To Kill a Ceramic Bowl

“I've been buried alive.”

Ilyas mumbled to himself quietly, the shock at his current situation quickly dissipating, to be replaced with a sense of firm resignation. At this point in time, he truly felt nothing would ever evoke more than a fleeting sense of shock in him. Buried alive, he thought. He had to be, the hard earth beneath his back, the utter darkness, and the thick, still air. Ilyas had to be underground. With his mind now calmer, he tried to open his eyes once again, willing them to get acquainted with the surrounding darkness, even just the slightest bit.

A soft, hoarse groan escaped from his parted, chapped lips, followed by a shiver that ran amok his entire body, as only now had he registered the cold seeping into his bones. His fingers dug deep into the soft, wet ground underneath him, as his whole body was violently aching, he realized. And if the sprouts of pain budding throughout his entirety were any indication, it wasn’t farfetched to suspect he was heavily bruised as well.

It was safe to assume that whatever had left him there, wasn’t so kind as to gently lay him down, but had thrown him in instead. That would explain the intense pain surging through him, but Ilyas couldn’t really spend more time contemplating the hows and whys right now, he had to find a way out before whatever left him, came back for him. He didn’t think that they were much inclined towards him at the moment, if their treatment was anything to go by.

Going by his sense of touch, Ilyas did not feel much around him besides the earth that he laid on top of, and what seemed like a wall of dirt that his left hand was brushing lightly against. He couldn’t tell how far the overhead space went, but it was not immediately atop his person. Perhaps, it wasn’t as narrow and small as an actual grave as he first thought. How comforting.

In the meantime, his eyes had barely adjusted a bit better to his surroundings, and he could slightly see inside this plot of hallowed land. There were faint tendrils of pale moonlight peeking in from right above him, as if attempting to breathe light into the darkness of his makeshift grave, but they failed to illuminate anything but their own fragile wisps. Still, this meant that perhaps he wasn’t as deeply in the earth as he first thought.

From what he could make out with his limited information, he was in some kind of underground tunnel, but he failed to make out any of its dimensions. Resigning himself to the knowledge he would not be able to discern the area with sight alone, Ilyas let out a breath and steeled his mind. He had to get up, despite the pain anchoring his heavy body down to the dirt he lay upon. The pain had shackled all four of his limbs and made them useless.

With a weak groan, he ventured to push both his arms in a position that would allow him to lift himself. With each slight movement he managed to elicit a pained groan and a labored, huffed breath to escape him. Once his arms were lying flat beside him, he tried to lift his upper body with his arms bearing most of his weight. When he finally managed to sit up, he eventually began to move his feet, which then prompted a tender ache to start from his right ankle, and shoot up his entire leg. Clenching his teeth, Ilyas pushed himself to stand up, despite everything in him protesting otherwise.

It took him three more tries before he actually managed to stand fully upright. With his legs feeling like they might buckle under him, Ilyas leaned against the wall of dirt beside him, the walls not as smooth as he once thought, little rocks and rough earth pricking his palm as it grazed them, and started to drag himself forward. He then paused, as his mind started to catch up with his circumstances. The last memory he had before waking up here was of him outside, so he should still have his phone on him. He slowly moved his right hand to pat down his pants pocket, searching for his phone, hoping it was still on him. Feeling its outline, he fished it out and brought it up to eye level. He needed a source of light to figure out his surroundings completely.

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He stopped once again with his phone clutched in his hand. He shouldn’t be alone. He wasn’t alone before he came to, he was with his boss on one of his little ‘missions’ again. His movement then became more frantic as he hurried forward, his uneven feet almost stumbling over the unlevel terrain of this underground space, as a rush of adrenaline cruised through his body, numbing any pain he was once feeling.

“Shawn? Shawn?” He called out desperately, “Shawn, are you there?” He strained his ears to hear even the faintest whispers that could come his way, but still he received nothing. His breathing became more rugged with the effort he was exerting to keep going. As he drew in more breaths, the stifling mustiness that hung in the air, the dirt that surrounded him, and the darkness that encompassed it all, finally solidified his plight for him.

Ilyas was truly stuck underground, and while he was breathing fine for now, he genuinely had no idea how long the air in here would last him. He had to hurry and leave.

Turning the flashlight on his phone, Ilyas shined the light around him, carefully observing and taking everything in. He was in a much more spacious space than he previously thought. The roof was well above his head by almost a few inches, and it was wide enough for another person to walk alongside him. The ground was uneven, with rocks strewn around and the walls were curved and jagged, but the tunnel followed a singular forward path. He turned his body slightly to look behind him, only to be faced with a wall blocking him. He was one of the endpoints of this tunnel. He flashed his phone around again, this time focusing on finding any sign that would indicate his boss was dropped in the same area as him.

“Shawn, answer me! Can you hear me? What’s going on here, where are you?” his voice echoed, full of barely concealed worry laced with fear. “Where are we? Shawn, answer me for God’s sake!” Ilyas shouted, his voice reverberated around him, and once more he received no answer. He wanted to shout louder, but his throat was parched, which caused every word coming out of him to scratch fervently at his insides.

A sinking feeling latched on him, causing his already heavy, and dragging feet to sink further into the ground beneath him. And just as he was becoming unnerved, his thoughts were about to delve into complete disarray, and his last string of sanity was about to break, something glistening from the side caught his eye, as light from his phone caught on it. He approached it carefully as he attempted to calm his mind back down.

There, on the cold, dirt ground was a white and pristine ceramic bowl, with fine gold detailing etched into it. Its presence in this underground tunnel was so unexpected, that it completely stunned Ilyas’ mind, causing him to completely calm down. The bowl itself was empty, and the gold detailing on it was unlike anything he had seen before. He was unable to describe it.

It was as if every time he looked at it, the design shifted into something else that was equally incomprehensible. He couldn’t pin it down. The complete lack of wear and tear on the bowl, and the absurdity of its presence here gave Ilyas pause. Although Ilyas was not able to recognize the bowl, nor did he ever encounter its likeness before, something in his heart knew exactly what this bowl was. What its existence here, with him, in this singular moment signified.

“You have got to be kidding me.” Ilyas let out, his tone carrying a heavy feeling of exasperation and irritation. “Tell me you are kidding me right now. You cannot be serious.” He gritted out maliciously. Ilyas reached out and tightly clasped the bowl in his hand, his grip so tight, as if to inflict pain and bruise the fine piece of ceramic.

“God, tell me right now that you’re just messing with me, Shawn.” Ilyas said, his entire demeanor shifting from nervousness and fear, to annoyance and disbelief. And although he knew it wasn’t possible, he could tell the bowl was somehow side-eyeing him, with guilt in its eyes. Ilyas could have sworn that he could feel the sheepishness radiating off of the bowl in waves.

He really did it. Shawn, his bastard of a boss, had really shifted into a ceramic bowl while they were buried underground, effectively abandoning Ilyas, leaving him to fend for them both in this predicament.

Ilyas tightened his clutch on the bowl even further, his own fingers pulsating from the pain of his hold, and brought it up to eye level. “You are going to help me get out of here one way or the other, you hear me?” Ilyas bit out every word, his anger increasing by tenfold with every fleeting minute. Ilyas felt the bowl squirm a bit in his grasp, but still Ilyas did not relent and let it go.

He was going to get out of here, even if he had to dig his way out using his ceramic bowl of a boss.