It’s been a year since I dipped my hands into the dark, murky waters that seemed to glow with black light. I was thirsty, parched, my tongue was swollen until it filled my mouth and stuck to my teeth.
I’d been wandering aimlessly into rock room after rock room, gazing with unseeing eyes on beauties undiscovered by man’s eyes; gleaming, glowing, green crystals that broke under my bleeding feet as I stumbled on drunkenly. Somewhere along my twisted, winding and overlapping path, a flashlight lay, the metal destined to rust away forever in the dark, the plastic destined to remain as bacteria fought in vain to decompose it, the acid from the dead battery destined to seep into the ground and spark off even more crazy crystal forms.
Somewhere along the same path, I’d thrown off my gloves and shoes, hoping to touch or step on something that would sting me and kill me quickly. It had seemed like a good idea then, forty-five-thousand steps back, but now it dawned on me slowly that cut, blistered and aching feet weren’t any better than the miserable non-existence I’d been suffering before.
But all of that was washed away the moment I entered the pool cavern. My eyes had long ago picked up the bluish-greenish glow that managed to spread and refract through the crystals five rooms away, and something dully meaningful had throbbed me into that general direction. I don’t know why black water should spread such a comforting glow around it, when the liquid itself is shrouded in the thickest, murkiest fog I’d ever seen. Perhaps it was some sort of bioluminescent microorganism in the air, surviving by drinking the water to gather enough energy to feed their molecular spark of light. Come to think of it, the light acted very much like phosphorous in the oceans above ground. Once when I was in the Pacific in a dugout canoe, I put my hands into the water and watched, amazed, as swirls of light flowed off in the wake of my hand. The boat was ablaze with light too, and the paddle as it dipped up and down, dripping living fire.
The light in the cave was much the same, except now it was all around me and swirled at my every move, my every breath. Were they drawing off energy from my body moisture and flaring more brilliantly than every? Were they excited? Was it a form of communication?
None of these thoughts flowed through my head at those moments, but in the moments afterwards, and when I was sitting safely in my own house again, writing this story. All I saw at that moment was the water, brackish, tepid, evil-looking, black as death.
But I would have welcomed even death in exchange for a single drink. In exchange for my soul.
I remember hesitating right at the waters’ edge, where the still waters seemed to ripple and lap at my knees. I hesitated again, when my cupped, trembling hands held something that was neither water nor solid, neither hot or cold, still or alive. It was if I was holding dry ice without the cold; that was the way the water slipped off my hands, not in drips, not in trickles, but like fog, melting away to nothing before it hit the ground. I hesitated as I saw the black creep up my hands, encircling my wrists and coloring the skin a dead grayness, entering my bloodstream and pumping to my heart. Within minutes every inch of my skin was gray, tingling with sensations I couldn’t describe, but still, even after all that, I hesitated from drinking something that had already entered me.
It was strange, but it was as if there was a voice in my head, telling me that if I dropped my handful and walked away now, right now, then it would all go away and let me die.
Did I listen to that voice? Well, I’m here, aren’t I? Still here after going without food for months as I wandered out of the cave, still here after getting thrown from the ambulance in a crash that killed everyone else, still here after numerous mobs hunted me down to kill the ‘demon from hell’, still here after being burned, cut, eviscerated, stabbed, poisoned and killed a million other ways.
I’m still here.
Spoiler
So...um, I'm not sure what to say about this. Perhaps a precaution against drinking from strange pools in caves *nervous laughter*. this is the typical crap you get after a writers' block, but you've heard that excuse already. Fire away.
