The Tunnel

The Tunnel
By Rick P.

Oscar Greene is an electrician and has been one for 19 years; he has a wife and two children, one who is getting ready to go to college. Oscar is the main economic support for his family and being the man of the house, he also brings food to the table. It is September 2, 1987 – 1:26 P.M and Oscar is returning home after a long, dreadful day at work. As he walks on the sidewalk of an empty street, he passes by a shadowy and lonely alleyway which leads into some sort of abandoned tunnel.

Outside the entrance of the tunnel, broken down fences and scattered garbage make it an obvious warning for anyone to stay away, but Oscar is already making his way past the garbage and into the tunnel. He believes that this tunnel will be a brief shortcut to the street he wants to come out to, but he’s wrong. Oscar is wearing dirty pairs of sneakers, a red striped shirt, and navy blue jeans. He is carrying a black bag of tools for an electrician’s hard job. This includes various things like screwdrivers, hammers, gloves, wires, wire nuts, etc. This makes noise as he walks.

As Oscar steps into the darkness, he can see a light at the end – which assures him that it leads to another street. He continues to walk and realizes the tunnel is longer than he first presumed, so he turns around to see how far he's walked. He looks around in curiosity as the inside of the tunnel is a wreck, not even fully completed, and a lot graffiti and drawings are on the walls. He turns and continues walking – finally reaching the end – and coming out with expectations of his desired street block. To his surprise, however, it is not the other side of town. He’s not even on a street anymore, he is standing on the outskirts of a huge canyon and the weather has drastically changed.

Wind blows from every direction making it almost impossible to move while carrying such a heavy bag. He stares at his surroundings and in confusion begins to walk back. Inside the tunnel, he can still see the far away entrance. Oscar decides it'll be better to walk forward instead of back – just to see where the tunnel has led him. As he walks forward into a ravine, he realizes that it’s darker than when he first entered, so he checks his watch. It reads 1:27 P.M, meaning he only walked for one minute, which just makes Oscar more confused. How could it possibly be so dark? As he turns around to get a clear look of the way he came out, he is confronted with another surprise – the tunnel’s exit is a cave! How can this be? Is this the other side of the city? No, it couldn’t be, a tunnel couldn’t go that far – he thinks,  -- especially in a downtown area. As Oscar’s thoughts betray him, he begins to accumulate fear – Where was he? How far was this place?

He grabs his bag, walking back into the cave, but then he hears something. What is that? Oscar turns around, already being half-way into the tunnel, and sees several crawling “creatures” coming down from hills in the distance, past the ravine. He stares at the creatures for a couple of seconds trying to figure out exactly what they are. He begins analyzing their body: stature of a man but head of a beast? Crawling at an extraordinary speed? Skin as pale as a dead body… What could they be? He asks himself. When he sees many of them start getting closer to him, immediately, he panics and begins to run towards the entrance of the tunnel – but the bag is too heavy and swings back and forth as he runs. He can hear annoying growling and moaning as he continues to run – knowing the creatures are closely behind him – chasing him.

As the growling gets louder, Oscar is now running for his life, but from what? He has no idea. The creatures resemble insect-shaped humans. He jumps out of the tunnel through the entrance and as soon as his foot touches the ground, the moaning and growling stop. Still, he continues running, dropping his bag and rocketing into the street past several people who look at him strangely. Oscar stops himself to catch his breath only after running a whole block. He turns around and slowly walks back to the alleyway where he had dropped his bag. As he takes a look into the alleyway, he can’t believe what he sees -without even a trace of what he had seen before, the tunnel isn’t there anymore. In awe, he stares at a never-before-seen cemented pathway surrounded by a large garden filled with roses. It leads into the next street, the one he wanted to go to. His bag is still on the floor, in front of the garden and several people are walking through this pathway…so...had the tunnel ever existed?