Down In The Basement
Deliberately my feet plodded down the old wooden staircase, down to the musty basement under my house. A single bare light made cold shadows form on the gray concrete floor and fly along the smooth stark walls.
Bending over I lifted up the large flat cardboard boxes, causing dust and tiny spiders to scatter like a tsunami across the hard smooth floor.
Leaning the cardboard against the wall, I bent down and pulled back the tight iron bolts that held the small wooden cellar door in place. Grabbing the old iron handles I lifted it up one more time, and set the door aside quietly.
Descending into the darkness feet first, the floor swallowed me up as each smooth stone step took me deeper into the dark moist earth.
Grandfather had plastered over most of the earthen top layers, years ago. But below that the visible rock layers of gray limestone were coated with the crystal glitter of exposed fossils that twinkled and spread the light around much farther than it would normally go.
Once the floor of a vast primordial ocean, it was now dry, quiet, and forever at rest.
As I went down further, the passage widened and curved a little, being a natural fault. It gets much darker near the bottom. At the end of the crack is an oblong chamber, like a fan-shaped bubble in the rock. The top and bottom are gleaming white calcite, like a giant clamshell, that can only be seen through the blanket of quartz crystals that cover the surface. Everywhere there are clear, fat, sharp, pointy, sparkling crystals, pointed mostly toward the center.
I followed our short path to the center, and rested my knees on the small pillow there. My hand no longer shook like it did when I was younger, and had first reached forth to touch the –
In a flash, a warm faint glow raced up my arm, my body, and swallowed my head.
Connected, and gone.
Abrupt, but, surprisingly, without a sound. One drop slid into the ocean.
Coming into focus, the colors took shapes and then details. I began to realize where I was, and what I was seeing…
Happy Halloween!
(C)
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