When I came to, I was immediately flooded with darkness, and a viscous pain in my

lower right thigh overwhelmed my aching cranium. I almost assumed my eyes were still closed,

before I looked up at a column of light that illuminated my immediate surroundings, myself

included. As my eyes adjusted to the rapid change in luminosity, I could make out the details of

the decaying roof on the floor above me. But, no matter how hard I focused, I couldn’t see even

a foot into the abyss that surrounded me. I looked up again. The hole was small, just barely

enough for my frame to fit through. How far had I fallen? Ten, maybe twenty feet? Either way, I

guessed it would be impossible to reach, even standing all of the way up. Right. My leg. I looked

down.

A Leatherman had stabbed me right above my knee. My Leatherman. My throat twitched

violently, before I finally managed to hiss a weak “Hnnnggggodfuckingdamnit.”

I reached down, tempted to pull it out, but froze. My fingers tapped the handle, and with

it a jolt of pain shot into my thigh muscle. No way I was going to fuck around with that. Okay.

Breathe. Just breathe. I just needed to stay calm, and I could figure this out. I can figure this out.

I looked down again. The Leatherman was still there. I just needed to focus on anything else but

the Leatherman.

I looked around, hoping to learn virtually anything new about my surroundings. I looked

into the darkness. I stared, waiting for something to change. Amorphous blobs floated around

my vision, creating the illusion of mass before melting away, imperceptible shades of

blueish-purple pushing off of each other, layering and dissolving. Squiggles in the corners of my

eyes danced to a silent static disco, jumping up and then floating back down in time to the

jittering of my eyes. The process was so mesmerizing I had almost forgotten about the hole I

had fallen through.

Everything rushed back to me. I remembered where I was. I remembered the

Leatherman. My leg throbbed, and I clutched it, hard.

I pulled up my thigh, trying to stimulate a response. It weakly slid, my boot digging a line

in the dirt floor, and I immediately regretted my decision. My leg twitched uncontrollably, pain

rocketing downwards from the Leatherman once more. I let go, and my boot slid back into

place, my body un-tensing as I let out a long exhale. The opening sat directly overhead, and the

warm sunlight that cascaded through offered little comfort. Sweat dripped down from my

forehead and pooled in my ear canals.

I wiped away what I could with the sleeve of my shirt, a dark green thermal. While it served little purpose up there, it fit better down here. The air was cool and felt good. It smelled surprisingly decent as well, as far as abandoned cellars go. I

looked at my watch. 4:25 PM. I still had about four hours of light, before sunset. I closed my eyes, the world turning red through my eyelids. Eventually, I could make out the sound of leaves above me, rustling gently, whispering a hushed lullaby. Might as well enjoy the sun, while I could. I only had so much time before it disappeared, but a small rest couldn’t hurt.

Crunch.

I lurched upwards, once again grabbing my leg in pain. “Stop… moving it…,” I muttered,

“You fucking… idiot.” I opened my eyes, and I tried to regain focus. The sun had faded, and I

looked at my watch. 8:00 PM. How did four hours pass? Did I fall asleep?

I heaved, and looked down. The Leatherman was, unfortunately, still in my leg. The pain

had turned into a dull ache, my muscle tissue clenching around the cold steel. I looked up. The

hole felt so, so far away. What had I guessed before? Twenty feet? Screw that, it looked like

fifty, maybe even sixty feet above me. I could still somewhat make out the ceiling, now a blueish

hue in the evening light. God, it was so far away. There was absolutely no way I could reach it. I

was stuck down here.

I started to whimper, begging some invisible force to come help me, to mend my leg and

help me get out of this damn hole. I inhaled deeply, and screamed.

“SOMEBODY HELP ME! PLEASE!”

But no one was coming. My arms fell to my sides, and heavy pants turned into light

sobs, and light sobs turned to wails.

Suddenly, my body stopped any sort of movement it had been making. Before I could

even register what just happened, I heard the sound of dirt, crunching. Was it footsteps? No, it

sounded like something being dragged, or maybe rolling. I couldn’t entirely tell. All I knew was

that it was coming directly towards me. I couldn’t move. My brain was rapidly firing signals to

every muscle it could reach, telling, no, screaming at me to move. To crawl away or scream or

even flinch, to at least clench in anticipation for what might be coming. I felt my fingers shake

against my pants, each little twitch jostling the Leatherman, wiggling it further into my leg, but I

didn’t care.

With all of my strength, I slowly turned my head to face the sound as it crept closer, and

closer, and…

An aluminum can rolled into the faint light, and lightly bumped against my leg. I stared at

it for an untold amount of time, trying to understand what just happened. It was barely touched,

the metallic surface still reflecting the evening sun. The text on the can read Fanta.

Fanta. What was an empty Fanta can doing down here? I grabbed the can and held it in

my hand. I looked up, puzzling over it in my mind, trying to focus on what lay in my brain, just

anything to divert my attention from the pain. That’s right, there had been a pile of soda cans

where the hole was now. But what was up there? A building? No, not just any building. A

restaurant. An abandoned restaurant. It all started coming back to me.

Urbexing. I had started getting into it, as a hobby. There was something all too alluring

about abandoned sites and what eldritch secrets they held. The rust that tainted every surface

with a reddish-orange hue, water damage eating away at the walls and floors, trash from faces

lost to time and the permanent smell of petrichor and mold. To me, it was the closest thing to

exploring the guts of a rotting animal.

Eventually, I had ticked off the last area on my list, a rotting shed I had passed by a few

times. It was completely uninteresting, save for a souvenir I managed to score: a nearly spotless

Leatherman. How it hadn’t been completely rusted over at this point, your guess is as good as

mine. The hinges had some dirt and grime in them, and it squeaked every time I folded it open

to flip out a tool, but otherwise it was in near mint condition. After a quick rinse in a nearby

stream, I brought it with me everywhere. Better to be safe than sorry, in case I needed a

screwdriver for something. Or a knife.

My attention diverted to the blade in my leg, and with it, the pain. No. I needed to

focus. Where was I?

The words Arigato Sushi floated into my brain, in a stylized font and everything. God,

what a stupid name. I chuckled, each huff reminding me of my aching thigh. I remembered

breaking in, using my Leatherman to pry away the boards that were fixed to the doors, flicking

away nails with the blade folded out. I remembered how weird it was that there was a pile of

Fanta cans in the middle of a sushi restaurant. The can.

I looked to my side, following the trajectory from where it came. What had caused it to

roll? I hadn’t moved in a way that significantly affected the structure, had I? No. There was no

way. I continued staring, in complete disbelief. Something must have pushed the can out of the

darkness. Something must have moved. Something other than me. I looked deeper, trying to

make out any detail I could notice.

Sweat seeped from through my hands, covering the can in a thin film of grease and dirt.

The sound of rustling leaves was long gone, silence enveloping my surroundings. The sky was

still bright, but it wouldn’t be for much longer. I continued to stare. Most expeditions had led to

the discovery of animals, a raccoon or two usually, maybe a deer. Maybe an animal had moved

the can and I wasn’t awake to hear it. But something told me what wasn’t right. If an animal had

moved, surely I would have heard it again by now. If not on its own, then from my screaming

from earlier. It felt ridiculous saying that it could be supernatural, but…

A memory crawled back into my head. The road that led me here ended abruptly a mile

from the site, the beige dirt path ending in front of a wire fence held up by an army of metal

supports. As I stretched my leg to climb over the fence, using a metal rod to support my body, I

remember taking note of a sign that was immediately to my left. I knew what it would say, just

another “NO TRESPASSING” sign, warning that “VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED”. Rust

ate away at it in a way that made most of it illegible though, leaving the word “TRESPASS”

untouched.

Trespass. What a fucking joke. It drew me in, like a hungry dog desperate for a snack, a

junkie looking for a fix, and I fell right for it.

My eyes relaxed to accommodate the darkness, and I almost caught something. A

barely visible angle, ever so slightly paler than the rest of the darkness. I tried to fixate on it as

much as my eyes let me. I noticed other contours around the shape, some round, others sharp,

two deep ovals fixated between two larger circles, and below those were lines that curved

downwards towards a horizontal line, which slightly bowed upwards, and continued to bow

upwards as I looked, twisting higher and higher, and then slowly falling downwards, like melting

wax.

The void crept further in, the sky now a deep purple as the sun continued to fade, and

with it my area of safety. This was it. My journey would end right here, and no one would even

know. This room would consume me, and now, I would be digested. I could almost feel the

shadows enveloping my limbs, seeping into my pores, oozing into my eyes and embracing my

torso, eating me, dissolving my body into nothingness, until all that remained was a faint

memory that I had existed, the only thing left to my name a goddamn hole in an abandoned

sushi restaurant. I looked up. The light was so, so far away, maybe even miles above where I

sat.

My body started to relax. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it wouldn’t even hurt.

Anything would beat a knife in my leg at this point. That damn Leatherman. Maybe I would just

bleed out before anything even happened, slowly fading into nothingness. Before what I saw in

the dark consumed me too.

A voice startled me, and I whipped around. “Hello? Is anyone there?” It was muffled, and

I could tell it was above me. I thought I was hallucinating, before they repeated themselves.

“Hello? I heard you scream, are you alright?”

“YES! DOWN HERE! PLEASE, I THINK THERE’S SOMETHING DOWN HERE AND I

NEED HELP!” I yelped uncontrollably.

“Okay, I’m coming over. Stay where you are!”

Footsteps creaked above me, and I heard the sound of dust raining onto the ground. Then, a light came down from the hole. I covered my eyes, but before my hands blotted out my vision, I caught a glimpse of the thing in the dark. About three feet to my right, a large horde of junk sat in a corner, two empty ramen cups pointing straight at me, in between them a jumbled heap of miscellaneous garbage. Trash. Useless, dirty, trash.

“Here you are.” I could now tell the voice came from a man, older, probably in his forties. He hesitated.

“Okay, I’m going to jump down, and I’m going to get you out of here. Okay?”

“What? How!?”

Before I could protest further, I felt a hard thump beside me. I felt his hands reach under

my knees and back, before I was lifted off the ground, hoisted upwards, and pushed me back

through the hole, where I rested back down on the planks I had fallen through hours earlier.

How was that even possible? When I was down there, the cellar was impossibly deep,

with no possibility of anything ever climbing out. But now, it didn’t look any deeper than six feet,

at most. The man’s greyish-black hair just barely poked out from the top, almost even with the

surrounding floorboards. He hoisted himself up and, with a strained grunt, was now on the floor

with me. His light flicked off, and I could now just barely make out his face.

“Are you hurt?”

I winced, before nodding and looking at the Leatherman. He followed my gaze.

“Oh Jesus. Yeah, that’s pretty bad.”

He reached down to examine it, before stopping.

“Holy shit. Is that my Leatherman?”