The Descent Down the Stairs
The Black Void - Episode 3648
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Jacques doesn’t have a clue how much time has passed. An hour? Two
hours? An afternoon? It can’t be 7:00 yet (Their supper time) because
he doesn’t feel the least bit hungry…though that just might be blocked by
his uneasiness. He tries to turn on the light of his metal watch, but it doesn’t work. ”What does it matter?” he thinks. He stands up and wipes the remaining tears off his face. That’s just it. It doesn’t. Even if he could somehow sit here and survive for a year, nothing would change. The only way out of this situation is action. He reaches his hand through the softball sized hole in the door again: the metal wall is still there. That possibility is ruled out. That left one option. ”Go down.”He turns and faces the downward direction of the stairs. He reaches for the handrail, but that too has disappeared. He puts up the hood of his sweater, makes the sign of the cross, and begins walking down. Jacques has no doubt that he’s never been more terrified in his life than he is now. The railings are already gone and the steps already extended. Who knows what other terrifying surprises await him. Perhaps the stairs will twist and turn. Or the stairs will eventually come to an end. Maybe the stairs will never end, and he will be left walking into this abyss until he either dies of starvation or exhaustion. These thoughts dance in Jacques’s head every single step down.… Jacques guesses that he’s been walking down for around an hour. He walks more quickly and easier now, since two of his three fears have not (yet) come true; the stairs have stayed going in a single direction and not one step has been missing. However, one of them are still very much alive: ”Will they ever end?”That is all that’s been lingering in his mind for past forty-five minutes, even shadowing out the worries of his family. To add to his distress, he’s exausted from his endless walking. His eyelids feel heavy. What he wishes for now is to rest in his bed. Then a thought enters his mind: He couldn’t see anything anyways in this darkness as it is. So he closes his eyelids (as well as the thoughts of possible falling asleep while walking). It isn’t sleep, but it’s soothing. He continues his descent. … He couldn’t have been walking for more than a minute when a distant crackle makes Jacques’s heart jump. He opens his eyes. At first, everything is blurry, but it quickly clears up. About fifty meters below him, he can make out a small fire, dancing in the window-sized hole of a fireplace. Sitting in front of it is a person, although Jacques is too far to make out the gender. And just a few meters behind the person, he can make out the bottom of the stairs.Jacques begins descending down the stairs faster, taking two or three steps at a time. Warmth and Companionship are just beyond his reach. All that stands between him and the bottom is one-hundred to two-hundred steps. After a minute of running down, he realizes that he’s getting nowhere. His steps don’t move him forward a meter as far as he can tell. It’s as if the stairs are an upward rolling escalator, moving as the same speed that he descends.”No…Goddammit, no!” Desperately, he leaps down, covering nine or ten steps. His feet land on a narrow edge of one of the steps and he falls forward, face first. Instinctively, he puts his hands out to stop his head from slamming the stairs. With a grunt, he grasp on to the end of one of the steps with his hands. Carefully, he pulls himself up: He hasn’t moved at all.Jacques looks towards the person. He puts his hands to his mouth and calls “Hey you! Sir! Or Ma’am! Can you hear you? Sir! Please help! Sir! Ma’am! P> The person makes no notion that he ever heard Jacques. “Sir! Ma’am! Whatever you are, please help! Sir! Ma’am! Goddammit, answer me!” Jacques yells for a few more minutes until his throat becomes too sore to yell anymore. Although he realizes deep down that the man probably genuinely can’t hear him, he would like nothing more to stomp on that useless son of a bitch’s face. However, he knows from past experience with working with tough tourist that anger won’t help him at all. Gritting his teeth, he takes in deep breaths: In and out. He doesn’t bother sitting down: Seeing the bottom of the stairs pumped a large burst of adrenaline through his body and made him restless. He continues this breathing exercise for a few more minutes. Although he isn’t anywhere near Nirvana, he’s calm enough to think straight.I traveled for about an hour with my eyes open and got nowhere. Then I closed my eyes and found this fire about a minute later. And when I tried to go down again with my eyes open, and started moving nowhere again… He closes his eyes and continues his descent.
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4/24/2008 9:30:35 AM
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