Short, passionate stories

it was the other night

you awoke and brought me along unwittingly as i followed you out of the room. still blinking the dreams from my eyelashes i followed your shadow through the hallway. when i turned the corner i saw the lights of the city around your silhouette. a star shower strong and bright enough to bring you out of the deep was making use of all the black canvas. i had to walk right up behind you and press myself against your pajamas to see them go. so high in the night. the window frame hiding most of the show.
i could smell you. your hair.
neither of us made a move to acknowledge the other. just my body pressed against yours.
silence in the hallway interrupted only by someone opening their door letting the sound of a TV escape. when silence again surrounded us your breath was the first thing i heard and i wanted to steal it.
wear it.
drink it.
it smelled like warm tea and chapstick.
it was in the moment i watched your breath become form on the window reaching out i tried to take it. i woke with my arm reaching to the ceiling laying there in my bed. sweeping my arm out under the blankets touching nothing. i missed you. and i don't know you.

the milk 

 

it was only this morning i watched you eat round little circles. hair poking out in all directions and tank top wrinkled from bring wrapped in a loose sheet. i could see you smile with your head bowed down to meet the spoon. you knew i wasn't eating...just watching you. the tops of your cheeks rising a little higher with each grin you hid from me. your hair hung just enough over your left eye to make you think i couldn't see.
the spoon would ring the bowl like a bell when you dipped near the sides to catch escaping O's, but silent as snow when you drank the milk from it. one red lip arching out and holding the bottom of the silver to your tongue. pink. white. silver. brown. across the table, everything looked a thousand miles away, and so small...
it made me hungry for you. watching you so distant.
not being in your mouth.
selfish desires to take you back to bed spilled out of my head into my eyes. i was supposed to be eating, you reminded me. i was supposed to be taking a shower and getting ready to leave. instead i sat there watching a drop of milk slide from the side of your lip to the center getting heavier and stretching down. i sat back in my chair and pulled my hands from underneath me where i had been sitting on them. i reached out to touch that drop. you saw me coming and thought i was up to no good.you jerked your head back enough to make the milk drop away.
there i sat with my hand reached out to you looking surprised and grinning. you didn't ask me why.
i didn't say.
i got up and walked to the bathroom hearing your head shake slowly in the morning silence. it could have been a cat shaking her paw on the couch in the living room as i passed.

old tapes make me sneeze

the soft color of your foot sticking out at the edge of the bed makes me feel young. the colors are so simple and calming i want to cradle it. arched as if a glass slipper shaped it and now has become invisible. those little toes look so vulnerable and sensitive wiggling in the air i worry they are bait for a monster bulging under the sheets only inches away.
your disembodied voice sings to me through this chilly morning. the toes not keeping time to the tune of your request..."i feel like listening to so and so". you say it so sweetly... it doesn't sound like a hidden request but only a sigh of desire.
i want to watch your toes wiggle and tap for the rest of my life in this morning light. i silently hop up and make my way to the basement in search of the only source of said music to keep this morning going on.
down the stairs i go, under false light i wander, in search of infinity. my mind is still watching your legs swish under light fabric hoping your toast with apple butter will last as long as it takes me to find this music you crave.
i see boxes marked in lettering i can no longer distinguish and shoes boxes that mark their age readily by their design and i remember their contents. |i kick the edge of a wood box as i squeeze into a stack in my quest. my mind pops out of the dream for a moment so it can mutter "fuck!" and then continue to knee up the pile in hot pursuit.
i see the blue box i remembered from long ago and drag it out from under its captor and down into my lap. i brush away a smashed spider web and blow a layer of dust away. flipping it open i see the long edges of tapes last played when fm radio was still the best way to hear new music.
i see the tape you want. just his name can start the song playing in my ears. sitting there in the half dark i close my eyes and remember the day i played it for you.
we were sitting in a loft with all white walls and brown furniture. i had just spent two hours staring at your lips and eyes speaking words of adoration and utter devotion. i begged your pardon as i put in a tape i had made for you. i shuffled back on my knees to you as the hiss stopped and the song began. his voice a wonderful mixture of gritty manhood and feminine sensitivity. words perfectly chosen. instruments balanced and precise.
smiling i snatched the tape from the orphaned group and boogied up the stairs to the bedroom you patiently waited in.
you were still laying in the same position and your foot was still dangling and doing that little jitterbug i love so much.
i grabbed the tape deck from the closet and checked the batteries for enough life to last this day and plopped in the tape.
i sat the deck on the bed by our feet and lay next to you throwing my leg over yours in the same moment. smiling into your cheek i pushed my hand under the covers and found your hot little fingers and collapsed around them as his voice pointed out of the speakers right at our hearts. i pulled my head back after a few moments noticing my nose was running from the dust i still had all over me. a nervous smile broke out on my face.
laying next to you smiling and worrying what i was going to do with my little runny nose as we listened to this beautiful music when i decided that it would be just great and i would just..

a long, green station wagon

i never rolled down the window when grandma drove us out to the gathering on thursday nights. it's not like i thought about it. i just wanted to rest my face half on the glass so i could stare non-stop at the whirring-by landscapes. never losing the neck strength or become distracted by oncoming cars.
it was ozark mountains big enough to a little boy, but small now to this man's mind.
the white farm houses propped against green, purple, and blue mountains breaking the patterns in nature, mesmerizing me.
off in the distance little brown bumps of cows wandered through trees while others layed next to muddy ponds waiting for the farmer's tractor horn to beep the call home. blurry white fences and then barbed-wire fences next to half rotten wood fences on and on forever. but why? fences seemed so unnecessary out there. the fields and the crops were so vast a cow, or a person, would be worn out trying to cross it to escape, and to what destiny? with wolves and woodpeckers waiting to take your last breath.
roads out there curved so often and so dramatically, i wondered if we really ever went anywhere or we just drove in circles around the same colored hills.
at last we'd turn down the dirt road marked by the grain store sign, now mostly brown where the white paint and red letters have faded or peeled off and made our little, beige, fluffy clouds of dust. rock popcorn popping under the car silencing the radio every few seconds made my mind wander even farther off. the bucolic scene on the other side of the glass moved too quickly out of sight and the radio was mumbling words about news and politics that mean nothing to a country boy like me.
bouncing around inside the wagon as grandma stared straight ahead, i eventually learned to reach my left hand down and hold onto her stack of boxed harmonicas before they'd hit the floor. if i'd let them fall she'd immediately ask me to pick them up, and then the spell being cast over me would break. pavlovian response served me well.
just past the canyon, furry with trees and brush, was our last turn before reaching the old church. as soon as we turned down that road i would take my head off the window and stare straight ahead at the church, almost hidden in the overgrown oak.
dried deer bones sticking out of dark fur is what it always looked like to me. the windows not yet illuminated by lights and music. shadows ever unmoving on our approach.
"grandma, they havin' cookies tonight?"
"yes honey. someone always brings cookies."
"not always."
"shane, you weren't even there the time martha didn't bring cookies. i just told you about it."
"just checkin."
we'd pull right up in front of the church partly off the road; since there never was a parking lot made for this place, it's zenith of attendance passing long before cars would come to this neck of the woods.
old, old dirt choking the bright green grass near the front steps swirled as i kicked rocks behind my grandma, walking in with tinfoil covered banana bread. every piece of wood inside had a dull shine, not from being cleaned or waxed, but by being polish-worn. every door creaked
 and every floorboard groaned, the electric wiring was exposed along with the bent nails holding them to the walls.
the pews had to been made by some carpenter a hundred years ago that believed god wanted you to suffer in as many little ways as possible. sharp angles, bizarre heights and depths in their design proved my case...at least to me. no one else complained, but they were old and grew up with these sorts of things.
no foam seat covers or ergonomic desk sets for these veterans.
old men wandered inside the chapel setting up chairs and instruments while old women jockeyed for display areas on the counter top in the ante-way. hot items stored in the corner to keep prying hands from interrupting the serving cycle while appetizers and cookies were granted top access.
knowing better then to make my presence known while the ladies got the treats and sustenance organized i'd hide in the stairwell at the side of the room leading to a basement so dark i never ventured down for fear ghosts and bones coated the floor.
once the rush had passed and the bulk of the group had joined the men inside to tune instruments and talk about the week past i'd casually stroll up to the cookies and get two good handfuls before someone could remind me that candy would spoil this that or the other thing.
the selection was always so similar scanning for what i wanted to sample had become a lost cause. the cheap vanilla cream cookies and the occasional chips ahoy (if on sale) were my only concern. the cakes and the breads would have to wait until everyone was being served.
out the double doors down the stairs and into the fields behind the church i'd go. first to the graveyard to sit in the tall grass and watch the fireflies come as dusk creeped upon this little orb.
the gravestones were so old and worn with rain that reading them was more imagination then careful diction. dates were about the only thing i could ever be sure about...1865...1802...1911...

1898...
oh so long ago.
another age. muskets and horses. indians and campfires.
out here in the foothills of the Ozarks these were real country folk. born, raised and died without ever crossing paths with Big Brother, social security, or world news. i didn't even know what these things were yet either i just thought it was rad that these people lived in houses without electric lights.
the chiggers would bite at my legs as i sat in the grass causing me to rustle and move around sometimes even getting up and walking over to another patch in hopes no little pest families lived there.
never such luck.
colored skies above. chatter and spots of music behind my back. blinking lazy lights surrounded me at head height. seated head height.
heavenly scents of honeysuckle covered the grasses. there were never any stems to pick as the kids living in the big house down the road a stretch passed down this way nearly every single day. it's alright...i used their tire swing all the time.
with just enough light left to see the dirt track leading to the pond under the dark oak i'd make my way to the tire swing.
pulling on the rope half dangling in the water i'd pull the tire to me and climb in and push off.
with the right tempo i could keep swinging for awhile until my ass was asleep from the tire edge cutting in.

i never cast a reflection on the water when i sat in that tire. the water was practically opaque with rotten leaves in the bottom and i never sat in the tire until sunset.
there i would swing and listen to my grandma and her friends strike up an old gospel tune and swing along into a folk song. sometimes i could hear a tired old voice sing out among the strumming, humming, thumping, and blowing.
it comforted me to be in that place as much as it did to lay across my grandma's lap while she slowly scratched strange designs into my skin.
i never was afraid there.
in the dark. over that pond.
i never thought of school or peer pressure. not one concern about my future or the dire situation in the middle east.
just floated in space. timeless.
young.
alone.
kicking my legs i would disembark from the tire and walk down the roads far enough so i couldn't hear the music anymore then i would turn back. my natural way of adjusting the volume in my life.
kicking rocks into the night and scratching alien letters into the dust with sticks found on the side of the road while investigating some sound or another.
at night the dirt road looked white and the trees seemed to be like giant t.v. sets tuned to static with their constant murmurings and shattered pieces of light shining through the leaves.
sometimes i would stare up into their boughs so long i would trip on my own foot or some variation in the ground and fall chest first on the brackish road. spitting away the taste only to punch myself in the arm for being stupid.
then latter enjoying the dirty little country boy look reflected in the tall glass under the lights in the church when i would return for the intermission and warm food.
there in a tight circle their chairs would be: old wood chairs men sit in to whittle; folding chairs from someone's basement; a piano that looked rusty. guitars of various age and use; in the center a wood-burning stove with several hand-cut pieces cracklin away.
the windows weren't stained glass. they weren't fancy neither, but they were tall and very dirty. the ceiling had the religious vault one always expects but fantastic expanses of exposed timber crossing hither thither and yon. spider webs big enough to catch birds seemed always on the verge of falling down upon me with the sheer amount of dust they held.
it was a church made of the bread of life. simple. strong. necessary. white walls unadorned and strong with hand-hewed lengths of wood still standing strong against the tides of time and nature.
a fort of the spirit.

Tiny Dancer

We were soldiers once...and young.
I was in the military serving in the Saudi Arabian desert not long after the first American war in that land, and long before the current one.
I was still fresh to the world and googly-eyed at every new place I was sent, or went. What made it even more intense being there  at that time was that our base was as remote as you could get. Located in the plains north of al-Riyahd in the great, sun-scorched stretches where our ancestors brought forth the seed of humanity.
Not only was our compound far from life as I knew it, but my particular place of employment was even more remote from the base itself. Every day was a ritual in solitude and remoteness. Waking up in tent city, walking to the shower tent in dry silence. Avoiding any eye contact or conversation if you happened across another soul. Then back to dress in my little sheet-draped slice of heaven. It was a four minute walk to the motor pool to check out my truck, get the vitals and sign-off the daily check sheet so I could drive away like a good, little boy. Since I was a part of the administrative elite I drove a small pickup which only ferried officers or other administrators. I would grab whoever had made arrangements the day before with me then off to the first of five security checkpoints just to get the half mile off base. All the badge passing and password muttering took about twenty minutes. Once we were outside the main base it was a silent 35 minute drive across the desert basin with only one turn on an open four lane road uninhabited except by military. Everything appeared timeless out in the desert and that stretch of road may have been decades old and just didn't have any traffic to wear it down but it looked new to me. Even the piles of dirt pushed off to the sides seemed like the wind would have blown them away long ago, but then again the desert was hard as concrete. Out there it was as flat and open as a nightmare. Brown and blue forever. No flowers. No bushes. No birds, just flies and the occasional mesa (which I don't think is the correct term since this was another world).
It was on this long and empty drive that one of the sweetest gifts I was ever given came to me. Command wanted me to deliver some packages back to the main base and pick up a fellow troop that had missed the bus, and since it was early enough that I wouldn't miss lunch I took off without much ado.
It was after I picked up the arrant troop and passed the wheel to him (because I out-ranked him...ha!) for the long drive back when destiny tapped on my door.
We had passed the last checkpoint and the wide open stretch lay before us. The heat of noon was upon us and the ground began to shimmer and bend. During the summer months the heat is so pervasive and intense quicksilver becomes like an ocean. The whole desert floor shakes with it. Now, I don't know much about the science of optics but I will tell you that it takes the concave shape of the earth and reverses it. What once was hidden just past horizon's slope would now be raised in the sky. Hidden cities now sparkled some many miles off in the distance, sunlight burning hot on the top of the highest buildings, a magical floating kingdom for my inner boy.
The driver was talking about something I couldn't tune into and so I rolled down the window letting the amazingly hot air blow through my hair and gush in my ears. The repetition from having traveled this road without event day after day after month  after month already had me filing it away. Just another day down and closer to home, waiting to get somewhere else.
I was looking East out my window slumped in the worn out bench-seat trying to give my tired ass a break from the bumps in the road, and the worn out springs in this government issue dried turd of a truck. The driver's voice had faded away and I didn't even notice until I heard him say "whoa..." with just enough awe in his voice to redraw my attention. I side-long glanced with my eyes to the left trying to avoid looking interested in anything just in case he wanted to talk more when I saw what had grabbed his attention.
"Wondrous..."and "...beautiful", that's what I said to the driver. He agreed,
it was something one doesn't get to see every day. So we slowed the truck and watched it
for a little while on the side of the road.
Fifty yards away a dust twister was gearing up for some action.
He slowed down more as I sat up in my seat. Not but a few seconds after he uttered his surprise and I noticed "her", the twister jumped the road and tripled in size. Tall and skinny she was, almost two hundred yards tall as she shimmied across the hard sand like a belly-dancer. She was bending at her middle from side to side so rhythmically I could almost hear the cymbals shaking her tune.
It was the color of caramel and milk.
Her smell was ancient rooms disturbed by robber's feet.
My mouth started to hang open in amazement. By now the truck had come to a complete stop without my acknowledgement, and thank goodness for that, otherwise I would have collected at least a tablespoon of sand in my gaping maw from driving down the dirt road.
Across the endless and desolate stage she danced, getting taller and bending ever more dramatically in all directions as if she needed to impress us more.
Looking up the twister's length like a lascivious strip-show gawker I leaned out the window to see all the way up. I blinked in to the pale blue and blinding sky and saw the queen's crown. As she skirted across the desert floor she was sucking up the sand, stones, and diamonds. Yes, I said diamonds.
Out here the sand is blown for so long and gets so hot that it fuses together with other grains and keeps on rolling for lengths of time I cannot measure or postulate.The heat and the friction makes gems from balls of sand. Many times I have picked up these semi-precious gems and stuck them in my pocket to bring home. Some soldiers take them to the Arabic jewelers to get cut and polished. Afterwards you can't tell them apart from the real thing, without the proper tools and training.
There I was, sitting in that little truck looking at this epic dance, watching the grand finale. It was like fireworks coming out of the top of this enormous dust tornado. I could hear the heavier stones landing all across the ground at fantastic rates of speed, but in my imagination I could only hear the sparkle of those diamonds high up in the azure firmament like fizz in a champagne glass.
Shots of white light, in the hundreds, painted on a blue palate. Brilliant, tiny flashes of stones set ablaze by an unforgiving sun, even visible through the translucent twister on the other side!
I wanted to get out of the truck and go dance with her. Shed my spectator's skin and become the risk, apart of the dream. To wrap my arms around her dainty foot and feel her pull me up and into her like a lover...like a dancer.
That was the brave me.
The real me sat in the truck and watched.
On and on she went twisting, bending, and dancing for almost three minutes until she started to fade into the East getting skinnier and shorter. At last I couldn't see her in all the dust she had kicked up. The dust tornado had become a dream lost in the dust.
tre um boi.

I never asked my friend afterwards what he saw there and what he didn't see.
Because we all know it's in the unnamed and untamed that things live and grow.
Not naming things helps them be more, and not chasing helps....well, you know.

Pussycat Mountain

Pussycat...pussycat…laying on the length of my side. I can feel your nails slowly poke through my shirt and your purring echo on my ribs. Nothing delights my heart more then being chosen for attention…I wanted to say love but I know you do not love me. You sit so close watching me type tempted to pounce on the fingers that poke and jump across the keyboard…I hope you do just that.
Life is here tonight. Living is within me.
How silly that I stop typing to let you smell the screen…tail covering a third of my words. Words written about you.
Tight little package curled at the end of this air mattress looking out into the night. I am alive tonight with your presence. What I mean to write is that I am even more alive now because you are hanging on the edge, and if you claw through the blanket in fear or joy we will both get wet.
Wet? Yes. It is raining outside tonight and the embers from the fire are still glowing. I can see the outline of your ears in front of the fire. I think you are licking your paw. The floor is wet and neither you or I would enjoy the cold night if something happened to this mattress. I don’t even know where you came from. Why are you here with me tonight? So tiny and new. White chest and brown ears contesting the black running up your tail.
The rain is beating against the roof calmly like a Jehovah’s Witness. Thump da da dun da dun thump. I feel like I am underwater listening to muted bubbles.
An orange ball of light is trying to burn through curtains of black and I can’t believe the fire is fighting so hard.
I am so happy out here. Far far far far from roads and electricity. Away from city lights and noise. No mail comes here. No cops drive by. If these were my last words and my body turned cold as I lay dead it would be many moons before someone came. A copperhead hiding under the rocks could send me into a fevered dream and into the void or a brown bear hungry from the winter following the scent of not too carefully sealed food only to find the warm delicacy of my body. How that pleases me.
 I feel the incongruence of writing on my laptop about the joy of being out. I know it makes as much sense as a doctor complaining about science permeating medicine.
This is the dichotomy of life.
You have this everyday. Look at it and relish the absurdity of living.
Wanting something and having something else.
I am losing this feeling of “real” to the desire to write about a lesson.
I am not anyone’s teacher. Or leader. Or role model.
I am just Markus Shane Davis.
Tonight I know only these things:
I am Mother Nature’s son
I carry a rifle as I walk through the woods
I hunt nothing but will shoot what is needed
I crave a cold, alcoholic beverage
Rain on fallen leaves sounds like breaking glass in another room
Bucks rub the bark of the saplings in these woods and smell like an exotic dish rotting in the trash can
Cats like body heat and will play with empty gun shells on the ground for about an hour
Trees tell me things that no person can
I miss love, even if it's only for a few minutes
Time goes by slowly in the night when you can’t sleep
I want to kiss that scholarly little girl who reads so much
A fire warms only one part of your body at a time
Coyotes yelp and play like young boys
I would be happy to die here in the wild
The man I thought I was is slowly fading into memory
Oak leaves in winter are the color of freshly baked bread
I am a fool

I want to write more but longing drums on my heart as steady as the rain outside. 
Some days later the morning breaks again on me and this note. I can’t rectify within my mind why I brought a laptop out into the mountain wilds. The battery is dying and the only thing I can use to charge it is the warm sun and deer meat. I hope it dies so I can ignore it and stop trying to write…it is robbing me of the precious moments here in the oaks and spruce. I feel silly sitting here in the dirt with a morning cigarette hanging out of my mouth typing with coils of wood smoke wrapping around my head as if I was Gandalf the Grey whittling ships in the air. This kitty is feral but too young to be dangerous. It bites my fingers when I play with it but not in a way that makes me laugh but recoil in horror at the red beads shining on my hands. I heard a plane yesterday somewhere off in the distance but the trees and mountaintops hid it from my view. I was crossing a field following the crushed, dry wheat when I heard it. And not two minutes later I came upon the semi-crop circle the deer had made when they all slept here the night before. The size of the depression belied the enormous number of them…maybe fifteen or twenty. I sat down in their bedding and looked up at the sky. The pistol I borrowed from my cousin poked me in the ass forcing me to lie down to enjoy the view. To say it was silent would be a gross understatement since it was still all over the world. Not a tree branch scraped or a stalk of wheat cracked…until I broke one off and placed it in my mouth like a good Huckleberry Finn.
I like sitting on big mossy stones in the woods with the rifle leaning against the edge. I can stare out at the valleys through the trees for hours and hours.
I will miss this immeasurably when it is time to fly back home.

The Cave, Part I

When I was 9 years old my family lived in a new house, in a new neighborhood, on the outskirts of a small town. The location was most likely picked because of the proximity to the new freeway, some train tracks, and a little creek that served as the city's flood control. All that made it cheap real estate.
Our home was nestled in a group of about 30 others in the middle of a reclaimed cow pasture. A short distance away lay Zero mountain.
Zero mountain was a mining operation for a hundred years until the minerals petered out and almost everything was abandoned. What was left running fit behind a tall fence and a little alcove. None of kids were interested in the mountain, the dilapidated equipment, or the tall fence for many years...save Winter time. That's when we would walk up the road cutting straight up and over the top of Zero so we could sled down it.
Those were trying and terrifying encounters that always left us wanting more...and our mommies. We always went back.
The train tracks that I mentioned earlier crossed right in front of our neighborhood and disappeared a few miles away around the back side of Zero and a forest resting at the base. It was a natural progression for us kids to start with putting things on the tracks to be smashed, then throwing things at the train, to running after the train, to riding our backs down the road running parallel to the tracks while chasing the train, to wonder around on the tracks a ways, to finally wondering where the tracks and train went.
The adventures continued on in to Summer with each outing finding us further down the tracks until we started making sandwiches and stuffing them, along with candy, in our pockets for the journey there and back again. It was on one of these journeys we started to become interested in Zero mountain. The tracks hugged the back side of the mountain about a mile in the woods. About a 1,000 feet up we could see dark holes in the mountain face but the terrain was too rough and the grade too steep to attempt a climb up, even for foolhardy kids like us.
We started looking for ways up the mountain along the tracks each time we walked them. It didn't look good, it was like a conical volcano on all sides exposed to the tracks. After walking down the tracks for weeks and not finding treasure, dead bodies, or a clubhouse the amount of kids from the neighborhood dwindled to three.
The remaining three kids (me, my older sister, and Jason from a block over) decided to abandon the tracks and walk up the road that cut straight over the top of Zero like a bad haircut. At the top we found an old rock breaker and a five story silo. It was all so rickety that playing on it left us covered in rust and cuts so we moved on.
The road wound down in to the valley at the top of the mountain where we found the fenced in alcove. A few trucks and buildings sat behind it, unmoving and unmarked, which didn't attract our interests. We followed a split in the road leading out of the valley and back up to a high ridge. It would around massive piles of stone, cut back on itself at least 14 times until we got to a clearing on what appeared to be the Western ridge of Zero. It looked like a wasteland blown to bits. Large boulders strewn about at weird angles. Left to topple over and roll down the mountain given the right momentum. Gravel piles of different colors sat next to giant gears and odd machinery that seemed to have served no purpose.
The sun baked everything on top. The light was pure white. It felt like a movie sequence when someone is about to die and starts to leave the world around them in a slowly blinding flash.
We wandered for an hour peeking in little cave entrances no bigger than a cracked door. Found a gigantic pit dug at the highest point that had filled with the bluest, opaque water I had ever seen. We couldn't make it down to the water as it was a sheer drop of about two hundred feet and the water looked like something a very large, and very hungry, monster would live in. We walked around until we found the ridge that looked down on the tracks we hiked so many times, some 2,000 feet below.
We knew there were caves down there, we just didn't know if they opened up on this side of the mountain. Our quest began again in earnest. We had to find an opening.
We split up in to three to try and cover more ground up on the mountain ridge. I took a path that lead me almost to the northern most part of the mountaintop. I was about to turn back as I could see the road we had walked in on far below, when I spied three wide, but short caves. Each opening was piled high with machine cut rocks. I could see scratch and bite marks all over them. The first two openings were piled so high and thick that no amount of kicking could clear an opening big enough for me. The third entrance however gave way easily.
There I sat with my legs dangling down in to the darkness after having kicked a wheelbarrows worth of rocks down. My hands were planted firmly behind me and I sat back just to make sure I didn't slip away.
The blinding light outside made it impossible to see in. I threw several rocks in to the opening and barely heard anything when they landed.
I found a cave!
I got up and ran up to a clearing and started screaming for Jason and my sister. It took them several minutes to make it over to where I was...and those minutes felt like an eternity. The same time someone feels slow down during a car wreck is what I felt. I couldn't scream any louder or make any more insanely outlandish claims to get them to run over the treacherous landscape than I already had. I had to wait.
When they finally got to me I was already running back to the entrance, which made them think I was joking as they both stood still until I turned back and screamed for them to hurry some more.
We all finally congregated at the entrance peering down in to the darkness. They threw rocks, I threw more, we all agreed this was the find of our lives.
Looking down the long drop of scree into the darkness I knew we would need flashlights and rope before attempting a venture inside. So, with half broken hearts we headed home knowing what we was to come next.
It took a few days to get back to the entrance we had found. While we dug in garages, sheds, and the backs of our parents cars for the supplies we thought we might need each one of us told the tale of finding "the cave". Kids were equal parts amazed and horrified by the existence of said cave and the possibility of disappearing into its depths.
I thought we would certainly be able to recruit some neighborhood kids into our adventure but after all was said and done it was only the three of us who originally set out and found the cave headed back to climb down inside.
The Friday finally came that we had all that we thought we would need: rope, flashlights, knives, extra socks (I don't remember why), sandwiches, peanut butter crackers, and a mason jar of water. With a cursory check of supplies, debate over whether a pellet gun would help and if we should bring one of our pet dogs along we set off with just the items already collected.
On our way out of the neighborhood we knocked on two doors to make sure we couldn't get one kid more to join...it seemed like four was a powerful number and capable of fighting off an unknown adversary that three couldn't. In the end, just the three of us stepped on to the tracks and headed West.
I can't rightly remember what we talked about but I'm sure it was about claiming the cave as ours, who we would allow in, who we would tell about it, possible treasure, possible monsters, and who was going in first.
I remember that the walk was longer than it should have been. Excitement pushed back against us like magnetic force, or maybe that was fear.
When we got to the top of Zero mountain it took a minute to rediscover our opening again which had me worried that someone had found our cave too and hid it, but my fears were unfounded. Soon enough we were standing at the jet black gash in the white rock looking in. The earlier agreement of who was going in faltered, Jason had declared dibs but fear broke that resolve, and so we found ourselves battling to force each other in using standard kid protocol; rock, paper, scissors.
First me against my sis, a win! Then me against Jason (the rat coward who was supposed to be first), a lose!
I went through all the stages of coping in about 30 seconds from denial to acceptance. In the end the desire to get down there was greater than my fear of dropping into a hell mouth and being devoured by blind, albino monsters.
I tied the rope around my pants using the belt loops and stuffed a flashlight down the front of my pants. I wanted complete control of my hands, and conversely, my decent if at all possible. I kicked a bigger hole in the scree and waited for the roar of rocks to subside before I climbed over the point of liminality and down the dark side.
I was trying to slide down on my butt at first and with each foot I realized it was an inferior method. The rocks were broken and jagged, the dust thick and choking. The best way down was a bent knee run. So, without alerting Jason who was holding the rope I stood  up and began descending rapidly. I must have gone down about 20 feet before the panic up top caused Jason and my sister to think I was either being pulled to my death by a nefarious force or slipping in to the abyss as they grabbed the rope tightly and sat back. My pants nearly came off as the rope went taught and I fell forward. The force knocked the wind out of me so I was powerless to yell out as the proceeded to pull me back up the slope via sharp rocks.
After being dragged backwards for a foot I finally yelled out and they stopped. I got back on my feet, dusted myself off, jerked angrily at the rope and walked down the remaining feet to the cave floor. My eyes were adjusting while I stood on the dry, cold floor in silence waiting for a noise other than my breathing.
Drips. Far off drips. Wind. A low moan of it entering from some unknown location deeper inside, like a yawn from a whale.
My sister and Jason were calling down to me, asking questions, demanding to know what was there, could they come now, and other requests I didn't want to answer until I knew speaking wouldn't attract something from the dark. I held my flashlight without turning it on for the same reason.
Finally, I turned it on and looked at what was immediately surrounding me. To my right the rock wall which held the opening and scree pile I just slid down went on in to darkness. I could see it stretch on for about a hundred feet before fading away. Panning left my light illuminated nothing unless I pointed it straight up or down. The ceiling was about 80-100 feet high, higher as the cave deepened. Turning left towards the other side of the wall I had entered through my light shone on a pillar. A pillar carved from the cave. Reaching from floor to ceiling and thick as a redwood. I walked towards it but was stopped, by the rope still looped through my pants. I turned around and yelled up the slope to come down and that I was taking off the rope.
As I freed myself from restraints I heard the bustle of the other two explorers making their way in and down. Walking forward shining my flashlight periodically at the pillar and down at the floor I was amazed by how dry the cave floor was and how large the pillar kept getting, as I walked closer and closer. Standing at the base of it and looking up the scope and size was beyond my young understanding. I walked around it with my arms outstretched trying to get a rough idea. It was on the backside, looking back at the entrance did I realize that another pillar was several hundred feet away. I was stunned. I turned around in to the darkness and pointed my light deep in to the cave and off in the faint distance another pillar, just as large, stood waiting.
I walked back around the pillar towards my sister and Jason who were just reaching the bottom and looking around for themselves and remarked on the pillars and the vastness of the cave. We all echoed sentiments of awe and worry. It was so big. Immense. Not an empty warehouse size. Not even a stadium size. It was a neighborhood, long, wide, tall, and deep.

We regrouped and agreed to walk along the wall to the right of the entrance to try and measure at least one length of it. We walked along the wall until the floor fell away. Looking around we realized there were trails/roads cut in to the rock so we walked over and were pleasantly surprised that it ran parallel to the wall. Like a cliff side road it was with one side only slightly higher than the main floor of the cave and the other falling off in to the darkness separating us from the cave wall that wound back to the entrance.

Kicking rocks off the side, down in to the abyss, listening for the bottom. Somewhere at the bottom a small pool of water was disturbed by our rocks. The splash was quickly followed by the clank-crunch of rock on rock.

We walked for five minutes. Slowly. Our flashlights whipped around, floor to wall, wall to emptiness, floor to ceiling, all over. It still didn't make us feel safe seeing where our every foot fell. Slowly we stepped as if the lights that shone down on the path would not reveal a sudden ending. The path bent close to the wall and the ceiling got lower as we moved further down the right wall. We came to a split on the road with one part turning off in to the darkness towards the center of the cave and the other even closer to the wall and down what appeared to be a sub cave. We chose to walk in to the sub cave and turned right. Things seemed a little more claustrophobic down that path. The ceiling was only 50 feet up and the walls on either side only 100 or so. Debris on the floor was piled along with corners where the walls met the floor. Big rocks, pillow sized. We walked another five minutes down the sub cave which also seemed to be dropping down minutely, deeper in to the Earth. Our conversations went from upbeat to fragile. We were speaking in hushed tones now that the walls and ceiling were closing in. Fear crept in to our minds. I was speaking about weird things on my mind. Worries. It became infectious. By the time one of our lights lit up a broken looking shack, more like an outhouse with windows, our bravery had given way to horror. We didn't turn and run. We stopped, then walked backwards, as if from a growling dog. Everyone turned around and started walking back making excuses like "It's too dark down here." or "Let's look somewhere else." as we headed back to the split in the road.

When we got back to the split and turned down the other route it was only a few moments before we came to just one of the many terrible and unsettling things hidden deep in that cave.