The Tunnel

Dark Night →

Bathtub, Pencil on paper, Artwork size: 27 x 37 cm, 4 Mar 2014

List of chapters in 2014 “A walk on the dark side”:
Jan – Dark Night, Feb 2014 – The Tunnel, Mar 2014 – The Invitation, Apr 2014 – Underground Palace, May 2014 – Foxy Gentleman, Jun 2014 – Crystal Lizard, Jul 2014 – Three Little Mice, Aug 2014 – Mr. Mad, Sep 2014 – Chess Game, Oct 2014 – Lost Children, Nov 2014 – The Garden

The Tunnel

Damn, this doesn’t happen very often, I thought to myself. Is this house made for short people? I’m not exactly the type who get knocked on my head very often.

I quickly moved along to the side of the fireplace. It was definitely warmer here and I didn’t have to stay in the spotlight. Now I could hear the sound of the burning fire. There was also a scent of burned flesh, near the fireplace.

Maybe an hour had gone by. I felt a little relaxed and the creature just appeared and disappeared from time to time. I wasn’t sure whether this was a safe place to stay the night yet. It was too dark everywhere else to explore, and the house seemed too big for me to explore fully during the night. Maybe the owners were sleeping upstairs, and it would be a very bad idea to disturb them at this hour. Not to mention the possibility of a psycho living here. I thought I might just find a nice spot to have a nap and wait for the next day.

Perhaps somewhere confined yet spacious enough to rest for the night was my best move. I laid my eyes on this cupboard, the top shelves were full of things in glass jars. I couldn’t quite make out what they were in the dark, something shiny and small. It had this massive space behind the door, perhaps it was the best hiding place I could find.

Finally I had opened it. Surprisingly, there was nothing, nothing but darkness. Perhaps it was too dark, I couldn’t even see the end of it. It was like a portal to another space. I crawled in, I tried to reach to the back, there was certainly a tunnel there. I didn’t know where it leaded to, I could see there was little light at the end of it.

At this point, I could either stay here and get my rest sorted, or keep going to find out whether this place was truly safe or not. I meant since I had come so far, giving up safety in the last minute was just not very appealing to me. What if there was a poison spider living in this tunnel? What about hungry snakes? The last thing I needed was to wake up all chewed up in my own pool of blood.

I carefully reached out to the space in front of me, I could feel the wooden cabinet was turning into a brick texture, with quite a bit of dust covering the surface. There were one or two rats running passed me, but that didn’t bother me. There was absolutely nothing else in there apart from the cold brick tunnel. I tried not to breath in so much dust that I would choke. A little bit of light began shining in my direction as I crawled through the tunnel. The light became stronger as I moved a little forward and I could hear the sound of water echoing in an empty room.

I could see an opening, covered with a metal grate, looking down onto a bathroom, tiles everywhere on the floor and on the wall, all in different pattern from one another.

There weren’t many things in the room, except for a giant bathtub in the middle of all of everything staring back at me. No, I mean there was really something there staring back at me. An octopus like creature with a cat’s face was sitting in the bathtub and looking up toward the corner I was sitting at.

The water was leaking out of the bathtub as it sinked itself in. A giant black octopus, with huge eyes.

It soon turned around and started to look at other direction. When I was sure he didn’t notice me, I felt relieved, and safe. Only after I realised the steam of hot water was filling up this side of tunnel, and it felt warm.

I quickly fell asleep.