Apogee (by InsaneDane)

Despite (or possibly to spite) your intuition you remain put, lying on the moist floor of the cavern watching the darkness creep down the wall. As it approaches you ponder the decisions that lead you to this point in your life.

Why am I here? The tree swallowed me. Why did the tree swallow me? Because I crawled into it. Why did I crawl into it? Because I was trying to escape the trolls. Trolls? Short. Ugly. Grey Skin. Fiery tufts of hair. Face that looks like a cross between an orangutan and an iguana. I'm pretty sure I owned a few of those a decade or two ago. What are trolls doing in the woods? Where else would trolls be? In a cave.

Like a nesting doll with a magnet in the base you snap upright. As you listen to the droning of the hunters echoing down from above you, the incessant "kayak-a" starts sounding more and more like "Gallaga" but as you can think of no immediate reason why a bunch of trolls would be interested in a Filipino filmmaker you attribute the loss of the hard-K to the soft dirt walls.

Galllaca. Gallaca. Gallaca.

Forty-seven seconds.

The moisture in the floor of the cavern has started to seep through the seat of your pants so you stand and wipe off a slough of mud. Taking a look around the cavern you re-assess your situation. Above you, 217 feet of earthen wall end in the approaching cloud of darkness. Make that 213 feet. Below you, thousands of feet of air before you'd even hit the clouds. Resolute in your decision you sit back down and await the end. Why not? You've lived a good life.

Right?

As the cloud approaches, you start to review the formative moments in your life. Your earliest memory. You were exploring the dimly-lit garage of the house where you lived until you were 4. You found a bucket beneath one of the darkened shelves. Peering into the bucket you saw a mirror. Struck with an intense curiosity as to why there would be a mirror in the bucket, you reach out to touch it. You cover your hand in oil. Your first kiss. A game of spin-the-phone in a crowded restaurant. Your first non-artificially-motivated kiss. She missed and hit your nose. Your first near-death experience. Swimming unattended and getting caught in the undertow of a small dam.

Thirty-two seconds.

Thinking about the dam was a bad decision. The breathlessness returns to you as you glance up to see the remaining 160 feet of wall. What had once seemed like the slow decline of a sunset now seems like the relentless onslaught of a trash compactor. Where before the approach of the cloud had been an abstract concept, defined more by the change in the cloud's position over time rather than the cloud's velocity. Glancing upwards now, you can't help but stare at the approaching Gallaca. One-thousand one. Another 5 feet.

Twenty-seven seconds.

You notice a dull pounding in your ears that is almost in time with the trolls' drone. You examine your wrist, feel nothing. You never could find that vein. The jugular. Yup. That thudding was you. You shouldn't have taken your pulse. Now you can't stop thinking about it. And thinking about it is making it beat faster. Or is it your imagination?

Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Twelve seconds.

But there's nothing you can do about that now except wait for it to end. Which it will. Presently. Confronted with this fact yet again, you attempt to organize your final thoughts. You close your eyes, breathe deep, and attempt to recall the sensation of pressing your face into sheets pulled straight from the dryer. The warm caress of the cotton much more pleasant than the cool caress of the breeze from the pit. The artificial floral tingle of the fabric softener in your nostrils much more... well actually the loamy smell of the cave is pretty pleasant.

You try to recall the feeling of sitting on a hilltop with your childhood sweetheart watching the sun go down. Then watching the horizon gradually darken over the next couple of hours. Neither of you wanting to go home. Neither of you wanting to let go.

But the time for that is over.

It's almost upon you now. You still haven't opened your eyes but you know that it's there. The surface makes a noise like static... or bacon frying. Something like that. You have only seconds. You lift your chin and wait.

Oh God! What the Hell were you thinking! You jerk your eyes open and attempt to make a mad dash for the pit! The surface is only feet from your head, tinged with an oily sheen. You crouch, hoping for a few milliseconds more on your trip to the edge. You will dive off over the edge if only you can get there--- Puddle. You go sprawling in the wet dirt 20 feet from the edge. You dig and claw your way toward the pit. But it's no use. The cloud is moving towards you faster than you are moving towards the pit. There's nothing to do but roll over and--- die screaming.

The cloud envelopes you embracing you with a searing... numbness? You feel nothing. Quite literally nothing. Not even the cavity that had been bothering you. Of course you can't see anything either. Or taste. Or hear. Your inner ear however does seem to be working because you can feel yourself being rocketed away from your body at an astounding rate. Well maybe it wasn't your inner ear, but you can definitely feel it. Just like you can feel yourself slowing. An eternity later you will stop. You decide to count sheep. You get to 4,568,237,654,689,134,121,132,391,713,529,653 before you get bored. At some point you forgot what the next -illion was called and just started making them up. By this point you don't even remember which words were real anymore. You don't even really recall what sheep looked like.

You think they were black, cloud-like things. but a lot of stuff seems like it was black, cloud-like things these days. Except for some things. Like fire. You remember fire. That was the big orange tufty things coming from the grey-ish things with black-ish splotches.

An eternity later you notice you seem to be heading back. Or at least you seem to be heading somewhere. You think that there was a back at some point. That seems right. There was once a before... wasn't there? Will there be an after? A next? Will there be anything?

Yes there will. In fact, just one more eternity later, there it is. You can see something. It's a.... It's- It's a blur. As you squint it starts to resolve itself into a coherent image. You know this image. This is a-

Click here if it's a doctor.

Click here if it's a gate.

Click here if it's a tire iron.

Click here if it's a rock.