'Til Death Do Us Part

“Well that’s good,” he said as he physically relaxed.

“Not so much,” I said softly, the seriousness of the situation was beginning to break through the stranglehold the hallucinogen had on my mind. I grabbed the lamp and pulled the shade off. I started to swing it around to get a feel of the heft of it to see if it could do any damage if it came in contact with a skull, but unless that skull belonged to a squirrel I was going to be in a little bit of trouble.

“Hey, man, that lamp cost twelve dollars. Stephanie is going to be pissed.”

“Why would your wife care? And how do you know how much this cost?” I asked him, holding the lamp nearly under his nose, almost in accusation. I didn’t know why that seemed like such an important matter, but right now I didn’t have anything else to fixate on.

“Stephanie owns these cabins. I’m supposed to manage them but I usually forget,” he said sheepishly.

“So does this place have a basement then?” I asked, again doing a pirouette like a drunken ballerina, but I guess that analogy is wrong because the drunken ballerina would still have been more graceful.

“No, man, you told me we didn’t,” John replied forlornly as he grabbed the lamp from my hand. “It’s too bad, too, because I was growing some killer weed down there. I even had a little rhyme, too, ‘The Purple cabin leads to the land of enchantment, smurple!’”

“That’s how you remember?”

He nodded.

I backed up, and two zombie hands had sought purchase on my poncho. I wrenched myself free.

“We really should get in the basement,” he said his eyes wide.

“I couldn’t agree more,” I told him.

“Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why couldn’t you agree more?” he asked in seriousness.

“Figure of speech.”

“Like an hourglass?” John asked.

“Sure, the basement, John.”

“Oh yeah, and you’re not the Fed right? Because if I ask…you have to tell me.”

“I don’t think that’s the case anymore, John. But no, I’m not a Fed,” I told him as the door began to crack under the zombie assault.

“Good thing.” John moved a small throw rug aside. A little hinged trap with a recessed ring for a pull lever looked back up at us. “See, I told you we had a basement,” he said triumphantly.

“How big is this thing?” If the size of the trap door was any indication, we were about to be inside an earthen cubby hole, and I for one would rather have taken my chances with the zombies. The thought of lying in the dirt underneath the floorboards as zombies walked above us was sending me into a near state of panic. Zombies walking across our graves; something was fundamentally wrong with the whole picture that was flashing across my mind.

“You prepared to have your mind blown?” John asked me. He pulled on the small ring and the door opened.

I was completely unprepared for what I was looking at. It looked like a rabbit hole, albeit a little bigger, a child could scramble through comfortably enough, it looked just big enough for a male. I looked over to John who had a huge grin spread across his face. “No fucking way,” I told him. Now all I could picture was being stuck in a tube staring at John’s feet as we wasted away.

“I know, right?! Isn’t it awesome! We should grab some beer,” he said enthusiastically as he hustled over to the fridge and started shoving cans in his pockets.

“John, how deep is that thing?” I asked, taking a step back; fearful that it would suck me in and never let me go. “I have claustrophobia, John!” Fuck the near panic, I was in full blown hysteria mode, I would have willingly gone to the zombies at this point rather than deal with the wormhole.

“See you on the other side!” John said as he quite literally dove into the hole. I expected to hear him start screaming that he was stuck or that the giant worm from Tremors was chasing his ass.

“Great, Talbot, like you needed another fucking reason to not go into the hole,” I said aloud after thinking about the movie that had scared the crap out of me in my youth.

“You coming?” drifted up from the hole. I thought I was imagining it, but then I distinctly heard him tell me to bring more beer. The zombie falling through the window was the last bit of motivation I needed. I screwed up royally and got into the hole feet first. I was death-clinching the small lip of the trap door as I pulled the door shut just as the zombie inside crawled over to me, it’s mouth not more than a few inches from my fingers. I was plunged into a darkness a blind person would have sensed.

I could hear the zombie scrambling to its feet. I let go of the lip just as it stepped on the trap door. My fingers were pinched a little bit, but it was nothing compared to the slamming of my heart in my chest. I wasn’t moving, John had slithered down the hole like a snake, and I was stuck fast. I tried to wriggle along, but my arms were pinioned above my head, and I didn’t have the room to bring them by my sides and help me move.

I wanted to cry. I could feel the walls collapsing on me, breathing was getting difficult. My next option was to push the hatch open and kill the zombie in the cabin, but I knew I’d never get out of the hole quick enough. It would be gnawing on my face as I struggled to get free. Die in the dark or have my face eaten, those were the two choices I was weighing out when John spoke.

“You coming, man?”

“John, I’m stuck!” I screamed. The zombie above me stopped its shuffling. The cabin door finally gave way with a resounding splintering.

“Did you grab more beer?”

“Would you leave me here if I didn’t?” I asked, truly concerned.

The zombies above me were having a field day on the cabin; what little possessions were in there were being reduced to rubble. I could hear the planks on the trap door creak every time one or more of them stepped on them and I sincerely hoped they would hold up. I shrieked—yeah dammit, I shrieked—when I felt John’s hand wrap around my ankle.

“Did you hear that, man? Sounded like a banshee,” he said in all seriousness.

“That’s probably what it was then,” I said in a near falsetto voice, not yet getting my rampant emotions in check yet.

John was pulling me down the hole. I was trying my best to not eat dirt…I was not succeeding.

“Hi ho, hi ho it’s off to work I go!” John was singing at the top of his lungs.

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked in response to his song choice. I was being dragged through a tunnel by a tripping madman singing Disney songs…with zombies above me. I couldn’t have made this shit up if I tried.

“You ready?” John asked me.

“For...?” I was beginning to ask as I felt myself falling. It seemed like I was suspended in space for hours, free falling through the cosmos, but now that I’m looking back on it, I’m pretty sure that was a side effect of the drugs I was on. The fall was no more than six feet, and I landed awkwardly but softly on some strewn hay.

The cavern—that was what it was—was lit up with some small lanterns that John must have placed here. “Where the...what the hell is this place?” I asked, standing up. I had a good inch or two from the top of my head to the ceiling. I tried my best to not think about it or my claustrophobia would begin to set in again.

“Chateau de Simms.” He smiled, his face caked with dirt, I rubbed absently on mine realizing I probably looked much the same. “Come on, come on,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me further away from the entry hole.

The cavern opened up, the ceiling now a good eight or nine feet from my head, the knot of claustrophobia around my heart began to loosen. The room stretched further out than side to side, maybe twenty-five feet by ten feet. I was having great difficulty with spatial relations and the echoing was completely throwing me off, threatening to give me one hell of a case of vertigo. I could smell a faint scent that harkened back to days of yore.

“Oh, my babies!” John wailed.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, looking around wildly.

John sat down heavily by a row of huge potted plants. Correction, huge Pot plants.