The first day I lived in a hole underground I was very scared of all the worms but I soon learned that these are among the least of your worries when you sleep in dirt. There are people who walk on the ground above you and can mess up your hole this way and when the dirt shifts it can get in your eyes. Little bugs sometimes crawl in your ears which can and should cause alarm (worms hardly ever do this). When you rise in the morning if anybody is around they will scream and perhaps call the sheriff.
That last one happened to me yesterday for the very first time. It was a woman who I think was out for a challenging run through brush and branches. Her heavy steps woke me and interested me and so I hurriedly dug myself up and climbed dirty from my hole. It took her nearly ten seconds to actually scream I believe because her shock was so great. She stood there without moving for that time except for her eyes which moved very fast.
I had to move then to avoid the wrath of the sheriff. It disappointed me because I had begun to think that I was getting along with the worms but I did like the idea of being closer to the river. When the woman ran I ran too, deeper into the woods towards the rushing crush of water that you can hear everywhere.
The new hole I dug was deeper than the first one and had thick roots that I had to navigate around which I was happy to do because the trees there were excellent. I did not find nearly as many worms.
Late into the night something absolutely astounding happened to me involving myself and a great limb like a tentacle. It pulled me deeper underground than I had ever gone right as I was drifting off. I didn’t think to yell and after all who would come running? It pulled me down as if the dirt was just soft cotton I was sinking into.
I was terribly scared but I was frozen much like the woman who screamed at me though I was frozen much, much longer. Everything was frozen but my heart which beat inside me like nothing I have ever felt except maybe when I was right next to a large deerskin drum that kept being struck. It was almost like that except it was inside me and more powerful despite how small my heart is. I think I was dragged down for only a couple minutes but time was hard to gauge because of the adrenaline coursing through every vein whether in my arms or my neck or my ankles.
I finally dropped into a hollow larger than any of my holes had ever been and it was totally dark but I started feeling my way around, specifically trying to find the limb that had wound its way around my waist because it had suddenly retreated. I felt a lot of things around me including large curved objects that felt like smooth glass but I am not sure what they were. When I found the tentacle again I knew it straight away because it felt exactly like the tail of a rat except it was so much larger.
It seemed like it was asking me why I started sleeping in holes or maybe that’s just what I wanted it to ask me. I said out loud not sure if it could understand me that I liked holes better than beds because whenever I got out of a bed I had to see the world that had been created against my will around me and it horrified and scared me and I didn’t know what to do about it other than go to an even older world that had been created before anyone had even thought about having a will and that seemed an easier evil to reckon with than one so conscious and thoughtful. I asked it if I should go back and waited in heavy, heavy silence for an answer or maybe a feeling.
I got no answer and thought that maybe that was an answer, there was no way to be sure but if I saw meaning where there was none then I preferred that to not seeing any meaning when I was supposed to.
I kept tight hold of the dry tentacle in all my time there because it was the only thing that seemed alive and I realized I missed things that were alive very much. There was lots of glass inside and I thought I could start to parse out some of its shapes. Some were certainly abstract and beyond me but some were animalistic and none were human. I wondered if this was a place that was very old though not as old as the earth. I asked the tentacle if it had made these art pieces and it did not answer me but I nonetheless had my theories.
It was the day that I asked it if it could bring me back up that I was sure I had been right about its not answers’ meaning because it immediately did what it was told. There was a thick layer of wet leaves on the ground when I got back and I enjoyed the smell very much. I only got a brief glance at the tentacle and saw to my surprise that it was a pink color like the flesh of a pig. I yelled goodbye to it in the small hole it left in the ground and hoped that hole would stay there in case I wanted to go back.
I had not learned anything about life but I had remembered how much I liked encountering things I did not understand and I thought about going back not to sleep in a bed but to visit a museum or perhaps a glassblowing class.