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The tunnel under the highway was a damp dark place, but its length was the only comfort the two of them had known in weeks. Ever since the surface went to shit this tunnel had been all they had; dank grey stone bricks curving up and away, the thinnest drops of moisture dribbling back down as the two of them walked down the tunnel under the highway.
~
They had met by the entrance of the tunnel, smoking, when the news still warned them of what was to come from outside, not the changes already happening inside the country. The shorter one – straight brunette hair past the waist – didn’t have a lighter, only stealing a match and a cigarette from her mothers house and running away down by the entrance of the tunnel. The taller one – short dyed blonde hair, with darker roots edging out of her scalp – had laughed and taken the match from her, and struck it on the wall of the tunnel, offering to light her cigarette. The two sat by the entrance, and smoked together. The taller one introduced herself as Cass, and the shorter one as Marie.
Cass struck up the first real conversation, about the news.
“S’all going to shit out there, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.” Marie had never paid much attention to current events.
“Least there’s still cute people around…” The puff of smoke hiding her smirk.
“Huh? Do you mean me? I’m not that cute, this is my first time out like this-”
“To smoke? Or as yourself?”
Marie sighed and asked if it was that obvious. Cass shook her head and just motioned to herself saying “We’re no different, not in any way that matters. We’re still women, even if one of us has never smoked before. Wrong end by the way.”
Marie spat out her cigarette and forced Cass to get another one out for her, “If you knew that from the start you should’ve told me before you lit it for me!” She mockingly shouted, a slight echo from out the tunnel. “I want another one now and you better tell me the right way to do it.” Cass conceded, and pulled another cigarette out for her, lighting it and taking a drag of it before passing it on.
“Thank you.. I guess.” They smoked together for a short while, watching the orange sun set through wisps of smoke, and leaning on each other for warmth as night drew close.
“Hey, Marie. If things get worse, in the news, promise me you’ll come here.”
“Why?”
“I want to know you’ll be safe, in whatever happens.”
“You have only known me for an hour, why do you care so much?”
“We have to stick together, I couldn’t bear to not know you’re safe, at least. You can leave whenever after, I just want to know you’ll make it.” Cass put an arm around Marie, and pulled them closer together, side by side.
“Alright alright. I’ll come here if things get bad. How do I know you’ll be here?”
“I’m here every night, I don’t want to go back,” she said, and the two didn’t exchange another word, only a slight nod, before Marie left to go home.
Cass sat slumped against the entrance to the tunnel under the highway and sighed, “I should’ve said when,” and lit another cigarette.
.
The night it all changed, Marie had been reading the news. It had become almost a ritual by this point, every time something in the news looked grim for her or Cass or who they were and stood for, she would sneak out with only a cigarette and a match, and the two would spend the night together, wondering if there was a silver lining, as the sun would sink below the skyline. Tonight was no different, only now it mattered more than ever before.
“We have to run away.” Marie pleaded with Cass, “There’s nothing for us here, we’ll never be allowed to be ourselves.”
“Where would we go-”
“In the tunnel, to the other end, the rainbow on the other side.”
“I don’t know what’s there, or if it even ends at something other than a dead end.”
“We can’t stay here.”
“I don’t know what’s there!”
“We’ll be together…”
Cass looked to the floor, disturbed dirt ground beneath her heel as she turned towards the tunnel, looking back up into the black nothingness just metres away, and then over her shoulder to Marie.
“Okay… Just-” she struggled to find the words, and took Marie’s hand, feigning a smile as they entered into the tunnel under the highway.
~~~
Time had passed in the tunnel, and they had continued walking, a sound echoing behind them as they went, uncertain if it was pursuers.
“Marie… Let’s sit for a minute.”
“Ok, do you wanna talk or just sit?”
“I heard a parable, one time, that talked about two people, on a road together. One believes that Heaven is at the end, and the other doubts him. The road continues endlessly, and the sceptic continues to doubt that the road goes anywhere, but the believer is certain there will come a point when the road will end, and they’ll both be in heaven. Until they find Heaven, neither will be proven correct, because the believer will continue walking and reassuring the non-believer that it could be the next corner, and the non-believer can’t verify that until they reach the end of the road, which may never come.”
“Do you think this tunnel goes anywhere, Cass?”
“Do you think there’s danger back the way we came, where our lives were being systematically destroyed by Old, White Men with superiority complexes! What choice do we have but to keep going. We don’t have the luxury of the non-believer. We need to find safety, we have to. There’s no other way.”
“But do you believe?”
“Marie, belief isn’t something you choose, it’s the feeling within you, a sense that there’s something beyond your senses; whether that’s morality, or religion or- or hope. And right now I don’t feel anything except panic. I don’t feel anything but regret for us being here…”
“I’m sorry for dragging you in, maybe we could’ve-” Cass silenced her with a kiss.
“Don’t be, we could’ve died if we stayed out there. I wish I had thought of a better alternative at the time but, at least we’re together.”
“They’re still coming for us, aren’t they?”
“We definitely can’t go back, so what does it matter? We have to push forward now, don’t we? We don’t need to confirm anything, the sounds are enough to suggest that something is there.”
“Then let’s go.”
And they went, and went, and hours of walking melted into days of staggering and rest, rubbing the raw sores of their feet, the echoes of a witch hunt always far enough away to keep them both on their toes. Both came to believe that nothing was waiting for them at the end, yet they continued to move ahead, rolling forward the boulder of the mutual belief that the other wanted to keep moving ahead, communication breaking down in the face of absurdity, of meaninglessness.
Cass turned to Marie and sighed: “My feet are ruined… I need to sleep…”
“Didn’t you say we should keep moving?”
“Yeah, Yeah, my legs just… feel weak.” She wobbled on her feet.
“Let’s sit again… it’s been so long… you can fall asleep on me…” Marie sat on the floor, rubble strewn around her, and patted the floor next to her. Cass relented and flopped into her, relishing the moment of peace between them.
“Do you think there’s meaning here, in how this tunnel keeps going…”
“I doubt it.” She began to stroke Cass’ hair, feeling a stronger sense of an urge to protect her than ever before. “I think it just keeps going because that’s how it was made, nothing more to it, maybe not even a reason…”
“I guess you’re right…” Cass snuggled into her lap and fell asleep. With her back pressed to the wall Marie fished a dagger out of her pocket; she always kept it on her for safety, knowing where she lived. She had heard countless times that having the knife was the more dangerous option, but it seemed every day brought a new violent assault against a trans girl like her, and she didn’t fancy her odds. She flicked it open and struck it against the tunnel wall, engraving a rough heart with both their names inside it. She closed the knife and put it away, and snuggled into Cass. If the tunnel had no purpose then she had found meaning in it herself. She would weave a tapestry of her life before and after Cass. She would write it all down, in the hopes she could come back and remember how -in this moment of anguish – there was love and that it was enough them to safety.
It wasn’t enough, and never could have been. Marie told Cass about the engravings, and they both collaborated to turn the walls into frescos as they went. The knife started going dull just as their life stories finished. They were running out of things to say anyway. Marie had resorted to carving in text her first experience of sexual assault, dragging horizontally along the walls as they went, like a long blood trail. It went completely dull before she could finish, and she chucked the blade away. The sounds had been receding, the threat fading, but still the two of them pressed forward.
“Cass… Why do we need to keep going..”
“There has to be something…”
“We can leave, the people that were chasing us- the sounds almost gone…”
“It’s a ploy, we can’t trust them, that’s why we’re running. Why should we trust them? We need to keep going…”
“Cass… we have to accept… we have to accept that they might be going, that we might be free. You can’t ignore evidence? Can you? That’s no different from…” she resists saying it “it’s no different from killing ourselves.” Marie had come to accept, to recognise the absurd condition of the world around them now, the tunnel. The threat that pushed them forward had left, so surely they should too. Cass instead took the leap of faith, abstracting herself from reason and following a new sense of duty, defined by moving forwards, and forwards, away from her past and towards a new future with Marie.
“We can keep going… we should keep going, we’re going to have a good life together…”
“Cass…”
“Marie?”
“Come sit down…”
“...okay.” She rested her head in Marie’s lap again.
“You’re not thinking straight…”
“I’m not straight hun.”
“I know, I mean… I think being out of cigarettes is making your head fuzzy. You keep wanting to move but.. just listen…” silence “they’re not here.”
“We can’t go back. Remember when we met…?”
“Not… not really?”
“Me neither. We put it on the wall right?”
“Definitely. It was one of the first, I bet.”
“There’s nothing behind us but memories and torment.” Laying like this, Cass’ mind was clear. She knew more of the world, she had experienced more. They couldn’t go back, retreat is just giving up, giving up and letting them tread on her and Marie. That was the crux of it all, wasn’t it? Marie. She looked up at her face, studying the emaciated grin on her face.
“There’s nothing ahead of us but tunnel. At least we know there’s something behind us. The memories aren’t all bad, we can relive the great ones, the happiest ones, and then we’re free…” Marie tried her hardest to convince her. Cass looked up at her, so much younger than herself. She deserved to live, but she deserved to learn how cruel life could be as well.
“We can go back… look at the memories a bit, and then come back… if we hear them even slightly we run.”
“Okay… Thank you Cass.”
“I love you, Marie.”
“I know… I love you too…”
They never found the engravings again. Perhaps the tunnel was too dark, and they missed decades of history, or the tunnel changed: The universe is irrational. Nothing is set in stone, even the stone walls of the tunnel they walked, searching for their memories, eventually searching for who they used to be, the rest eroded with time, until they walked aimlessly, without knowing why.