Mr. Beast #6

Mr. Beast waves me over from the edge of the hole. So deep! Inside, rock walls creep down and down and down and disappear into dark. He looks over his shoulder at me.

We had gotten lost. When the splinter in Mr. Beast’s foot had finally been scratched out, the world went dark. Upon realizing our shivering beneath the shadowy branches that blocked out the stars (if there were any), things became more serious. We could die out here, I thought. But still, Mr. Beast had that childish way about him. During our attempt to escape, he would be stopping along the way to investigate notches in tree trunks and taking bark samples and pointing out to me the dark excrement of animals. In between the distractions, I worried. He grunted at his foot. We had no clear technique of finding our way back to the take off point. We thought it smart to start off walking in the direction that we remembered the Professional walking off in, hoping to be led back to the road, where from there we would climb. But even after walking what felt like twenty minutes in the Professional’s footsteps, we still hadn’t found any road. Surrounded by more eerily abundant, flickering leaves, Mr. Beast dashed into the darkness away from me through brush. It was so sudden, it was as if he had been snatched away. Afraid of being alone, I sprinted as fast as I could, following the sound of rustling leaves in pitch dark. Cold wind punished my face and hands for running this way through the eerie trees but I could not lose Mr. Beast. If I were alone, it might kill me, the night. From far away, the silhouette of Mr. Beast appeared and began to grow in my trembling vision; he had stopped. The doe had gotten away. Now we were so completely lost. I wanted to strike him. Then I noticed the hole in the ground.

After contemplating the pit, we conclude that someone built it, which means that it leads to somewhere or something. With my frost-bitten hand, I feel a plume of warm air. It rises from the hole and then collapses under the chilly glare of the eerie, flickering leaves. Mr. Beast and I huddle over again, clutching our own bodies against the icy breeze that returned again to molest our skin and hair. This time after it passes, Mr. Beast walks away from the ridge and disappears into the dark. A few seconds later, he appears again carrying a heavy stone. Marching over, he heaves it into the pit. We listen.

Climbing down is difficult. Yet Mr. Beast seems to have no problem whatsoever. It is such a terrible ladder made of rocks in the wall that stick out just slightly more than the others, enough to grasp each one with only the very first knuckle of each of my fingers. For certain I will die falling backwards into the pit. Lowering myself slowly, painfully, pathetically. It's then Mr. Beast begins his lecture: telling stories of himself, from his past. His voice rolls upward from underneath my trembling feet. He wants attention is all; I refuse it. But the echoes of Mr. Beast's grumbling travel from his tongue to warm stone to warm stone and then enter my ear like a tongue. I want to strike him, but my hands are trembling, slipping every moment. My body is collapsing, pathetically clinging on to the small stone shelves and going lower and lower. Mr. Beast’s stories let themselves into my ears. They must be lies. I find it hard to imagine him in Amsterdam with drugs and girls. And then, mid-sentence, he goes quiet. Worried, I look down. I can make out only his white face: floating in the center of darkness away from the wall, but not screaming, not shrinking. Not falling. He found the bottom.