I had begun listening to fairy tales at a very young age. I was seven when I started denying them, nine when I began forgetting them. Children who cannot replace love with something else would kill themselves beneath the bloody knives of mercy. I knew the tales no longer had any effect. I also knew they could not be trusted.
As a bird split through my thoughts, slicing them apart and crying out from meters above my head, everything changed its course with that staircase whose depth beneath the ground I did not know. With this knowledge, I could no longer continue my life as before. What I felt was an icy shiver spreading through my fingers. The sensation of nightmare flooding from my arms left bare by my T-shirt, rushing into the fine hairs of my skin, did not leave me in peace even for a moment.
In the presence of the group leader standing beside me, there was a severity that made me punctual to the second. Lowering my head and clenching my jaw, I stared into the void. "The staircase…" I murmured. The rain was the only reality reigning between us.
He slid his gaze to my face as if I had formed a meaningless word.
"Where… does this lead?" I asked, without hiding my timidity. How much longer would I continue not knowing what was happening here?
"Where it leads doesn't matter…" he murmured, as though he stood behind his words until the very end. "Do you want to go down with it?"
"With whom?" I said in a faint voice.
I knew my questions did not sound foreign to him.
"With yourself…" he answered without thinking.
Swallowing heavily, I murmured, "What is down there?"
"Food…" He spread his hands to either side as if it were simple.
When he cast a glance toward the staircase, my stomach churned.
"D-do you eat there too?" I asked, struggling to make eye contact with him.
A mocking smile appeared on his face.
"Why don't you want to see that place with your own eyes?"
When the sound of birds was heard again, the pain of the life flowing outside hurt me.
As the rain rushed to the ground as if filling a well at full speed, I glanced at the staircase. This thing, which should have served no purpose other than to take me down, now frightened me beyond measure. I was solemn and still, as though I were about to bury my own coffin beneath layers upon layers of earth. My dried lips had already been wounded and left miserable by my teeth like an enemy.
With the urge to wrap my arms around my body, I commanded my feet. I tried to calculate how far the staircase would descend. A few meters, or a few hundred? What was below? A tunnel, or a small underground excavation? This door had been opened once. I could not allow it to close without taking what was mine. Throughout the breathless seconds, I kept commanding myself. I wanted to go down those stairs. With my body constantly rebelling against me, I resisted in a state as though my soul had overflowed from within me.
When I looked once more at the group leader's face in the hope of obtaining a different piece of information, I saw a different emotion suddenly flare in his gaze. Before I had the chance to understand what was happening, the footsteps—those I assumed belonged to the remaining members of the group—were heard again. Perhaps because my ears had coded this sound as terror, I tried to take a deep breath, wiping my sweaty fingers on my trousers. My breath shrank and vanished in my lungs, and another deep breath buried itself inside me. The group leader stood where he was without moving, looking at me. Perhaps this was the thing that frightened me the most among everything happening here. The feeling his simply standing there and looking at me created was no different from the slicing pain of a knife on flesh.
"Are you afraid?" he asked, as my chest slowly rose. As he led the crowd that gathered behind him in no time, he wore a wounded expression, as though he would pay the price of that leadership in another way. I did not understand. Everything was draped in gray and white. They did not care about my fear. Yet they behaved as if they did. That closed, pale state on their lips; the lines and bruises surrounding their eye sockets—together, it was difficult to call them living people. As their numbers increased, I began to sweat, and while I remained fixed to the ground, they kept moving without pause. As if there were a magnificent view here and they wanted to watch it in its finest, most complete form.
Among the soulless faces, fear appeared on one of them. At that moment, in that split second, I licked my lips and with the last strength I gathered, tried to draw an expression from their faces. I wanted to understand the reason lying beneath that fear. The staircase winked at me. "Come here," it seemed to call; "Come here and see what I hide inside…" Even the imagination of this thought made me shiver, and I struggled to understand what these people, frozen in place, found in this scene.
I took a single step. The distance between me and the staircase had lessened. I was out of breath, as if I had run uphill. I took another step and, turning around, touched the icy cold of the staircase railings that burned my skin. As my fingers slid downward along the metal surface they clung to, what slipped from my hands was not only the cold, but also my confidence in myself. When I descended one step, I clenched my jaw and teeth with all my strength. Ruining myself, I continued to slide my fingers.
At last my head was washed by a faint light appearing beneath the darkness. As my hands and body became invisible inside the hollow of the staircase, I was in unbearable pain; I tried to manage my body's energy, to move myself. In that moment I did not know what was right or wrong. But I felt longing. I did not know what I longed for. Or I was regretful. I was unaware of what I regretted. As I moved away from the hatch and entered that hollow resembling a cold meat storage, hesitation clung to my blood like a poison. In this tunnel, where humanity had remained outside and which resembled one of those graves where people are buried with their belongings when they die, the last beam of high-intensity light was cut off as the hatch slammed shut. My toes were frozen. As if the nerves enabling me to use my legs had been damaged, I looked down with half-open eyes and saw that the rusty final steps of the staircase were about to end.
I was approaching the ground. Gravity was forcefully pressing the soles of my feet against it. The light grinned like a bad actor exiting the frame. I did not know what was here, what was waiting for me. When the faint light reflected in front of me from my right side, I realized the voices from above had completely disappeared. No matter how much I strained my ears, I did not hear the slightest fragment of sound. As it was, I tried to capture more detail in the already dim light. When I lifted my head, I understood this place was a tunnel nearly four meters high. Hanging from the ceiling were corded lamps. The walls were made of a frozen layer of earth, and the ground of dry mud. I began to watch with disgust the pipes I assumed were sewage pipes, not knowing where they descended or rose. From somewhere, water dripped—drop, drop. Even this sound rose so loudly in my mind that I forgot I had come here for food.
I walked a few meters. I only walked. I thought I had left my thoughts outside the door. But they had already clung to the hem of my trousers like mud stains. When I had advanced ten meters, even when I had walked twenty, no place related to food appeared before me. Only, the further one went into the darkness of the corridor, the colder the air became. I felt my feet grow stiff from the cold. My hands and feet trembled from excitement. Despite all that cold, beads of sweat slid down from my nape. When my body remained motionless as if to show it was exposed to dozens of unfamiliar factors, simultaneously the lamp on the ceiling crackled. The light went out with a sharp pop. I had expected it to happen more slowly; its suddenness surprised me. My heart began to pound hard. I felt a drop of sweat travel down my back. Everything below my spine shuddered. My voice and breath seemed to retreat inside me.
As the noise of the water dripping from the tunnel ceiling onto the ground turned time into an unending torment, the darkness did not only target my eyes—it sliced my body line by line. I felt the smell of dampness and mold intensify. I had wanted to take a step when a shadow passed through the darkness. I blinked. As my heart pounded as if it would leap from its place, the darkness of the tunnel was illuminated by a blue light. This light came from a blue holo-screen adhered to the surface of the tunnel.
Tunnel, I thought to myself. So there was a holo-screen here too. The letters fell onto the surface of the screen one by one like water pouring from a bucket. I struggled to perceive them with my eyes.
I felt defenseless. "Never cry," I reminded myself of the mission. As if my effort were in vain.
The letters opened and closed like the wings of a flying bird. The burning sensation in my stomach caused by hunger returned to me as dryness on my lips. The pain touching from the back of my head to the tip of my nape was warning my synapses of danger. When I involuntarily brought my hand there, my fingers touched the bandage left behind by the chip's cold presence.
While my assignment continued to shine in capital letters among the names drifting across the holo-screen, I took a cowardly step. My legs were reluctant. They were fleeing from something. My fingers were frozen, motionless. As if they did not belong to my body. As the blue pixels of the screen flickered, it was casting a giant die that determined my fate.
The hunger in my stomach had become unbearable. My stomach had practically stuck to my abdomen.
I advanced inside the tunnel as far as the light extended.
With every movement of the pixels, I feared the light would go out completely.
I examined the walls down to their finest detail and looked ahead.
The drip-drop sound had not ceased; it had turned into a melody in my ears.
This melody reminded me of the voice recording stored inside the music box my husband had bought me. It was now a sweet memory left behind, made of the words, "I love you." When hopelessness was poured over me, I could not manage to pull myself back; on every patch of earth I walked alone, it was as if I saw his name.
Just then I heard a double "beep beep." A sound like a drawer opening rushed into my ear. I could not decipher where it came from. I looked around blankly. The sound repeated itself. Then I felt my fear repeat itself as well. When the sound repeated once more, I realized it came from a point near my left ear. I shifted my head to the ceiling, then to the walls. A new holo-screen lit up in front of me. On the rough surface of the wall, it was as if something written crookedly and unevenly.
Among the undulating waves of blue light on the screen, perhaps what it was trying to describe was a door… Or a portal.
My hand, together with the legs that involuntarily carried me to the side of the wall, moved to the rough surface of the tunnel. I had even forgotten to breathe. As my fingers were crushed beneath the icy cold of the wall, I noticed an indentation. As if it were the raised template of a world map, I continued to probe that surface with my fingers. Before long, I felt as though I were perceiving the surface of a nail. It was something small and cylindrical with a pointed tip. As I turned it in place, a piece of wood emerged.
Without understanding what it was, I realized I was holding a nail in my hand.
Come on, I muttered.
The piece of wood came out from beneath the crumbling earth and fell to the ground.
Then I came face to face with the wall.
Inside the compartment, two cans were visible.
In my astonishment I could not believe what I saw, but I was so happy, so happy that I thought my breath would suddenly stop. I grabbed the cans and opened their tops. The smell of tuna came. My intention was to eat without thinking. So it was real. Sliding the soles of my feet, I collapsed to the ground and, almost attacking it, began to eat whatever was inside the can. Time had stopped. My unrelenting hunger was being crushed beneath the weight of the seconds.
After licking the bottom of the can clean with my tongue, I looked at the empty container. The blue light swayed before my eyes as if dancing.
At that moment the lights flickered again.
This frightened me.
Rubbing my hands against the ground, I stood back up and brushed the dust off myself.
I involuntarily glanced toward the other end of the tunnel.
When I wanted to take a step, I stumbled because of the wood crushed beneath my foot. When I managed to regain my balance and save myself, I heard footsteps coming from directly above me, from the ceiling. They must have been the steps of those walking above. Even running. These sounds were loud, heavy, and frequent. With the pain in my forehead, I tried to walk in the darkness, but I failed. The light finally went out completely. The holo-screen had disappeared as well. The dusty, damp air remained captive in my lungs. The footsteps from the ceiling had grown stronger. This worried me again. Despite this, I began walking in the opposite direction. My aim was to return to where I had come from.
As I moved forward clumsily, a voice echoed. It was a robotic voice. That is, it was a warning sound coming from the holo-screen.
"Please begin hunting!"