The Lumière

Four thousand feet beneath the surface of the Earth, there lies a darkness so pure and immovable that one can feel it. Not even the glow of Jeff's flashlight can cut through the viscous cloud of the unknown. The echoes of his footsteps on iron grating are eternal, each compounding on the one before. Cement walls grip his shoulders like a vice, and the ceiling hardly offers the space to crane one's neck without earning a concussion. 

Jeff walks a narrow hallway, searching aimlessly for his partner. Though he knows he is hopelessly lost and Death is approaching, he disregards these truths and continues his search. The path is declining steeply with no end in sight. Water from somewhere runs through the cement trough under the walkway and makes the air sharp with humid chill. Jeff binds himself in the warmth of his leather jacket and holds on tight. The hall continues this same way for what seems like forever. 

When the path finally levels out, the water pools underneath it. The hall forks, with the walkway completely blown out in one direction, dropping into the murky liquid just below. Jeff waves his flashlight around to get a sense of his location.

To his greatly understated dismay, all along the walls are elongated smears of dry blood, the aftermath of some brutal dragging. Jeff's throat rolls in its flesh carriage and dread knocks his skull like a church bell, resounding. He collapses against the railing and tries to recover his thoughts. 

4 long years of work in the mines and he'd never known about this...

Pained moaning erupts abruptly from far down the hall. It sounds like Charlie, Jeff's partner, and it's coming from across the gap where the walkway falls apart. 

Jeff scrambles down into the water and begins to wade across. It's only about knee-high, but thick as tar and just as black. As soon as he's halfway across, the moans stop and a set of neon lights flickers to life on the ceiling. They create a hallowed space of ghostly blue that splits the coal fog of subterranean blindness.

Standing petrified in the heart of the light is Charlie in a gruesome state. His shirt is removed, scars pouring down his skin in red, raw lines like nerve endings or pine leaves. Lichtenberg figures sprawl out across his entire torso. He does nothing but stare listlessly at something beyond.

"Charlie!" Jeff calls out. 

No reponse. He wades in Charlie's direction. 

"Charlie, I thought you were-" Jeff stops abruptly in his tracks as he notices a flutter in Charlie's lips. He's muttering something under his breath. Jeff approaches Just below the walkway now, he can just barely make out what Charlie's saying. 

"Don't go the light," he chants repeatedly.

His body tremors, shuddering with a ferocity enough to shake his bones right out of his skin. Tears, glimmering in the specter light, trickle down his face. His trance is unbreakable

"Charlie," Jeff coaxes. "You okay?" 

He shakes his head without looking.

The lights brighten around him. Jeff makes to turn and get back on the other walkway. Charlie's chants rise to a crescendo. Jeff keeps looking over his shoulder, stumbling  through the water. 

Blue-green wisps of light, like jellyfish tails, emerge from thin air and begin to curl around his torso. The wisps move slow and loose. Jeff wants to turn and run, but it's impossible to rip his eyes away for some unfathomable dread of what comes next. 

Charlie stops muttering.

Suddenly, he launches a guttural scream as his body erupts in earth-shattering bursts of electricity. The shocks shake him like a rag-doll and the deafening crackle roars into the abyss, perpetuated by stone acoustics.

Tendrils of light slink like eels toward the water, where Jeff is frozen. He snaps out of his daze and charges for the walkway. The edges are sharp and nick him several times as he clamors up. 

Throwing one more glance back, he sees the ceiling lights go out as a luminescent creature trailed by glowing tentacles bolts back into the shadows. 

Jeff pats his pockets and realizes he's lost his flashlight in the panic. Trying desperately to quiet his heaving breaths and pounding heart, he staggers down the other path at the fork. 

With his sense of sight deprived, every sound becomes painfully intense. 

The pressure ambient of a low wind gliding through the tunnels. The jarring rattle of a metal walkway not meant to be tread upon after years of disuse. The internal ringing of screams Jeff would never be able to describe to anyone on the surface. And a distant, continual hum. 

A light emerges at the dead end of his path. The nerves in his skin spontaneously combust with a cold fire that is felt both in the flesh and in the mind. 

There, enshrined in the glow, is a map of the facility encased in glass. The hum that was before far away now seems to perch on his shoulder and prod his eardrums. He steps and unsteps, again and again, forward and back, unsure what to think of this beacon of hope. He chokes down his spit and resolves that the only other option is certain death. 

He punches the glass out and reaches for the map with bloodied hands. Adrenaline makes him unsteady, volatile. He checks all of his surroundings, but there is only darkness. 

He laughs and cries like a madman, tossing the map in the palms of his hands, until finally, he notices something above the glass case. 

A rhythmic breath, in perfect cadence, blows out of the vent above. And just behind it, a pair of massive bug eyes, at least a foot in diameter each. The creature swims in an ethereal shine that reveals its turquoise scales, glistening like newly polished knives. Jeff can feel the electric buzz in the air already. From the slats in the vent emerge the brilliant tendrils like vibrant Sirens, beautiful emissaries of death...

And then, came the spark.