Paul wished he had died in the fight. Dying would mean that Paul wouldn't have to feel the wounds that covered his body. The cracked ribs that sent spikes of pain through his side whenever he took a breath. The teeth punctures on his thighs that throbbed with every step. The hot, sharp pain from the laceration on his head that bled into his left eye.
He had considered doing the job himself, even going so far as to press his claw knife to his throat. He held it there for a long moment, grimacing in determination and willing his shaking hand to draw the blade across his neck.
Do it, coward. You’ll just wake up in your original tunnel, no pain, no injuries.
But I don’t know that for sure. What if there's a limit to this? What if this is it? My last chance?
Paul lowered the knife from his neck. He sighed, only to immediately regret doing so as pain shot from his ribs when he inhaled.
The mother's corpse dwarfed the bodies of her pups strewn beside her. He limped over to one of the pup's carcasses, bent down, and slung it over his shoulders. He stumbled as he stood, stars flashing before his eyes, blood loss making him unsteady.
The phosphorescent fungus that Paul used for light was nearly spent, but Paul picked it up from the cave floor where he had dropped it anyway.
Delirious with pain, he concentrated on lifting one foot in front of the other. He had a long walk home.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Paul repeated the mantra in his head, focusing on it instead of the pain that coursed through him.
The combination of his light-fungus and his night vision had allowed Paul to traverse the twisting tunnels on his way in with relative ease, but now that its phosphorescence faded, the landmarks he counted on to find his way back became blurred and indistinct. The shades of black and grey that Paul could see allowed him to navigate the rocks and fissures in his path, but when it came to orienting himself in more massive caverns, the branching tunnels blurred into blackness.
He knew he saw more clearly in the blackness than he ever had before, and a corner of his mind wondered if his night vision had ranked up sometime during his ordeal. Despite the improvement, the extent of his vision still consisted of shades of shadow.
He considered detouring from his path to return to one of the other patches of phosphorescent fungus he found in the tunnel complex but didn’t trust himself to find his way back. He didn’t trust himself to make it back to his cavern, for that matter.
Paul clutched desperately at the mental map that would allow him to find his way home, struggling to keep it intact while wracked with pain. Bits and pieces seem to slip from his grasp, the intricate, web-like structure of passageways and caverns he built crumbling as hot agony seared his brain.
Step.
Step.
He backtracked, and then again, taking wrong turns only to find himself in unfamiliar caverns, forcing him to turn and limp back to portions of the tunnel labyrinth he was able to recognize in the dark.
The fungus's glow was nearly gone now, but he still held it front of him like a beacon that would help guide him home.
Step.
Step.
Paul stared at the fungus as he walked, cursing it for betraying him, cursing himself for thinking that its light would last forever once he pried it from the cave wall.
Give me light, damn you, light. I need you. Come. On.
The rat carcass on his shoulders grew heavier as Paul limped through the caves. His back muscles cramped, but Paul refused to drop the corpse. He knew it wasn’t rational, wasn’t sane, but if he was going to come out on the other side of this, he was going to have something to show for it.
The pain came in waves; sometimes bearable, like the ocean gently retreating from a sandy beach; at other times excruciating, crashing down with the weight of an angry sea. When the waves hit, Paul would stop, his breaths shallow and unsteady, unable to do more than stand, clutching to a cave wall as the pain broke over him.
Step.
Step.
The pain reminded him of his fear. Huge. Looming. A shadow that had threatened to consume him. Paul had been able to dive into that fear, letting it pass over him instead of drowning in panic. He considered doing the same with the pain, diving down into it in the hopes the wave would move over him but leave his sanity intact. He flinched, quailing at the thought of opening himself up to the pain that he struggled to keep from overwhelming him.
I’m only barely hanging on as it is. This isn’t going to work.
Step.
Step.
Fucking glow, you stupid mushroom.
The waves of pain came more quickly, with less relief between them, forcing Paul to his knees. He wondered how soon before there would be no break between the waves before he’d they trapped him in the roiling surf.
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Taking as deep of a breath that his cracked ribs would allow, Paul dove into his pain. He let his mantra go, allowing the pain to scour it from his mind. All the little defenses, all the little distractions that he used to keep the agony away, he let them go too. He forced his jaw to unclench. Forced his fingers to loosen their grip on his club. He allowed the barriers that he had built up in his head between his consciousness and the pain to slip away. He dove under the wave.
He could feel it all around him, surrounding him, enveloping him, every blow he had taken, every sliced piece of flesh, every bruise. It threatened to overwhelm him, drown him, destroy him. But it didn’t, and now Paul knew that it wouldn’t.
The waves of pain continued to build and break, but Paul had measured himself against them and found that he was their match. Paul put one foot in front of the other again.
He didn’t know how long it had been since he started walking; time was slippery in the dark. At times Paul thought minutes had passed, only to find he had just taken a handful of steps. Other times he looked around in confusion and found himself in a different tunnel section, but could not remember how he got there.
Paul was mostly sure of where he was in the tunnels, relying on his mental map to guide him, but what worried him was that he couldn’t be sure. Everything looked too similar in a palette of muted gray and charcoal.
His left hand still held the light-fungus, the last vestiges of its glow fading. It had ceased to provide any useful illumination hours ago, but its dull glow comforted Paul, offering the one sliver of color in a world of gray and black. He had cursed it for its uselessness, but now he didn’t want to let it go.
Don’t leave me light; I need you. C’mon, we’ll get back to the cavern together.
Paul watched in dismay as the fungus’s light dwindled, then ceased. He still held it, staring at it as he limped through the caves, willing it to show some sign of life again. He focused on it, letting all his pain and frustration and will coalesce on that one thought.
C’mon, I know you’ve got some more left in you. Glow.
Paul knew that nothing would happen but still felt some disappointment when the fungus didn’t respond. He continued to focus on it as he walked, however, externalizing his emotions, putting his mind to a task that he knew was impossible, but that kept it occupied. The effort held thoughts of despair at bay, and Paul maintained his focus on the dark, dead fungus.
Then the fungus glowed.
He nearly dropped it in disbelief and held the shelf fungus back up to his face.
Did I imagine it?
Paul stared at the fungus, but it was as dark and lifeless as before.
Not daring to believe, Paul focused on the fungus again, pouring his will into a task that he wasn’t quite sure was real.
Give me light, you pain in the ass.
The fungus complied.
It was dim at first, a barely perceptible glow.
What. The. Fuck.
Paul kept at it, pushing his resolve into the glimmer of light.
The change was subtle, a slight brightening, like the way night fades slowly into dawn. The glow flickered as Paul concentrated, providing feedback for his efforts, allowing him to focus on what made the light brighter and ignore what didn’t.
When Paul was a child, he spent hours focusing on small objects like pebbles or silverware, convinced that if he could just think hard enough, he could move them with his mind. Paul was pretty sure that most kids tried the same thing at some point, and just like them, he had been disappointed when the objects stayed right where they were.
Concentrating on the light reminded him of his experiences as a child, but with a difference. When Paul had played at moving objects with his mind decades ago, it was like trying to push against air. This experience was different. Paul could feel a resistance to his will, and the more he strained against that impedance, the brighter the light became.
Ever so slowly, the features of the cave reappeared as the blue-white light melted through the dark. As the details of the cave became clear, Paul realized he was in a different section of tunnels then he had thought. He was on the edge of his mental map, and if he had kept walking in the direction he was going, he would have become lost in the labyrinth of tunnels. He shuddered.
Re-orienting himself, Paul limped forward again.
The fungus wasn’t as bright as had been when he first picked it, but it was enough for Paul to navigate with. His arm shook with the effort of keeping the fungus held in front of him, and eventually, Paul let his arm fall to the side.
Paul gaped. He held the fungus at his side, but the light remained suspended in front of him. It shone a shimmering blue-white and the size of a marble, bobbing slightly as it floated in the air.
I’m not making the fungus glow again at all.
Paul had reasoned with himself that he was somehow feeding the fungus energy, like a human battery, allowing it to emit its phosphorescent light. The truth was something far stranger.
I’m somehow doing this. How am I doing this?
The light weakened as Paul’s concentration wandered, and Paul shoved his questions aside.
It doesn’t matter how you’re doing this Paul, or why it’s happening. Right now, you just need to keep doing it.
Maintaining the light turned out to be exhausting, however. Paul had never realized that he could become physically tired just from thinking. Several times the glow flickered and dimmed, and Paul’s head began to ache with the effort of maintaining his concentration. The pain was an afterthought compared to the litany of Paul’s other injuries, so Paul let it wash over him with the rest of his suffering and focused back on the light.
Paul was nearly back to his cavern when the light went out completely.
Paul struggled to resummon it. Lancing pain shot through his head as he willed the light to appear again but to no avail. It was as if whatever medium he had used to push the glow into existence had disappeared. His head throbbed.
You’re close Paul, almost there. You don’t need the light to get you back the rest of the way.
Resigned to shades of gray once more, Paul slowly made his way through the last of the cave system before reaching his cavern. It was relatively straight, and in less than an hour later Paul stepped out into the light of his cavern, choking back a sob of relief.
He dropped the rat carcass near the column that housed the old rat den, then headed for the stream that fed the cavern’s giant pool. Fresh pain shot through his body as he cleaned his wounds in the frigid water.
Paul was physically, mentally and emotionally spent. There was nothing he wanted to do more than climb up on a warm shelf-fungus and sleep. But he couldn’t. Not yet. There was one more thing he needed to do.
Feet dragging in exhaustion, Paul limped to where he dropped the rat and sat next to it. He removed his rat-claw knife from the thong around his neck and ran his finger along its edge. He had nearly taken his own life with it earlier that day.
Paul shook his head, gripped the knife tightly, and began to butcher the rat.
“I’m not food, you’re fucking food,” Paul whispered to the corpse.
Paul limped back to the pool and the warm, glowing shelf-fungus that surrounded it after he was done. He was too weak to climb to his usual sleeping spot. Instead, he clambered onto a lower shelf-fungus, spreading his limbs out on its warm, spongy surface.
Every part of his body hurt. He was filthy, he was exhausted, and after the incident with the glowing light, he had doubts concerning his sanity.
Paul lay back, staring at the cavern ceiling. He placed a morsel of fresh, raw rat into his mouth and chewed slowly.
I was wrong. Rat is fucking delicious.