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Down in a Hole

A Melanie Black Short Story

· Short Stories by Melanie Black

She fell down the well away from destruction

Chaos and flames flaring with rage as far as the eye could see

Water trickled down the stone sides surrounding her

She could feel its moisture breaking through the layers of her skin

All without a single touch of its droplets

Their shimmer, not one of hope 

But a reminder of the tears that so often flowed from her eyes

From their eyes- all of them living through this self-made war

 

Another explosion shook the earth at its core

Small shards of rocks rained down around her

Shattering against what felt like the bottom of the once-deemed endless pit

She was stuck in this pit, and the scariest part wasn't how she would get out

No, the pit that ensnared her was a God-send at the moment

Homing her and keeping her safer than she would be above ground

 

Lights flashed behind the rumbles of desecration

Screams fled through her eardrums, sending shivers down her spine

The noise, the pain she was almost witnessing, was like an auditory assault

An assailant with hands that seemed to somehow choke her with sound

Tumbling to the ground, she covered the sides of her half-bloodied head

 

She could choose to believe something else

She'd make her mind wander to some other fictional reality

Instead of the stench of death and decay, she could make it something else

Something sweeter, like sweet tufts of cotton candy wafting up her nostrils

The screams were that of theme park riders

Whilst the booms of battle were that of a decadent firework display

 

She'd stay in that well with her own false bliss

Until starvation and thirst turned to infection and insanity,

She was bound to die- this she knew

But down in the hole- it was the lesser of two evils

Safe and insane inside her well