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It was unnerving. So disorientating that your bones were provoked into tensing until the joints were grinding. Your body had become heavy, full of soaking bags of sand, but beyond that was the taunting emptiness that beckoned curiosity with a curling motion. It felt as if you were staring down a cylinder container, pin prick of light gleaming from the bottom to attempt some crude creation of a telescope. We don't belong here. This is.. This is so wrong. "Don't stand there, okay?" Kat caught onto your forearm, fingers clenching around your sleeve with persistent dread. "Hey, hey, wait."
You stumbled back into her figure. "Sorry," you mumbled as she guided you to stand on the other side of her, where you were not tempted to peer down at that beckoning light at the end of the tunnel.
"This is stupid!"
"Go as far as you can, okay?"
"Look, look, you can basically walk down without a rope. It's fine. It's not even steep." Bobby tried to reassure the rise in concern around him, justifying the hesitant furrowed brows and ripples of instincts to drag him away from the edge with hysterical desperation. You nodded slightly, a slight shift as your hand clenched around Kat's with pleading notes of intent panic. The pads of her fingers squeezed in return, tender and chasing the trembling touch.
"Okay. Okay, just um.. one thing," Bobby turned back to them, his video camera held against his shoulder. "If I don't come back tell my mom I love her, alright?" The silence that followed his playful request was a tipping point, as if there was a sudden agreement that such a thing was a possibility. You felt uneasy by the eager expression across Clark's face, as if he had some kind of psychosis with the way he was urging Bobby towards the drop. It created an internal disgust. His behaviour was incomprehensible. You took a faint step backwards, barely moving as Kat reluctantly dropped your hand and moved forward to position herself at Clark's side where she could grasp the rope firmly. For a moment it seemed Bobby was going to change his mind with the revelation, but then he turned back to the opening. "Alright, okay, I'll just take it slow." And he stepped over the threshold.
Immediately it was if something had swallowed you wholly. Breath shallow and short, a stuttered thing of anticipation. The constant reminder that thinking rationally was a priority, but it had eroded in your mind, a record skipping the most important parts. Disbelief should have swallowed you by now, setting aside the overactive imagination that created all sorts of monsters from the fear of the unknown. There was never anything under the bed, was there? you asked yourself. The shadow in the corner of the room was always just a chair. It was just a pile of clothes. It was... nothing.
There was a pause in his decline; halting on the slope. You could see his free hand had wrapped around the twined rope for stability, knuckles pale from his grip. "It's actually kind of steep."
You inched closer again, staring down and allowing the spread of dread to infect every palpitation of your heart. It cinched tight in your chest with every muttered word that echoed faintly back and forth. Those wisps of reassurance were small stabbing sensations, expecting something every time an audible sound began from his end.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine!"
She was standing too close to the edge. Kat could get hurt, you understood in that moment; not the kind that happened when you were being a little too enthusiastic and allowed your teeth to clench down on her bottom lip until blood started to swell, but seriously, undeniably, without the chance to undo it, hurt. You were idly working all of this over in your mind when the echoing, panic of Bobby. The ground slipped from beneath you.
Everything had become a white noise. Moving on instinct, you lunged for the rope. It was rough to the touch, squeezing against your palms with resistance as he came shambling up the incline with hellish abandon. He was hauled up. Clark looked up from the camera he had taken off Bobby, and stared at you with a placid expression. It was the kind of thing that said: I didn't know what was down there, did I? I would have said something. Right? You moved half an inch, closer to Kat and her frantic, comforting words as she tried to calm Bobby. She had coaxed him towards the side. And then he was being tugged by some unexplained force. The rope was slipping from your trembling hands, cutting into the barrier of skin. "Kat!" you yelled, a desperate plea that was thrown over the struggle of Bobby and his fingers tugging at the knot around his shorts. "Kat!" your voice trembled with each scrap of bravery to overcome the fear.
There was a struggle, a delayed assistance from Clark before he was attempting to hunch over the knot that was tightening with every sudden tug. "What are you doing?" "What are you doing" Kat had shoved you back, not allowing you to be close to danger. She threw herself towards the edge and grasped at his arms. You felt like you had detached. And then you had stumbled onto the ground beside her, clenching your fingers around the nape of his top and trying to haul him up. He wasn't trying to drag her with him, that was important, his hands were not clawing into her ruthlessly with desperation. No. He was just holding and looking at her while pleading her not to let go. You needed her to let go. If she didn't then Kat would be gone too. And then you'd lose everything. "Don't let go!" "Kat!" "Don't let go!" "Bobby!"
Bobby was gone.
Your elbows were hanging over the edge. He was gone. Weren't you just holding him? Hadn't he just pleaded you not to let go? You couldn't move a limb, all anatomy had collapsed into itself. You couldn't take your attention away from that spot of light, desperate to see him stumbling back up. There was nothing. There was noise, only noise; echoing crunch and yells that fell into a sudden liquefied void. Kat wretched you from the edge of the tunnel, grabbing at your arm painfully, her fingers twisting in the fabric of your sleeve. "Baby, baby, baby," she spoke in all-consuming gasps of panic while trying to capture your attention, reaching up and grasping your face until the imprints of her fingers were a startling, throbbing gesture.