The man started digging the hole when he was bored. He closed the television, took a shovel,went to the back yard, and started digging into the cold hard ground. At the end of the day there was a shallow dent in the ground, and chafing wounds on the mans' hands. Exhausted and aching, he dropped the shovel on to the ground and walked back into the warmth of the house. The next day it rained, and the hole filled up creating a little puddle. He went outside to retrieve the shovel, and left muddy footprints on the floor when he walked back in. The footprints remained on the floor a whole week until the day he was fired. He came home at noon that day and watched game show reruns until he fell asleep. The next morning he woke up and cleaned the muddy footprints and then the house. He sent out his resume to every job he could find and waited. He tried making small talk on two phone interviews. A week later he took the shovel and started digging again. He cleared the damp layer of mud left over from the rain and soon the ground was dense and rough again. He worked for hours, alternating between loosening the ground with a pick ax, and clearing the loosened dirt with a shovel. By night time the hole was deep enough to stand in. He climbed out and went back into the house and fell asleep in his clothes. The next morning he bought a ladder and placed it inside the hole. He worked the whole morning, coughing up the dust, feeling his hands cramp up. At noon the shovel broke. He climbed out of the hole, and fell asleep near the ledge, soaking the warm sun. When he woke up it was dark and he was shivering in the damp cold, his face masked in dust. The next morning he woke up with a fever. He spent three days on the couch, trembling in and out of sleep. He drank tea, until it ran out and ordered Chinese food but left it unopened on the kitchen counter. On the fourth day his fever broke. He got up slowly, took a shower and drove to the supermarket. He spent the morning eating bread and microwaved hotdogs. He felt his strength returning to his arms. In the afternoon he walked to the yard and climbed back down into the hole.
His beard was itching. He woke up at dawn and climbed down the four tiered ladders to the bottom of the hole. He had his breakfast sitting on the cool dirt. A hard boiled egg with bread and cheese. The hole was five times his height, shaded for most of the day, and cooler than above ground. A little before noon the shovel made a sharp metallic sound and water burst into the hole flooding it rapidly. He kicked off his shoes as the water covered his waist. A ladder that was leaning on the wall tilted and crashed into the water hitting the man on the head. He coughed violently as he broke through the water. There was blood all around him, and his head was pounding and dizzy. He threw up swallowing water and drowning. He opened his mouth in panic and inhaled even more water. His feet hit the bottom of the hole as the panic ebbed. He flung himself upwards but hit his head on the ladder blocking the way up. All the remaining air got knocked out of his lungs. Anxiety engulfed him completely. With his last gasps of clarity he slithered between two ladder steps and continued up. He broke through the water and inhaled thirstily. The air was cold and fresh, pulling him back to himself . The ledge of the hole was now just above him, nearing as the water rose. He reached up, pulled himself out and rolled in exhaustion onto the ground.
He found a job working in a large store. He arrived at work at 7:30, but started getting paid at 8:00. He stacked merchandise until 5:00 PM and then went home. When he got home he fell asleep. He waited for the weekend but spent the weekends sleeping. At work people would ask him questions like hows it going and he would answer “OK for a Monday”if it was Monday or “Friday, so pretty good.” if it was a Friday. He had lunch in the cafeteria and sometimes would get drive through on the way home. He gained weight. At work he would sometimes remember the day the water pipe broke. One weekend he went outside and looked at the hole. It seemed a lot shallower than he remembered. He climbed down and considered digging, but he didn't see the point. He stayed in the job a year before he quit. He deliberated long and hard about when and how to resign, and what he should say if the manager asked why he was leaving, but in the end the manager wasn't there and he resigned to the deputy manager.
A day after his birthday he picked up the shovel and started digging again. He dismantled his bedroom closet and used the wooden beams to shore up the sides of the hole. He dug carefully around the repaired water pipe and continued digging downwards once he cleared it. His hands had softened and his old chafing wounds opened up. He soaked them in hot water and enjoyed the pain running up his hands. He barely slept during the night and got out of bed before dawn to begin digging again. He dug straight through till evening, and had a large bowl of pasta at the end of the day. The next day he hammered nails to the side of the hole and fastened the ladders to the walls. Two weeks later he found a few wooden logs in a scrap yard. He tied them together to make an A frame . He placed the frame above the hole and threaded a thick rope with buckets down to the hole. He lifted buckets of dirt out of the hole.
The hole was more than 80 feet deep. It had the musty smell of a cave, and a deep soothing echo whenever the pick ax hit the ground. After he hit the rock bed, he bought a titanium ax, and continued digging. Digging through the rock bed was much slower, and pulling up the rocks was arduous. Instead of digging straight down he started digging a tunnel diagonally enabling him to put all his weight behind the pick ax. He dismantled his kitchen cabinets and used the wood as planks to provide grip. The hole was getting darker and darker as the slanting tunnel crept further away from the sunlight above. He rolled a long electric cable and installed a lamp at the end of the tunnel that projected long shadows of a man hurling an ax onto the rock. He seldom climbed up to his house any more. Most of his furniture was dismantled and holding up the walls of the hole. His belongings were sold, converted into rows and rows of canned foods that were lined up against the walls of the tunnel. He was getting thinner but stronger. The ax became an extension of his strength, and he discovered that what once took him weeks, now took days. The lamp went out one day and he found out that the electric company cut his power. He spent three days in complete silence at the edge of his tunnel, 200 feet in the ground. He could tell where the rock was by listening to the small echos tiny movements would make. He could tell the shape of the rock edge, where there were boulders and where there were only pebbles. He felt the tunnel surrounding him. He continued digging in darkness wholly aware of where the weaknesses in the rock were, where he could place the tip of the ax to break it apart.
One day the ax displaced a rock which vanished into darkness below, falling until it hit water several seconds later. The man hacked an opening with the ax and lowered his head through the opening. He could hear water flowing far below in the dark. He lit a piece of wood that used to be a table leg and let it drop down the hole. The flame punctured the darkness for three long seconds before it hissed into the water. He went back up to get his rope.
The water was strangely warm and he let himself fall in. As soon as he felt the water he regretted jumping in. The current was powerful, and it carried him down stream across the cavern. Before he could scramble out, the underground river reached the end of the cave and continued into the rock, dragging him along. He couldn't swim back against the current so he tried to quiet down, focus and conserve the air in his lungs. He raised his hands to skim over the roof of the tunnel where the water touched the rock leaving no room for air. He tried to think of options but couldn't come up with any. He regretted not trying to swim back as soon as the stream entered the rock, but there was nothing to be done now. He wondered where his body will end up, and whether it will be found. Or maybe it will float down this underground river, decompose, and clog up some water pump some day. His fingers suddenly hit open air. The water slowed down and he could stand up in the darkness, the water reaching his waist . He could tell he was in very large space, but couldn't tell how large. He waddled out of the water and to his surprise the ground was mud, and not hard rock. He drank some of the water, which was equally muddy and salty. He walked away from the water trying to keep a steady direction in the dark. The ground was completely flat, and his pace was quick despite the smooth surrounding darkness. Many minutes later he still hadn't reached any walls. He thought the water was behind him but he couldn't hear it any longer. He was used to being in complete darkness but it was usually confined and small. Here , as hard as he focused, he couldn't make out any echoes. All sounds disappeared into the darkness, never to come back. The darkness surrounding him was surreal- there was nothing, anywhere. Nothing mattered, only the ground was real. He lay on the ground for several minutes but couldn't find any meaning there either so he continued walking. There was no difference whether he closed his eyes or kept them open, and after a while he wasn't sure which he was doing. One day the darkness in front of him morphed into a bright white light which wasn't there. It then changed to a flickering green lights, and finally to his school councilor asking him to stay, to give it some more time. She should have tried harder, he thought. He wanted to chase her, but then realized he was lying down, sleeping. He woke up and coughed. His mouth was dry. Yesterday he had tried eating the dirt , swallowing hard without any moisture in his mouth. What does yesterday even mean he thought. If he never sees the sun again, can he settle on a new set of rules here in the dark. Why couldn't a day be 50 hours, or stop with this year nonsense. If he wants to do something by the time he is 30 he better stop that number from going up. Everybody famous was younger than him. He used to watch basketball with his friends and look at the age of the players, as long as one of them was older than him he always thought he still had a chance, if he just practiced, applied himself. Not that he wanted to be a basketball player, but he didn't want to discount that option either. His friends. His friends were nothing more than yearly phone calls and awkward silences in corporate sports bars. Well this place wasn't manufactured, this was real, he hoped. Although he couldn't see it. Would be funny if it was really not that large, if he had been walking around in circles all this time. His next step mercifully plunged him into water. He wanted to make sure this was real, but how could he really tell. Maybe he was dead. He listed the options in his head – he was either dead, sleeping, or here, which to him seemed the least likely option. Either way the water tasted good . He drank, but not that much considering how thirsty he was. There seemed to be little correlation between the level of thirst and the quantity of water needed to quench that thirst. After a while he followed the water up to the point where it entered from the rock, finding the river through which he could get back to his tunnel. The water had gone down since he had ridden the river to this place, allowing for air between the water and the ceiling. He quickly figured out that he could avoid the current, and move against it by walking slowly and clinging to the sides of the tunnel.
The man climbed out of the hole squinting at the light and he saw his sister looking at the house. She noticed him climbing out of the hole, and for a long second contemplated whether the scrawny bearded man was her brother. She finally decided it was and ran towards him but stopped short of hugging him.
Jesus, Where have you been?
The man wanted to speak but it had been many weeks, and he only managed a course whisper.
I was worried. She looked at the house. It was was little more than bare walls, the windows had been removed, the walls stripped of any value.
What did you do to the house?
His mind raced, grasping to come back, but with all this light, his mind seemed to float, not sure where to go. Was he supposed to say something funny?
She looked down into the hole, picked up a small rock and threw it in following it until it disappeared.
Whats this for? She asked.
Hard to explain.. he thought he heard himself say.
She looked at him trying to make up her mind how crazy he really was.
Come on lets get you something to eat. She motioned him to follow her.
The food court had a Mexican place, a Chinese place,a Sandwich and Salad place, two hamburger chains, and a Sushi bar. The man decided to eat a hamburger. It wasn't very good. A large woman was sitting at the table opposite them with her two little blond girls. The woman had a large soda plastic cup, the older child had a medium plastic cup and the smallest had a small plastic cup. He wondered at what age did you get to move up a size. Must be a right of passage or something.
His sister came back carrying dessert.
What happened to that job you had in the store?
Wasn't for me.
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t pursue the matter further.
So what have you been doing? Are you spending all your time in that tunnel?
The man moved the apple pie around the plate.
Well I didn't have money to go traveling overseas.
So your plan is to keep digging that hole, is that it?
I don't know, maybe. Its not so much a plan.
Don't joke about it. I don’t think it makes you rebellious.
Well what do you want me to say?
She moved her chair closer and lowered her voice.
You can't run away like that. It doesn't work you see, at some point you're going to have to come back, and nothing will have changed, everything will be the same except you will be that much older. I know you, you think this will make you special, make it all worth it, but no one cares, you're just a crazy guy with a shovel.
His sister dropped him back at the house. He suggested getting some coffee but she had to pick up her kids. She insisted he call her at least once a month over his insistence that he didn't have a phone. He sat at the edge of the hole his feet dangling into the abyss trying to imagine years into his future, but the only thought that came to him was that the tunnel would be really long by then. Of course he doesn't have enough canned food for that long, but he might find a way to survive. Maybe there are fish in the water. But maybe there aren't. He could feel his heart shudder at that thought. Wondering around in the dark, hungry and lost. On the other hand there was the store, not that store but any store really. But this time he would apply himself, network, show some initiative. He vaguely remembered giving himself that very same motivational speech before the last job. Night was closing in around him. He knew in his gut that any decision he makes he will regret at some point. Dead or bored, either way both paths led to nothing.
At around midnight, he climbed down into the hole. The ax hit the rock in a precise crack bringing the wall crumbling down. The man caught a last glimpse of sky before running deeper into the hole avoiding the crashing rocks. The rumblings continued for a while until all the rocks were satisfied with their new location. The man breathed in the silence, calmed himself and walked into the darkness.