micro-fiction monday : feb 10

cw: mild language.

PART ONE

I was about 16 hours deep in Renter-Friendly Upgrade tiktok when I (sweaty) (covered in white paint) (probably lead-based) was peeling up the world’s ugliest baby-poop green mock-linoleum peel-and-stick tile. The old ‘tile’ pulled up from the floor in one big sheet, and I rolled it, crawling forward on the newly naked floor.  That's when I discovered it. A 3 foot by 3 foot hole extending down infinitely beyond the floor of my basement apartment. And by 'discovered', I mean ‘nearly fell in, ass-over-armpit’.

So there I was, snorting floor dust, my face smooshed (safely) a foot and a half away with the hole, and I was now presented with a problem.

Hole.

As someone who would rather give a horse a root canal than ask my landlord for help, I stared down into the abyssal black of the Hole for a good long minute. 


Then I called my boyfriend over to come stare at it with me.

Eventually we decided that pointing a flashlight down the Hole would be a good idea. It was unenlightening (unlike the flashlight, get it?).  When I said abyssal black, I didn’t realize how black and abyssal that the Hole would be.  Here I thought I knew what abyssal black was before the Hole.

I did not.

Picture a hole. Now picture it deeper.  Like an abyss.  Keep going.  Abyss-ier.  Okay, now imagine it’s really dark.  Like super, super dark.  And then, even a little darker than that.  That’s the Hole.

“So have you chucked anything down it yet?” Devin asked.


“No,” I snapped.

Obviously I had.  I guessed I wasn’t ever seeing that Hello Kitty keychain again.

“Should we try? I wanna see how deep it is?”

“…Fine, but toss something soft.”

“Why?”

“What if there’s mole people?”

“There’s no mole people.  I’m tossing a quarter.”

“What if it’s like dropping a penny off the CN Tower? You could kill them!”

“That’s made up. Now shush, I wanna hear it hit the bottom.”









































We waited a long time.






































After seven minutes we gave up.

Devin (boyfriend, very handsome, 26) started throwing things haphazardly down into the Hole, just to try and get any sort of feedback.  

The Hole did not respond.  The Hole only consumed. Devin did not relent his investigation.

“If anything tried to fall straight through the earth, it would get melted by the Earth’s core.”

“Thanks Char, that’s helpful.”

I was holding Devin’s ankles as he lay prone, head in the Hole, trying to find the bottom with his flashlight.

“I just mean, I don’t think you’re getting your sneaker back, is all.”

“Alright, pull me up.”

We sat staring at the hole for a long time.  Eventually we ordered wings.  Devin started chucking his bones into the Hole.

“I have a compost,” I complained.

“Weren’t you the one worrying about mole people?  I’m just trying to make sure they’re fed.”

“What if they’re vegetarian?”

Devin rolled his eyes, rummaged in the container and grabbed a celery stick, waving it in my face before yeeting it into the Hole.

There is only so much staring at the Hole one can do.  We put some chairs around it and painter’s tape and called it a night.  The Hole only waited.