible time in my life, one that I have never related to anybody before this writing.
Benjamin chose one of these ‘game’ sessions as the first time to try stealing my food. He asked me where my food had gone. I knew it was a silly question because my food was on the tray right in front of me and always had been for as long as I could remember, but I thought perhaps it was just him testing my ability to look around, as people sometimes did[8], so to please him I looked down and was astonished to find that my food had disappeared from the universe; the tray in front of me was empty and spotlessly clean. I had never been a baby who was fussy about my food, instead enjoying everything that was fed to me, and angrily I looked up at my brother to complain about my non-existent meal, only to discover that he was also gone! Moments later, I heard the clunk of my plastic plate on the tray below. I looked down at it as my brother came back into existence and shouted, “Here it is!”
I paid no attention to him and instead eyed my food suspiciously. Where had it gone? Had it gone some place with Benjamin? I was chilled by the realization that I had no way of telling if this was even the same food as before; I hadn’t thought to take a picture of every meal I ate in the unlikely event that somebody caused it to no longer be corporeal, and now I did not have a picture to compare against this probable imposter on my tray. The most plausible explanation was that Benjamin had spirited my lunch away to another dimension where time passed more slowly so that he could eat the stolen food in peace and savor each delicious mouthful. Then he had gone to the mashed vegetable restaurant, ordered more, and brought that back to our normal dimension so that it could pretend to be my original lunch. And who knows what could have been put in the vegetables by him or some other party before they reached my plate.
I didn’t think all of that at the time, of course – that would be ludicrous, because, after all, I was only a baby. It wasn’t until much later, when I was well into my teenage years and had gained knowledge of the world, that I was able to decipher my thoughts and figure out what had truly happened. What I did do, though, which I think supports that I understood the basic principles of what I’m writing here, is throw my plate upwards onto him so that he was covered in mashed peas and carrots. And obviously, all these years later I now understand the concept of object permanence much better than a baby does, yet to this day I am always careful to keep a close eye on my food until I have eaten it.
I finished my meal and fell asleep. Later, I was partly woken by the noise of the food tray being removed and the door closing. When I woke even later, I noticed that the light from the window was still the same as when I had come in the night before. There was no clock in the room, so I could not tell the time. I didn’t know how long I had been asleep, but it felt like several hours. The light from the window was very odd; I had never seen the light changing as clouds drifted in front of the sun, and it hadn’t dimmed with dusk or brightened at dawn, so it was impossible for me to know even the approximate part of the day I was in. It occurred to me that it could be a sophisticated artificial light behind the window, always set at the same sunny brightness to make me think it was daylight outside, when really I was being held in a dungeon miles below ground and all that was beyond the glass was a light bulb with ten thousand feet of solid earth packed on top of it.
There was no way for me to be sure; it was fully possible that I really had been falling asleep in the afternoon and only waking up the next day after the darkness of night had gone and the sunlight returned. The suspicion that there could be a billion tons of dirt just above caused me to feel uneasy. I tried to relax and forget the light, forget the dirt, but it was all around me and above me and then my head began to hurt. Suddenly the image of the ceiling pressing down and sagging under the weight of all that soil flashed into my mind. I got out of bed and saw that the walls were pressing in towards me. Some outer set of joists must have buckled due to disrepair combined with the incredible pressure of the earth. Cracks appeared around the window, and I backed against the far wall near the hallway. I banged on the door and shouted for help, because I knew that soon the wall would collapse completely. A worm made his way through a crack around the window frame, and as I crouched down in the corner, my mind calmed and I marveled that the worm could survive on its own so far below the surface and outside of any stable structure, while I, a far more advanced being, would easily die. Of course, worms only have a lifespan of a few weeks, but that was better than dying right there in my room. This worm was the humble harbinger of death. How would it happen? I would suffocate – Oh God, I would suffocate! Of all deaths, what a horrible way to die was suffocation. The wall would burst open and the mantle of Earth would pour through onto me, pinning me against the opposite wall. First the room would fill with dirt, and then in the same instant my lungs would fill with dirt. If it didn’t crush me right away I would gasp for air, but there would only be more dirt, piling up in my lungs like dirt shoveled into a grave. From dust I had come, and now that dust was returning for me I desperately did not want to go back to it.
“Help me, please, help me!” I shouted, and banged on the door. I did not hope for any response; no doubt they had already all left when they first knew the joist had snapped. How many other patients were also left locked in their rooms like me to meet this hellish fate so far beneath the surface of the earth, away from any kind words or friendly faces, away even from the notice of a society that might spare a mention in the newspaper obituaries?
Since I could not force the door open, I pressed my body flat against it in the hope that the lateral pressure of the earth as it poured into the room might press my body into the door and force it open. If that didn’t kill me, I might still be able to make it into the hallway and escape with my life. Several sharp cracks like gunshots sounded, starting out low, far away and rising in intensity as they came closer, and I thought that there must be guards shooting other patients – or prisoners, as I was now certain they should be properly called – who tried to escape. Then I realized it could not be gun shots because it was so close now, and I knew it was the sound of further building supports snapping and the end for me was near.
I braced myself for a wall of earth to slam against me, almost able to believe that I could protect my soft internal organs from harm just by the power of my tightly straining muscles. The door swung open from the pressure and my body flew forward through the doorway. I briefly waited, and realized that because I was still able to wait, even briefly, I was alive. I felt no pain, except where my face had landed against the hard tile of t
he floor, and saw no soil in the corridor, so dirt could not have slammed me through the doorway. Looking up, I saw my savior dressed all in white and wearing shoes with sensible heels: Penelope! She had come back for me against her orders, even risking her own life to save me from a terrible last meal of choking earth. I wasn’t going to let her gift be wasted, and I sprang to my feet, kicking the door shut behind me as I did so, to buy us precious seconds for our escape.
“Quickly, get to the ladder. I’ll follow you, just go!” I said to her.
She only looked at me, and I realized that she may not be fully aware of our situation. “It’s in my room, that’s where it’s starting!” I said. “The wall is collapsing right in there, and when that wall caves in the rest of the building will follow. We have to get out.”
Then I remembered the others who were also trapped in their rooms. I couldn’t abandon them, not those who were just like me. “Give me the key and I’ll try to get out as many of the other prisoners if I can. You’ve spared me, now let me spare them.” She still didn’t display any of the urgency you might expect someone standing in a soon-to-be-collapsed building to have. “Please,” I said, “hurry!
She still didn’t move to leave with me, and I now saw the two stocky men standing with her. One of them barred my way when I tried to go past, so I stepped back and felt myself once again pressed against the door, but now from the hallway side. Suddenly I didn’t feel especially spared; she had pulled me from the frying pan into the fire, and there happened to be two large, rough-looking men already in the fire waiting for me. There was nowhere to go; they blocked my way forward, and the door behind me was by now tightly packed shut with dirt. The frame of the door wouldn’t hold very long, soon the earth would burst through and we would all be buried in the deepest grave ever dug.
“Oscar,” Penelope said, “don’t you think you should be in your room?” I didn’t understand why she would say that. Hadn’t she heard me?
“I can’t go in there; the walls have already caved in!” After I spoke, she nodded to one of the men, and then it hit me – not the wall of dirt, or even a fist, like I might have expected, but the realization that she wanted me back in the room buried under ten tons of dirt. She hadn’t come to rescue me at all, then; she was only there to check that the job was finished. I was to be buried here, a secret victim of an unfortunate accident.
Now that I knew where she stood, I wasn’t going to waste any more time. I ducked under the arm of the man she had nodded to, but immediately I felt a powerful hand on my neck. He had moved with unbelievable speed and grabbed me before I could take the first step. I twisted my neck painfully to slip away, and then I spun around and swung my first into his face with the full weight of my body behind it. He staggered back for a moment, causing my body to thrill with triumph, but then he recovered and circled his thick arms around me. The other man grabbed me from the side as well, twisting me around, and they both held me still. I struggled until I was exhausted, but I would have been powerless to wriggle free from the grasp of even one of them holding me like that; there was no chance I could get away from both.
Penelope reached for the door, and I could barely believe my eyes. Had she gone insane? She turned the handle and pulled the door back slightly, but as she opened it the first inch I summoned my strength to lift my legs and kick it back shut with a resounding slam. The men pulled me out of reach of the door, with hands as solid as iron shackles.
Penelope put her hand to the doorknob again, and I shrieked with fear; I couldn’t bear the thought of dying by suffocation and being unable to even move. They were denying me the most basic right of all living creatures, the right of struggle for life. “Even that worm is free!” I would have shouted, if my terror and exhaustion hadn’t reduced any sounds coming from my throat to moans and whimpering, so I couldn’t even beg or plead, never mind protest. As she turned the handle, I felt my inner self shrink back away from the door. Then the door was open, and I closed my eyes tightly.
Nothing happened. The light on my eyelids was warm and bright. I opened my eyes and saw that there was no dirt coming through the doorway, only sunlight. I had gone insane along with Penelope. Was this how my mind reacted to the extreme terror of dying in this way? Perhaps I had died so suddenly I didn’t realize it was happening, and this is what comes after death: an inviting, open door, and warm sunlight shining through onto my skin. The bonds around my arms were loosed, and I moved through the doorway almost as if floating on air. Then everything was all wrong. The room was just like the room I had been in before the wall collapsed and it was filled with dirt. Penelope was in the room with me, and so were the two men who had held me. I was not dead, and I felt someone owed me an explanation for why.
“The walls…” I began, but stopped when I saw that the walls were unblemished. There were no cracks. There was no dirt. I ran my hands around the frame of the window where the worm had come in, but there was no hole where a worm could have slipped through. I dropped to my knees and ran my hands over the ground.
“The worm!” I said to no one in particular. “It came in through the window, through the crack that’s not there anymore.” How unjust, I remembered thinking, just a minute before, that the worm should live while I should die. But I was alive; it seemed that there was no worm at all in my room, and considering the way that Penelope had looked at me I was beginning to doubt that there ever had been.
“What’s happening to me?” I asked her. I moved to sit down on the bed but I kept my face turned away, lest I look at her face and see cracks appearing there as well. I felt her sit down next to me.
“Why don’t you start by telling me what you think is happening?” she said, gently.
The different feelings of confusion, shock, fear, and anger battled inside me, but none was victorious, so my voice emerged as emotionless and monotone, the opposite of how I felt.
“I was in my room, and I was thinking about the window here,” I said. “Do you see the light coming through it now?” She must have nodded, though I still didn’t look at her. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve never seen any other kind of light coming through, no other shade or any variation in brightness. I suddenly realized, or I guess I should say ‘felt’, because I’m not really sure right now, that there was an artificial light behind the window. There’s also no clock in my room, so I could never be sure what time it is. Even right now it could be nighttime and I wouldn’t know it, because there could be an artificial light shining in and no clock to say otherwise. And the only reason for an artificial light is that we’re somewhere deep down underground because Ron doesn’t want me getting in the way of his plans.”
I heard the door click shut, but I still felt Penelope on the bed beside me. Later I saw that the two men had left us alone in the room.
“When I thought about being so far underground – miles, probably – the ceiling started to press down and the wall cracked and the worm came through, flaunting its carefree worm lifestyle right in front of me while I faced death. I banged on the door and cried out for help, then you know the rest because you’re the one who came to what I thought was my rescue.”
She was quiet for a few moments, and I looked over just to be sure she was still there. I was surprised to find myself looking into her eyes because she had been watching me closely. I nearly blushed under her intense gaze, so I looked away again. Then she said, “I’m not a doctor, Oscar, and we’ll have to let Dr. Boggs diagnose you to be sure, but I think you just experienced claustrophobia. I’ve worked with other patients here who are claustrophobic and this sounds very similar.”
“Why did it only happen today,” I asked, “since I’ve been here for days in this same room? And why has it never happened to me before?”
“Well, I think for the past few days you haven’t felt confined. You were just in a reasonably spacious room with sunlight coming through the window and the entire open world only several feet away. It was only once you started to think of yoursel
f as being miles underground that you felt trapped. The idea of a trillion tons of dirt on top of your head is probably enough to make anyone feel claustrophobic, even people who’ve never had trouble with it.” She thought for a moment, and then her face brightened. “I’ve got an idea that should help. I’ll have to get the doctor’s permission, but why don’t I just take you out of your room and we go outside? That way you’ll see you aren’t a character in a real-life Journey to the Center of the Earth, you’re just safe in our hospital.” Then, she added, “Our above-ground hospital.”
It seemed like a good idea to me, so before she left me in the room we agreed that she would discuss it with my doctor and that if he thought it was a good idea too then she would take me outside the next day to alleviate my fears. If nothing else, it would be nice to see the sun unfiltered through my frosted window.
While I sat and thought, I looked around my room. I noticed that there was no food tray. I was sure that there had been one before I left the room and was brought back in by the muscular orderlies, and I hadn’t heard anyone take it. Always before, there had been a noise when someone took the tray, some clattering or clinking – enough to wake me up, even. I briefly thought that actually it would have been possible to put me in a different room to my original one, especially since the struggle in the hallway had disoriented me. It was even possible that my room had collapsed, and they had just moved me to this nearly identical room to convince me otherwise. The more reasonable explanation, I knew, was just that one of the orderlies had taken the tray away while I was distracted by talking with Penelope, and so I hadn’t heard it. Although, I had still heard the door clicking shut. I didn’t entertain those thoughts for very long, anyway; Penelope had seemed genuine in her offer of help, and I had agreed to try things her way, at least for a day. I focused on just being a regular patient in a mental hospital, and not being imprisoned underground.
The sheet was slightly rumpled where Penelope had sat on the bed beside me, and when I put my hand there I felt the warmth of her body lingering. She had shown me only kindness in the time I had been here, and though she had not rescued me (because, perhaps, there was nothing for me to be rescued from) she had certainly improved my mood from that of one facing certain death to one who was at least looking forward to tomorrow.