In a suburban town in eastern Oregon stood Damon behind a cash register, rubbing his temples to ease the stress an angry customer was giving him. She was an elderly woman with glasses the size of two tennis balls. Her enormous nose scrunched every time Damon said something, as if making an unappealing face was going to help her hear him better. “I’m sorry Ma’m, but this item isn’t on sale today. You must have read it wrong on the paper.” said Damon very placidly. The old woman could barely hear anything, yet she shouted so loudly that heads turned in the Deli section across the store to see where the voice was coming from. Maybe that did not happen, but Damon liked to think so to add some sort of humor to his horrible day. After a few more shouts and groans, the woman grabbed her two plastic bags with rage and stormed out the doors. With relief, Damon inhaled deeply and checked his watch. It said 4:32, meaning he had twenty-eight minutes left until his shift was over. He just turned eighteen a few weeks ago, unfortunately making him eligible to work longer hours. Despite the old woman who was in desperate need of a massage and possibly some Xanax, Damon encountered four other people in the morning that woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Each hour of his day defined “terrible” in a whole new way. While waiting for another customer to pick his line, Damon noticed a few beads of sweat trickling down his forehead. As he went to wipe it off, he saw a man standing by the entrance covered in all black and staring at him. With frantic eyes, Damon looked down at his watch and then back at the man, repeating the same motions he made with his head for a little while. Realizing that the man was still staring at him, Damon turned around to Lisa, another cashier, and asked, “Do you know who that is by the doors?”
“Who?” Lisa asked.
“That man wearing the black sweater and pants? He’s been standing there for a while now.” Damon explained.
“I don’t see anyone. Where?” Lisa usually went along with Damon’s daily pranks on her, but this time she had no idea where he was going with it.
“Right there! How can you miss him?” he said with a bit of irritation in his voice.
“There’s nobody there, Damon. What’s going on with you? Your pranks are usually well-thought-out and funny. This one is just…” Lisa smiled and shook her head in disappointment. Damon rubbed his eyes and looked at the doors again. The man was gone. This was not a prank.
His watch finally said the time he had been waiting for all day. He took off his name tag and vest and walked to his car. Rummaging through his pocket, he finally pulled out his keys and sat inside. Before he started the ignition, he put his two hands on the wheel and rested his chin on top of them. He inhaled, and then began to ponder about his encounter at work. The strange man at the grocery store was still in his mind. He wondered why Lisa did not see him when he was very noticeable, considering that he was tall, wearing black, and literally staring in their direction. After a few moments, Damon began to drive home. It was a very cloudy day; rain always came to Damon as a sign to deeply think about any bothersome events in his life, a chance to clean up any debris left from his crumbled hope and optimism. Today was one of those days.
Damon’s entrance into his house was like a thief in the night, quiet and unnoticeable. His day ruined his entire mood, and the amount of emotions he was feeling was too large to explain. “Damon, sweetie? Is that you?” asked his mom from the kitchen. She was fixing up some dinner, earlier today that normal since she knew her son would be hungry when he got home from work.
“Mhm. It’s me.” replied Damon vapidly. His mother began to say something else, but her voice was fading away as Damon climbed the stairs to his room. He plopped on his bed and put his hands over his forehead. There were too many things fumbling through his mind, and he knew exactly what he needed to do. On his way back downstairs, he stopped in the bathroom and washed his face. The water reminded him of the random sweating that happened to him earlier. “Mom, don’t take any food out yet. I’m going to go for a walk,” Damon said as he walked past her in the kitchen.
“It’s going to rain very soon, Damon. Be back quickly.” ordered his mother.
“Alright.” Damon grabbed his jacket and his backpack that had his water bottle, flashlight, cell phone, and house keys inside. He opened the door and entered the crisp air-filled outdoors. He hoped it would rain as he was walking back home, concluding his form of escape with petrichor, his favorite scent. A few moments passed, all filled with silence except for the thudding sound of his footsteps on the grassy ground. He was not heading in any particular direction; just down some grassy area that turned into a little forest. Sooner than he expected, he felt a raindrop splash right on his eyelid, slowly dripping down and clinging onto his eyelash. A little smile appeared on his face even though his wish came true too soon. Then another one hit his wrist. What started out as simple drizzling turned into a torrential downpour in a matter of minutes. Damon began to run, putting his backpack over his head and trying to find his way back home. He had no idea where he was, but he was not afraid. All the emotions he had stored up inside were dancing around, excited that the rain arrived to wash them away. After Damon was finished with attempting to get the tiniest taste of elation, he realized he really needed to get home. There was nothing in sight to indicate which way he came from though. The monstrous, dark gray clouds now covered the entire sky, changing the entire ambiance from tolerable to absolutely depressing. It was getting harder to breathe and see for Damon as he scurried past what seemed like never-ending trees and patches of wet grass. Without any warning, he suddenly fell flat on his bottom and slid down a path of slippery mud. His speed was uncontrollable and his heart was racing as fast as lightning. After about three seconds, he did not feel the mud drench his pants anymore but instead, he was falling down into some kind of pit. His shoulder slammed against the dirt that looked black from the lack of light, and he repeatedly opened and closed his eyes to get back into normal vision. His shoulder was feeling weaker and a black and blue bruise was definitely expected the next day. Once the opaque, blurry views vanished, Damon directly shot his head up. It took a few moments to process where he was, and even longer to realize the danger of the situation. Damon was stuck in a pit about twelve feet deep. The digging was done in a cylindrical manner, making it that much harder for Damon to climb out of it. His first instinct was to literally jump onto the dirt ascending upward and hoping his grip would hold. Every attempt failed, for the dirt was damp due to the rain. “This isn’t good. No no no. This isn’t happening. NO! HEEEELP!” shouted Damon, facing his head towards the opening of the pit. “SOMEBODY HELP ME!” The misery in his voice could be detected without even looking at his face. After such a horrible day, he really did not think things could get worse. If Damon was not out of there in the next few days, he would probably die. He shook his head to bring him back to sanity. Thinking quickly, he realized the rain was not everlasting and drank the remaining water left in his water bottle. He then jabbed one foot into the damp dirt, which acted as his support, and shot up with the other, holding the bottle as high as he could so the rain droplets could fill it up. He touched the ground with both feet once his bottle was filled with the rain water, hoping it would still be full by the time he got out of the pit. He leaned his back against the dirt and put the water bottle in his backpack. The light from his cell phone appeared. Was he stupid? That phone should have been the first thought to come to mind. He grabbed the phone and turned on the screen, praying for his dear life to see one signal bar. Nothing. The numerous trees surrounding his location blocked off any signal attainable. His body slumped its way into a potato sack shape, and his eyes stared in one area for a long time. Damon was trying to think of any idea to help him get out of this terrible dilemma, but unrelated thoughts kept coming to mind. Flashes of Mark’s, his brother, face and Lisa’s laughter every time she fell for his jokes beamed through his mind. After about fifteen minutes or so, his head swiftly turned to the side, trying to trace a voice he suddenly heard. It was a man’s voice, but he could not make out whose it was. That doesn’t really sound like Dad. Hm…maybe it’s Mark? He’s just eight though. Couldn’t be him. When a rain droplet sporadically hit Damon’s eyelid, he realized he was talking to himself and there was absolutely no one in sight. He inspected his location one more time to see if there was an easy way out he was simply missing, but nothing formed a light bulb.
The downpour was reducing its force, slowly turning into the drizzle it began with. Damon fell asleep, the ants on the ground were climbing his shoe, and the sun was disappearing. A vibration woke him up. It was his cell phone. Damon grabbed the device and unlocked the screen as fast as possible. The words “LOW BATTERY” were flashing in bright red font across the screen. Crap. It was his only source of time, and the closest thing that could get him in contact with someone. Before he shut it off to save as much battery as he could, he saw that it was 11:42 pm. He knew his mother was worried sick and his friends were wondering why he did not text them back, but there was nothing he could do. He closed his eyes once again, hoping the next morning would be a better one.
Damon felt like the thick saliva in his mouth and the burning wrinkles on his bags were eating him alive; they were the only things he could think about at the time. His stomach felt like a balloon, full of all different kinds of unknown gases that could destroy his organs if popped. He used his palms as a towel and rubbed his face up and down to liven up his weary body. The water he drank from his bottle felt like the richest, most purified water that ever went down his throat. At an instant, he had to do something he did not do in a while. He quickly ran to the other side of where he was sitting, took his pants off, and sighed with relief. After buckling his belt back on, he checked the time. 8:23 am. He let out a groan and stood upright to stretch. Perhaps the police were at his house right at this moment, comforting his bewildered mother and writing down important information, such as his height and eye color. He could not believe nobody walked around this forest in the past fifteen hours. After the stiff muscles in his back, neck, and arm were somewhat loosened, he began to speculate, attempting to dig up an idea to escape this hell hole. “Hi sweetie.” There it was again, but this time, a woman’s. “Over here.” Damon turned to his right and saw his mother sitting on the floor, one hand on top of another and a warm smile casually appearing on her face.
“Oh my gosh, mom? What the fu…” said Damon very confusedly.
“Yup, it’s me. Someone had to come get you, didn’t they?” his mother said in a very comical tone.
“I don’t understand. Who told you I was here?” Damon was no as surprised as any other person would be if they saw their mother carelessly talking to them in utter turmoil. He was shocked, but more inclined towards the idea of getting out of the pit than to why his mother was there with him.
“You called me, silly. Don’t you remember anything? I keep telling you to eat almonds everyday, Damon. They could help your memory.” Finally she was talking in a motherly voice, confirming it for Damon that she was, in fact, there.
“My phone’s dead, mom. How the…” Damon saw that his phone was halfway charged and had one bar of signal. His eyebrows bent inward from confusion, unsure if he was lucid dreaming or not. “Oh. Well, why did you come in here with me? You should have called the police or the fire station. Now we both are stuck in here. How are we going to get out of here, huh?” Damon was infuriated at this point because only a complete idiot would do what his mom just did.
“Well, I looked through your backpack and found a flashlight. Considering that it’s the only thing we can use, let’s try digging our way out of here.” suggested his mom.
“Dig? With a flashlight? Ugh…I guess it’s worth a shot.” Damon pushed his raging anger aside and told himself that the more calm he stayed the faster he would get out of there. He was going to try anything at this point, but he was not sure he had the energy to. It was already 5:30 pm, making it twenty-four hours trapped in this pit. He grabbed the neon yellow flash light his mother took out for him and jabbed it into the dirt, backside first. It was going to take a long time, but at least there was some kind of progress occurring. After about a half an hour or so, Damon put the flashlight down, stepped back, and looked at the absolute mess he created. There were piles of dirt all around him, and the “passageway” he was aiming to create did not look very accessible by a human body. Calm down. You just started. He drank another sip of his water. It was now full three-quarters of the way. Damon thought to himself that if he worked for one more hour, he could at least fit up to his chest inside the little tunnel he was aiming to create. It was 7:10 pm. His cell phone was on the verge of dying. Wasn’t it just halfway charged? Mom! Where is she? His mother was no where in sight, but that was the least bit of his concerns at the moment. He picked up the flashlight once again and started digging. It was now 8:03 pm. Damon put the flashlight down and stretched each of his ten fingers as far back as he could. They were sore, tense, and possibly consisted of some knotted veins. To prevent any sort of unnecessary injury, he took a nap and hoped he would wake up early the next morning.
He did just that, with a roaring stomach and a major headache as well. The food deprivation and limited water intake was getting to him; his vision was becoming blurry like it did when he first arrived in the pit, and he was uncomfortable keeping his eyes open. He took a big sip of the water from his bottle, now only half way full. The moment came when Damon could not distinguish his nightmares from reality, as if both of its roots intertwined and formed a flower that signified hope, yet sprouting thorns that were not easy to see. Maybe this flower symbolized life itself, with all of its roller coaster dips and speed that could churn your stomach in ways only you could describe. There it appeared, beneath a few pebbles and slabs of dirt. It was yellow, a refreshing color that represented happiness and positive outlooks. Damon scurried towards the area this flower was peeking through and put it in his hands. His body suddenly felt recharged, as if all of the Kryptonite around him vanished. He saw another flower in the same spot, causing him to dig harder and deeper. He could not stop digging, because when one flower was put into his hand, another somehow appeared. It was as if there was a huge garden beneath all of the dirt. Maybe there was another land down there. Damon’s excitement was brought to his hands, and sooner than he could remember, something sharp slit the skin on his knuckle. Gah! He removed as much dirt as he could around the wound and saw blood, a vermillion color, trickle down his hand. He took his water bottle out and sprinkled some over it; he did not want any infections forming on the two weapons he needed most.
Once the blood was washed off, Damon stood in front of his work and stared at it for a good five minutes. He realized that he could not just keep digging in one direction, but in a slope he could climb his way out of. The muddy, brown texture of the dirt reminded him of chocolate. Lisa gave him a cookie a few days ago, soft and packed with chunks of milk chocolate and he put it under the radio player in his car. He began to salivate, and a slap brought him back to reality. Don’t lose it, Damon. Don’t…lose it. He was away from home for almost two days, stuck in vast emptiness which left him feeling the same way, empty. Just one footstep, one whisper, or one sign of movement was all Damon needed to get his full conscience back. He put down the flashlight to check his cell phone once more, annoyed at the routine he had been following for the past two days, and pressed the on button. The screen remained black. Damon was now unable to know what time it was, slowly peeling away bits of his tiny amount of hope. His tolerance was being nudged at by monotony, and the frustration built up enough energy to let him scream extremely loudly. As he did, his lungs shook and his hands trembled, but it was as liberating as the release of a cage door was to a bird after days of imprisonment. This release of fury was exactly what Damon needed to build up the energy to make extreme progress with his digging. He refused to use the flashlight and used his two hands instead. Grunts and groans were released as he was throwing clumps of dirt onto the ground, but this was the only way he could work faster and have a chance at living.
Damon was unaware that the whole night had passed until he saw an amber circle up in the sky, missing its bottom half. The sun was rising and Damon was feeling like chewed up garbage by a pack of hungry, wild dogs. He drank some water, now a quarter left, and sat down. “Oh hey, Mom. I was wondering where you went last night.” said Damon to his mother sitting on the other side.
“I had to get something to help you dig more easily. Here.” She passed Damon a shovel. His eyes lit up and a smile stretched across his face.
“Yes! Thanks, Mom. Man, this is really going to help.” Damon looked up after gazing at the shovel from fascination and realized she was gone. “Mom?” Things were beginning to get extremely confusing for Damon. How could his mother go in and out of the pit, but not Damon? Why was she leaving without him? How was she leaving? His head began to pound and his eyelids began acting on their own. He needed to stay awake to finish digging for the day. He was practically living off the little bit of hope he had, mostly from communicating with his mother. Since he had no sleep the night before, a nap was taken instead of digging for a half an hour, and then Damon woke up to continue his mandatory task. A few more hours passed, not that he could accurately tell since his only surroundings were dirt, ants, and more dirt.
The sun was setting once again, but Damon was hours away from escaping. He drank some more water, now only filled enough for two more sips. He rubbed his eyes with his knuckle and picked up the flashlight. The digging began for the last time. It could have been one, two, or even five o’clock in the morning when Damon inhaled deeply and dropped the flashlight onto the ground. The release his fingers made from the grip of the flashlight was the biggest relief Damon probably felt in his entire life. Nothing in his past gave him the same happiness he was feeling at the moment. The slope he created did not reach the top, or else he would have been out of there. This was because as he was digging, the unleveled ground consistently made him slide down and fall on his bottom as he tried to climb it. This called for drastic measures. What he needed to do was run, even sprint, up the slope and somehow climb the rest of the way up. It seemed nearly impossible by simply looking at it, but Damon knew it could be done if he put in all the effort he could muster up. He tried once, but he failed. Another go at it was given, but the result was the same as the previous one’s. His left eye squinted instinctively, for a ray of warm light was beaming on it. Time was going by so fast, as if the sun was on a roller coaster, rising and dropping non-stop. Strangely, this beam of light transferred energy into Damon as it does to plants, and he felt a superman in him be born. He stared in his destination’s direction, and then straight forward. His right foot rose off the ground, followed by his left foot, gradually increasing the speed to a sprint. Huffs and exhalations were released as Damon made his way out of the pit, and when he hit the grassy patches with dirt clumps around him, the amount of happiness he felt was immeasurable.
“Woo-hoo! YES!” he screamed. Damon’s arms flailed all around and he jumped like a child winning a giant stuffed animal at a carnival. He quickly lied on the grass, face side down, and sniffed the fresh blades until the smell touched every corner of his lungs. His back was aching; the thought of a massage made him sigh. He looked down the pit, making sure his mother was not in there. When he saw she was not, he ran home. This time, he knew exactly where he was going, as if the answer was deep beneath the ground and could only be revealed once you dug your way through it. His house was in clear view now, and Damon pounded on the door while laughing. It swung open.
“Damon! Oh my dear boy! Oh my goodness...” His mother grabbed her son and embraced him to what seemed like the point of suffocation. The look on her face was one of sorrow wrapped up in a blanket of joy and fortune. She quickly ran to the sink and gave him a large glass of water and then another. Although what had happened to him for the past three days was not disclosed, his mother knew her son was dehydrated and weak. She called the emergency room, and they took him away for the last time as Damon, the boy next door.
“Damon? Can you hear me? Hello?” asked the doctor at the hospital in Baker City. Damon slowly opened his eyes with a blinding light in his eyes. The doctor turned off the flashlight and smiled at Damon’s mother. “He’s awake, Mrs. Tilson.” She ran to her son and gently touched his right cheek as she stared in his partially covered eyes.
“How are you feeling, honey?” she asked.
“I’m better, Mom. But uh, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Where did you get the shovel from?”
“Shovel? What are you talking about, Damon?” Right when his mother thought Damon was feeling better, a minor panic attack struck her.
“In the pit. You were there with me, and you gave me a shovel to help me d—” The doctor quickly interrupted Damon.
“Mrs. Tilson, if I could have a word with you outside. I need to…I need to tell you something important.” Both Mrs. Tilson and the doctor stepped into the hallway. “Mrs. Tilson, I took a few fMRIs, brain-imaging tests, on Damon earlier to make sure nothing was out of the ordinary, and I noticed something in particular. There were some differences in the images of his frontal and temporal lobes compared to ones in a normal image of the brain, one of many signs of schizophrenia. I’m not saying he has it, Ma’m, but then I came across another symptom. Damon could not follow the light I was shining in his eyes after he woke up. Only eight percent of the average people cannot do this, but a much higher percentage of schizophrenics cannot. And the shovel? He thinks you were in the pit with him, Mrs. Tilson.” explained the doctor.
“No, no, no. This is all a misunderstanding. He had hallucinations. The boy didn’t eat anything for days and was confined in one tiny pit! How can you say that?” exclaimed Mrs. Tilson.
“I understand Ma’m, but there’s also some more evidence that can help back up my belief. As I was bringing Damon to the emergency room, he began speaking to me and asked me for Lisa. I’m not sure who that is, but he told me that he wanted to know who the man in black was at the supermarket he saw a few days ago at work. A man no one else saw.”
“Please doctor… this can’t be happening.”
“We will discuss the disease in more detail later on, Mrs. Tilson. I still want to do many more tests on Damon to make sure I’m right. This truly is a miracle though, you know. Without his schizophrenia, Damon would have died in that pit. You indirectly helped him, being there in the pit with him in “his world.” Your boy is blessed, and there is nothing to be afraid or ashamed of.”
