| part 1: the lengths you'll go to for love |
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| everything was going fine. then chris said something i couldn't quite hear, something about seeing someone right outside the window next to him and then we were running as fast as we could down through the remains of the asylum's power plant. wheelchairs and steam valves and dials and levers all blurred sickeningly by and i heard him hiss as much to himself as to me, 'we were being too loud, he had to have heard us' over and over. and so we descended ever deeper, through twisting shafts and tunnels as my failing flashlight flickered worthlessly, then went out and i was trying to navigate over, under, and around a maze of pipes in complete darkness. at last we crawled through a tiny tunnel barely half of my height, thick with cobwebs that were presumably as old as i am, older maybe, and it seemed as though it would never end. my hands and clothes were filthy from the muddy floor, i was out of breath, i was completely lost. we reached an oasis of light, a shaft that led to some grate cover high above and chris stopped us. 'be quiet,' he said, listening intently. i looked back and could barely make out two faces in the darkness. we had lost three people. one of the kids whose name i couldn't recall started unzipping his bag and rummaging noisily through it. 'they could be right up above us! be quiet!" chris whispered, but the kid kept shuffling things. maybe he didn't care, maybe he didn't realize that it would not be good if we were found, not at all. there would be no plausable deniability, no excuses, no forgiveness. the kid noisily opened something else and chris said, softly but with barely restrained rage in his voice, 'what are you doing back there? making f***ing sandwiches? shut up!' and at last the kid was quiet. my back was starting to ache, my legs were falling asleep my lungs were burning and even though i knew they'd probably never find us here, there was always the chance, even moreso that they'd simply wait and wait until we tried to leave and snare us then. they could wait forever. but for the moment, we were hidden, deep inside the bowels of a strange, collapsing creature and i thought how hard it is to explain to someone who doesn't know firsthand the ridiculous lengths that you'll go to for love. |
