I just discovered this little corner of the internet. Reading everyone’s stories has made me feel less alone, so I’ve decided to share a story of my own. I’m not a spry man, far from it actually, and my experience has become more of a distant nightmare, but it still haunts my life never less.
So, the early nineties, I remember I was wearing baggy jeans and a t-shirt I had stolen from my friend and had no intention of returning. I walk jovially with little haste, even though I had a house with kids and a wife to return to, but I decided they could wait. I was chasing a tiny black kitten that brushed up along my leg. When I attempted to grab her, she scurried down an alley. I gave chase, letting the night take me where it wanted me to go. Every time I thought I would catch the thing; I would see its tail snake around a corner. After a few corners, I realized she had led me to a sketchy part of town. Not sketchy in broken, but sketchy as in unfinished. It was an area I may have driven through once. I can’t even remember the name of the street. Most of the buildings were one-level storefronts that had the skeleton of future builds on top of them. I’m sure if you went there today it would look like Manhattan. Further down the street were abandoned construction equipment, their owners had gone home for the night. I thought about heading home, but then I saw the kitten leap with grace atop a backhoe.
Pspsps. I tried to call it over, but the damned thing began licking its taint. Walking forward would be the worst mistake of my life. The road had seen better days, but I had put my faith that it would keep me steady. A single flickering street lamp barely illuminated an inconspicuous manhole that lay in the center of the road. My mind didn’t even process it at the time since those things were everywhere. I stepped forward and felt the world disappear beneath my feet. Darkness fell over my vision and soon all my senses turned off.
When I woke up I couldn’t quite remember who I was or what happened. That smell was what woke me up, and it made the hairs in my nose run for the high hills. That was definitely the first thing I became aware of, the next would be the distant sound of a burbling stream. Everything in this place lived in shadows. Anything you could see would only be because it was less dark than the things around it. Still, nothing took a complete shape. The pain swelled in my head around the same time I noticed my entire waist was covered in shit. I started dry heaving the second it all clicked together, but nothing came out.
In the dark, no object could be seen, besides a pair of vulpine eyes that stared at me. They blinked irregularly, disappearing for a few seconds before returning their gaze. Then, he came closer. The eyes belonged to a face that had been caked in layers of sewer bile. When he backed into the corner and closed his eyes, he would disappear completely. But, he wanted me to see him. He smiled and his teeth glinted in the dim light. His mouth looked like a jigsaw puzzle that had lost most of its pieces.
I tried to back away from him, but then I found that I couldn’t get too far. The last thing I noticed about my hell was that I couldn’t move my left arm. With my free arm, I felt for what disabled me, but my hand couldn’t push beyond my shoulder, because there was a concrete wall. I slowly crept along the solid wall until I reached my shoulder, and I realized my hand was in the wall. My usually sensible self went berzerk. I repeatedly yanked my arm but it stayed entombed in the wall. I tried wiggling my fingers, but all of them kept their tense position. As I scrambled, sewer water splashed against the sides of the wall and covered me in human feces.
All that man could do was laugh. He chortled like he was coughing up his last meal, though I doubt this man had eaten any real food recently. I tried to scoot my way backward and leverage my hand out, but I couldn’t budge. I hyperventilated and began to sob, but that man kept laughing and splashing around like he was a baby in a bath.
“Please, can you help?” I asked, but help caught in my throat.
“You’re in trouble. You’re in trouble. You need me. Need me. But. But. No one asks for my help. My help.” Everything he said, he said twice. “Stuck. Stuck. I made you stuck. Stuck. And now, you need my help. My help.” He began sucking on his grime-covered thumb. I couldn’t help but cry. I didn’t want to look like a weak man, but the whole situation had been too much for me.
I repeated my plea for help; I couldn’t think to say anything else. He turned away and grabbed something from a dark pile in the corner. The man returned with a less pleasant face. Instead of his broken smile, his mouth pressed close and his eyes became filled with hate. They stared at me, but I don’t think he even recognized me as a person. It scared me. Something plopped into the shallow water next to my legs. My eyes adjusted and saw a distressed Peppa Pig lunch tray. In a clumsy line were three items: a box cutter, a hammer, and a thick ribbon with frayed edges.
When I looked up, I was met with his eyes only a few inches away from my own. They glowed, no, flamed with rage. “NO ONE! NO one helped me! Me. I don’t help anybody. Don’t help anybody.” He spat in my face and it felt like it burned. The man crawled into his corner and watched.
I tried pulling at my arm again, but it was hopeless. I looked at the tray in front of me and picked up the hammer. I took the flathead to the concrete and tried to break myself free. Pieces of the wall crumbled into dust, but I had barely made a dent. I struck the same place in the wall once more, but I was only making myself a pile of powder. I think it would have taken me days to carve my whole arm out of the hole. I put down the hammer, but I didn’t bother to make it on the tray. I stared at the box cutter. In my periphery, his eyes glinted at me. Studied me, it seems. The longer he cast his gaze on me like some creature, the more I wanted to escape.
I picked up the ribbon, red with chunks of someone’s lunch attached, and began tying it around my arm. I used my teeth to hold up one end while I tied the other in a tight grip around my shoulder. An acrid taste joined the other unpleasant senses. I kept pulling at the ribbon until my arm looked like it could pop off. I closed my eyes, bundled my shirt to bite down on, and grabbed the box cutter. I rubbed off any grim on my leg and positioned the blade at the point where my arm entered the wall. There it stayed for minutes while I found any courage to do it.
Then, an image came to mind. A small bubble of laughter inflated in my gut and soon flew out of my mouth. The man joined in with his hyena guffaw. I imagined myself in the novel Gerald’s Game. I had read it about a week prior, maybe a month. But, as I closed my eyes, all I could see was the man who had kept me captive as the moonlight man. And I laughed because I couldn’t finish the book. It was too scary.
The laughter felt intoxicating, so I just ran the blade along my arm. Dark fluid poured down my arm. I began to rub my blood against any part of my arm that was free. When the sting of a thousand bees set in, I screamed. I could rotate my arm, but I still couldn’t pull it out. I took the blade and wedged it into the hole. It could barely get in, but I managed to bring more blood inside the hole. It flowed quickly in every direction. I twisted my arm until I felt like I could pull it out, and I almost did then and there. Everything moved so quickly, but I still had to think rationally. Though, if I hesitated even a little bit, I risked passing out and losing any progress I made.
I acted as if I could just barely yank myself out. In the corner of my eye, I could see those twin flecks of white grow closer. He moved without making a slosh. I crept my free hand along the floor, making the extra effort to let the rest of my body distract him. With each yank, a small section of my arm came loose, and with it came a fountain of blood. It soaked the entire left side of my body. The man continued to creep forward, just about the length where I could reach out to him. With little remorse, I gripped the hammer and brought it against his head. He flopped into a deep puddle of mush. I pulled the rest of my arm out from the hole and drove the devil horns of the hammer right into his skull.
I looked behind me for the first time to find a round tunnel illuminated by a beam of soft moonlight. Almost like a rat, I scurried out of the sewer and up the ladder into the free world. At that point, I had been running on pure adrenaline so the blood loss caught up to me fairly quickly. I think I only made it a few steps before I collapsed on the road.
If there is a god, I thank him every day because a police crew arrived in the area not too long after I collapsed on the road. They reported a scream multiple people heard in their homes. If only they knew what was happening in their sewers.
I woke up in the hospital with my family by my side. We were accompanied by a few police officers who had a hoard of questions to berate me with. I answered until my blood pressure began rising and they were escorted out of the room by a nurse.
Upon later investigation into the sewer, they didn’t find the man, but they did find his mattress and his food supply. I have checked the news reports often, but I don’t believe he has been found. He may be dead, but who knows? It doesn’t haunt me as much as it used to. 30 years have passed and I’ve moved to a different state. I’ve told my kids and grandkids that I got in a fight with an alley cat, and they seem to believe it.
Stay safe out there, and make sure to be careful of where you walk. It could change your life.