I Took a Walk Episode Six Terror In the Black

Earning this bonus could cost Jimmy his life

It took Jimmy a moment to recognize the screaming filling his helmet as his own. By force of will, he stopped screaming. It wasn’t all that much of an improvement. His fast-panting breath echoed loudly inside the damn helmet.

It took all his focus to slow that breathing down, yet his heart pounding in his ears still threatened to overwhelm him.

He had to get control of that fear, or he was dead. He slowed his breathing even more.

In, two, three, four.

Out, two, three, four.

In, two, three, four.

Out, two, three, four.

He hadn’t moved a muscle since that fall. At least he believed so. There was a good chance that his left arm pointed in the direction he needed to go, but only a chance.

“Just stay calm, Jimmy, you can do this,” he said aloud, his own voice strange in his ears.

Praying he wasn’t sliding, changing his orientation, he rolled onto his side so he faced that direction. Then he rolled onto his stomach. Trembling, fighting back his terror, he got to his hands and knees. Not sure at all he was correct, he turned the roughly forty degrees that faced him in the direction he believed the machine to get him back was.

He started walking in that direction, counting.

“Fuck-ing-Griever-one.” He said, saying one syllable for each step. He would only be counting every fourth step and had a better chance of keeping track of his counting.

“Bastard-Asshole-Griever-two.”

“Fuck-ing-Griever-three.”

“Bastard-asshole-Griever-four.” He settled in to repeating that pattern to keep track of his steps.

At fucking Griever five hundred, he stopped walking and counting.

“God damn sons of bitches. Mother fucking corporate douchebags. I am going to kill them if I survive this god unholy mess they got me into.”

 Jimmy had no doubt. He had missed the damn basement. What in the hell was he supposed to do now? He hated not being able to see.

With deliberate care, he turned around one hundred and eighty degrees.

Had he passed it on the left? Or the right?

Had he even been close at all?

He had no way of knowing, despite mentally trying to reexamine how he fell and landed.

Turning what he hoped was between five and ten degrees to the right, he began again, counting his steps out loud.

“Ass-hole-Griever one.”

“Fuck-head-Eastland two.”

“Ass-hole-Griever three.”

“Fuck-head-Eastland four.”

The darkness and fear ate at him.

By the time he reached two hundred, his voice had dropped to a trembling whisper, his fear making his whole body shake, increasing his fear of falling again.

At “Fuck-head-Eastland four hundred,” he was crying those words more than saying them.

At “Fuck-head- Eastland five hundred,” he kept going. Maybe he could hit the Elmeron Dynamic’s basement, instead.

“Damn it, I am not claustrophobic!” he screamed out. “I can do this.”

A new goal fixed in his mind; he began getting himself under control, though it took him until he reached six hundred before he quit crying and his trembling faded.

Hitting fuck-head-Eastland five-thousand and still being in the black was no more than he expected.

He quit counting, but kept marching forward with little hope. If he was heading in the wrong direction, he was only getting deeper and deeper underground.

That is what the odds favored. That thought stopped him. Two-thirds of the direction from the lab would see him lost here for all time.

But beyond Elmeron Dynamic’s basement some miles, the land sloped down.

He resumed his plodding march, trying not to let the oppressive blackness destroy his sanity.