WRITTEN BY BHAGATH SUBRAMANIAN.
There was a tunnel.
It was large, like the gaping mouth of some ancient world-eater. The size of the opening was so gargantuan, and the shape of it so eerie, that all who came upon it were overwhelmed by something that could not be described using any language that human tongues and throats could form the sounds for. If there was a way to grasp any idea of what it felt like, it would be to look upon the face of some shell-shocked soldier, or a shipwrecked sailor washed up on the coast, or the blank stare of a mother unable to process the death of her child.
He came upon it one day. His little rain boots were smeared with black mud and streaked with greasy soot. It was getting dark, and everything was so much bigger than he was. The creaking trees, the engulfing grey clouds, and even the leaves that managed to snap away from their branches seemed to be able to stretch across his face and smother him to death through intimidation alone.
But nothing was bigger than this. All of a sudden, the horizon was replaced by an endless black. It was there that the opening to the tunnel sat, wedged between mountain and mist- waiting. The valley spilled into the abyss. The ground rose to where the mouth was, and he could almost make out a slight dip downwards at where the lip was. There was a breeze. It was going into the tunnel. Everything converged at the mouth, flowing into it. Nothing was exempt. The trees continued, the bushes dotted, the mud and the slush and the dirt too. Even the air was compelled to enter the opening. He felt that if he waited long enough, he’d catch the ground itself shift and crawl, millimetre by millimetre, carrying the entire forest with it into whatever fate awaited all things in whatever place was beyond that dip, just past the lip.
He needed to see.
Slowly, he began to trudge through the slosh and grime. First, he felt the breeze at his back. It was cool, but nothing like he had felt before. It was air, formed into a guiding hand. Comforting, and icy.
Ever so faintly, rustling- in the bushes, to his right. Before he could turn to look at the tree line, the deer had already darted out from it, and made its way to the mouth of the tunnel. It put one hoof over the edge, and soon the rest of it followed into nothing. It reminded him of some warm, dark, sacred place of silence. Of sleep.
He walked on. With every step, he noticed the colour draining. The leaves were grey, the sky was black. And the sound- everything was at a whisper. Soon, there was only silence, and all the light had been sucked out of this world. There was only enough to see the glint of the rim. He was at mouth of the tunnel. There he was, faced with the unknowable weight of eternity careening over him. And he took the plunge.
They found his little body in a bright clearing. He was far from where they had made camp. He was cold. He had no more need for sleep.
Cover photograph by Bhagath Subramanian.
© Bhagath Subramanian. All rights reserved.