Reprisal

(13)

I walk along the outskirts of town. I enjoy the night by myself. I honestly couldn't care if a stalker decided to kidnap me in the middle of the night. I want to be anywhere but here. I come across a bridge that looks as if it was made in the Victorian Era. I make sure my head torch is firmly fixed to my forehead. The battery is at 50%. Beyond the frail bridge is a small wood that I have only gone into once before. The number of homes becomes scarce and civilisation starts to become more desolate. I make my way closer to the forest bridge.

But I can assure you that it is clear of mansions. I reluctantly walk over the old bridge and once I reach the muddy surface on the other side, I exhale with immense relief. The night is humid compared to what the weather has been like recently. It's going to get worse. Or so that's what my taxi driver said to me recently.

My boots become drenched in mud which could be compared to slimy play-dough. I punch twigs off trees as they try their best to poke my eyes out and kill me. The sharp moon looks over the canopy of the forest. The drainage basin isn't far from here. I just hope I don't end up accidentally falling into one of the old sewage tunnels.

I have heard awful stories about them. The hooting of owls silences the inaudible night. I grab my phone out of my pocket and the time says that it is one o'clock at night. My battery has deteriorated over the last nine minutes. I click the button on my head torch and the screen reads 38%. I don't have long before I am lost in darkness. I grab my phone again and make sure I have plenty of battery time. I am struck with luck when my phone screen reads 48%.

I strap the torch around my head again. I continue through the woods until I trip over a massive tree root. My heart races as my foot completely locks itself. The mud pool that I have fallen into thickens and grasps my foot like a zombie's hand pulling me down. I try to crawl out of the position but it's no use.

"Help!" I shriek.

It is night time and if there is anyone outside at this time I will be in danger.

My voice breaks as I end my cry. I tug at my boot and take my foot out of it. I rush away from the expanding pool of mud until I spot something flash across a ditch fourteen metres away from me. My bare foot is wrapped in my shredded sock stings like a glass shard had struck it. I plough through the forest in the hopes of finding someone.

"I need help! Someone for god's sake help me!" I scream with a tear falling from my eye.

Several bushes of stinging nettles pierce my tender foot. My headlight sizzles as the disgusting mud floods the electrics inside. I grab my pocket and try to feel for my phone. It is no use. It must have slid out when I tripped. I now have to walk in this forest in the night. My head throbs with a pain that makes me feel sick. The cold starts to bite at my skin.

My coat squelches as I rip it away from my body. Having mud stricken over me isn't going to keep me warm. It'll only make me colder. The only thing that is keeping me warm now is my small pink tank top and leggings. I spot a glint roughly about thirty-two metres away from me. I trudge through the dense foliage and fall into a large tunnel.

My heart skipped several beats and at first, I thought I was dying. But no. My brain realised something before I did. I'm in the sewer tunnels. I can't see shit and the only way I can see a foot ahead is if I use the moonlight. The taller trees on the other side of the ominous, overwhelming and overpowering basin wall are shielding me from moonlight.

I have no choice but to move through the tunnels in the hopes of finding a construction worker or someone. But no one is going to be working at this sort of time. I feel the gooey sides of the drainage wall. The sewage sticks to my hands like glue. Tracing the wall with my fingers is the only procedure that'll keep me alive and get me through to the other side. Hopefully, there will be an end to these tunnels.

The tunnel system is a labyrinth. In the early twentieth century, the tunnel system was built to upgrade sewage drainage and filtering of water. But it has since collapsed. Not all of it. But the important parts.

I notice an edge on the wall and I realise that I have to turn a corner. If I am correct this is the right path because the other tunnel entrances near me are covered in wood. Or that's what the sewer company said last year. I turn around the corner and to my luck a hole in the roof sets free the trapped light. I can just about see seven feet ahead. I notice a sign in the distance. I could read it and sewage has disintegrated the text. I rush up to it and make sure I stay on the little path to avoid stepping in a thick sewage stream. I could only just make sense of what it read.

It reads a warning but an arrow pointing left. To my right is a long and pitch-black tunnel. I decide to take the left and when I do I realise it is the only way out. If the tunnels hadn't collapsed I would have been trapped in here forever. The grey and dull walls crumble as I shove rocks and boulders away. Moonlight seeps through the gaps between stones and pebble-like, broken bricks.

I pull away and I fall into the stream of sewage but as a result, the entire broken section falls and the crumbling echoes. I walk out of the tunnels and step onto an old backroad. It looks like this heads back to Cedarwood. Or the actual town and not the outskirts. With blasting bright moonlight shining on my sewage-dripping skin, my eyesight starts to deteriorate. The smell of human faeces and god knows what else floor says nostrils to the point where I could faint.

Then I fall to my knees...