Spelunking

Short Story | 1000 words

You take a measured breath through your mouthpiece. You track the oxygen as it circles through your lungs, turning into carbon dioxide with each determined kick. You breathe out, the dark water bubbling behind you as you swim further into this cave. Your flashlight is weak here, with no sunlight to aid it, and it only reveals glimpses of jagged rock walls. Sharp teeth extend above and below you, holding you in its mouth, testing how easy it would be to clamp down around your smooth wetsuit and metal tank.

Suspended in this cold liquid, moving is imperative. Each kick warms your sluggish blood, saving you from a hypothermic shutdown. It might be pointless, though. You don’t know if this cave has an ending.

A bright flash catches your attention. Invigorated, you swim towards it, your arms parting the heavy water like a blade through jelly. For your exertion, you make little progress, but your flashlight illuminates the source just as another brilliant flare stuns you.

There, standing on the cave ceiling, a woman in white gets her photo taken. You see her in flashes. Her dark red lipstick, broken into a smile for the camera. Her smooth brown skin, powdered lighter. Her dark hair, permed into ringlets that hang around her shoulders as if she were on land. Her hand, plain, no wedding ring, resting on the shoulder of a young boy who looks so much like you did. He’s thin, scrawny, pressed into a suit, and his face gravitates into a scowl despite his mother’s scolding.

“Smile, anak.” The water consumes their speech and spits it out into your ears, even though you’re still far away.

“I don’t want you to get married,” the child says, and you realise from her high pitch that this is a young girl, not a boy.

“Don’t you want a better life?”

You swim towards them. Maybe they can direct you.

The camera stops photographing the wannabe bride, and your surroundings fall into gloom again. You keep going, trying to keep your body straight, but it’s easy to get turned around in this pitch blackness.

You wish you could check your tank. You don’t know how much oxygen you have left, but you must have been swimming for hours. You can’t remember when your journey started, or how, but you know no one is looking for you. Even if there was someone, nobody would find you in this endless cave.

Time is a malleable, suggestible thing. You try to track it, counting Mississippis in your head. You manage a hundred before the numbers get muddled up, and you start back at one again.

The water thickens. Your legs are tired, but they kick against the sludge, calves straining to inch you forward. Then, your beam catches a young woman’s face, wide eyes blinking at the end of your flashlight.

You stop, hovering. It’s that kid again, but more womanly. Her hair is pulled into a tight ponytail, her no-nonsense frock draping over her thin frame. She has your flared nose and your strong jaw and the same determined look under her thick furrowed eyebrows. Her hands clasp around a bulging suitcase, and when you follow her gaze behind you, you see a lit-up window in the distance. Inside is the bride, no longer dressed in white but in black. Her red lipstick is smeared across her face, a purple bruise blossoming underneath her wrinkled, tan skin.

“I’m sorry,” the other woman whispers, suitcase in hand, and she steps away into the darkness.

“Please wait,” you try to say, but only bubbles escape you. You swim after her again, but she has already dispersed into the water.

Your lungs are burning, and you keep trying to take in gulps of air, but each breath is shallower than the last. You propel yourself forward with desperate kicks, your hands outstretched and searching for a lifeline, for anything. You keep breathing out the carbon dioxide, but with no new oxygen, it clings to your empty lungs, sticking in your throat. You claw at your mouthpiece, no longer swimming forward but upwards. You wrench it free, and it drops away with your oxygen tank.

Your vision dots. You keep your lips pressed together, but instinct will always win over human resolve.

You expect to choke on salt water, your body flooding with its demise.

Instead, your hands clasp around a cord extending from your belly button. You’ve lost your wetsuit, but the darkness conceals your nudity. You stop swimming and float.

Without the bubbles and the water disturbances, you can hear a soft lullaby. It floats around you, coming from every direction. The water warms, and the cave shifts. There isn’t a perceptible change, but it feels like the cave is being held.

You wish this cave would reabsorb you into its walls, your cells and her cells undivided. Undelivered.

You close your eyes, adjusting to the foreign sensation of peace. Something else is keeping you alive, and you no longer have to be vigilant.

Perhaps that is your mistake.

The water suctions around you, pulling you into the depths of the cave, and your limbs flail as your head topples over your legs. Large appendages grasp your head, gentle yet firm, coaxing you out. You try to push yourself upwards, away from the hand.

“I have no one,” you want to beg, but a baby’s cry swallows your words as you gush out onto a hospital bed.

You’re born against a will you don’t yet possess, and stuffed into arms you don’t know.

She hushes you as you wail, and her lips brush the top of your bald head.

“I’ve been waiting for you.” Her voice is joyous and sweet, coating you like honey.

In a moment, you’ll be whisked away, the nurses concerned by her bleeding that refuses to clot, and it’ll be a long time before anyone holds you again.

But right now, she cradles you.