do you ever get like. muscle memory but with feelings? like you’re put in a certain situation that you’ve been in before, and suddenly, almostautomatically you feel all the feelings you had from your life back when the situation happened last…….
It’s been snowing again so during my daily checks on the hole I took Rosalind a coffee to warm herself up. The snow was coming down hard, and she was sat in a beach chair beside the hole with a parasol heavy with the fallen snow. Her eyes lit up as I handed her the hot drink. I was hoping she would take off her owl mask to drink it. No luck. She had mastered a technique of sipping it from under the mask.
I felt like we had been getting pretty familiar, so I asked her what made her want to join this ‘book club’.
“Just a change of pace really. I used to work in a genetics lab. About a year ago I was brought a DNA fragment to sequence that was found inside a meteor.”
“Not the meteor that wiped out the City Square pigeons?!” I asked her.
“That’s the one. Lucky no one got hurt. Except the pigeons I guess. Poor pidgies.
“Anyhow, this DNA. It had all the usual AT CG base pairs, but at one point there was a pair we hadn’t seen before. We named them YZ and it only showed up once in the short sequence. We decided to stick the pair in the DNA of an E coli bacteria to see if it did anything, similar to how we manufacture insulin. Maybe we’d synthesise some exotic protein from it?
“Instead, adding that single base pair changed the entire nature of the organism. It quickly became a colony and then a simple multicellular organism similar to a water bear. But it didn’t stop there. It became more complex. Growing to the size of a grapefruit. It looked a bit like a cross between a toad and a hippo, with a long yellow stalk coming from its back.
“One morning, it decided it didn’t want to sit in its nutrient solution any more so it began hovering about 3 feet in the air above it. Just vibing. And its form had changed again. It’s hard to describe. Kinda like a black void? Picture a neutron star, but instead of shining light, it radiates terror, existential dread and the anxiety you feel when waiting to hear about the outcome of a job performance review for a job you really need because society is literally falling apart and apparently now would be a perfect time to make you redundant, even though there was a perfectly good furlough scheme that could be funding your wages.
“It was pretty nuanced as ominous voids go.
“I left soon after that. Not sure what happened to it. I guess it’s still there.”
I left her to sip her coffee and went to check on Gomez. He’s stopped staring at me now, but he won’t take his eye off the second door to my room. I’ve no idea where that door goes. As I’ve said before, I live in a basement and until last night there was only one door in here. At least, I think there was. Maybe I just haven’t noticed it before? I’m surrounded by dirt on all sides so there shouldn’t be another room down here.
It isn’t even really a door. Just a door shaped opening in the corner of my room edged with an inscription that reads:
Per me si va ne la città dolente,
Per me si va ne l'etterno dolore,
Per me si va tra perduta gente.
Which Google Translates reads as “Null Reference Exception: Hope Not Found”, but my phone has been playing up since its trip down the hole so it could be a recipe for vegan pain a chocolat for all I know.
The mysterious door leads to a damp narrow staircase spiralling deep into darkness. The ceiling drips with a malodorous fluid from finger-like stalactites onto the stairs, making them slick and treacherous. The walls are irregularly cut stone with crumbling mortar. Every surface is covered in a mosaic of slime mould lined in miserable gardens of nitre.
This has to be a health hazard. I’ve covered it with a bed sheet.
I emailed my landlords to complain. They say it’s probably rising damp and they’ll send someone to have a look at it. They better sort it out soon. There is a hot and humid draft pouring out of it and the screams are keeping me up at night.
I went back to the hole to try and get my phone back but no luck. Sent a whole roll of string down it but still can’t find the bottom. That makes it at least 100 meters deep!
I’ve tried ringing it from a land-line, but surprise surprise, no signal. (damn you, O2). Would have been funny if someone answered. But with how deep it’s gone, it would probably count as an international call, and I don’t really wanna pay for that.
The hole was wider. About a foot across now, And about two feet down it, I spotted something was stuck in the side. I reached in and grabbed it along with a handful of the dirt.
It was a little sprout. Nothing weird for a change. I was about to cast it aside when I noticed a noise coming from somewhere close by. It wasn’t coming from the hole. I closed my hand around the sprout and the noise stopped.
Weird.
I pulled my hand up next to my ear and listened carefully. Not a sound. I slowly opened my hand and the noise started again, and it was definitely coming from the sprout! It sounded like it was crying? I cupped my other hand over the top of it, and the crying stopped again. I guess it doesn’t like the light.
Well, little buddy. You’re in luck, because I live in a basement flat with no windows.
So I brought my little buddy home, and planted them in a Nine Inch Nails coffee mug.
They live under my sink now.
#SomethingWeirdHappenedToday
Something weird happened today.
First thing this morning I checked on the little sprout and he’s doing well. We’ve named him Gomez He’s cute. No leaves yet. Just a thin green stalk. Wonder what he’ll grow to be.
I checked on the hole again. It’s had gotten bigger again. Now it’s almost two meters wide. Still can’t see the bottom. Looks like the Council tried to fence it off with some hazard tape during the night but that’s already falling apart. Unless the Occultists took it down.
Oh, yh. The Occultists. I’ve got a good view of the park from outside of my house and saw the Occultists were setting up camp there. They’re easy to spot. Purple hooded robes, lined with gold. All of them wearing a different kind of theatrical mask, like they looted the costume department for the ball scene in Labyrinth. Love that film. Don’t love the Occultist so much. Still… nice to see people being responsible and wearing masks.
There’s about a dozen of them that I could see. Most were setting up tents or constructing their own rope fence around the hole. A local trade union had set up a stall a outside their encampment. They usually show up whenever there’s any kind of gathering in the city. A couple of Occultists were being distracted by one of them handing out newspapers.
When I wandered over to do my morning check on the hole, one of the purple hooded figures approached me. She made a diamond shape with her hands by putting the index fingers and thumbs together.
“Abandon all hope, neighbour,” she chirped. By her welcoming tone, I gathered this was a greeting.
“Thanks. And you. What’s going on here?”
“Oh, we misplaced our hole.”
“That thing’s yours?”
“Yeah,” she replied meekly. “It was meant to be in Millennium Square, but looks like our coordinates were a bit off again.”
“Again?”
“Oh, I mean this time,” she corrected herself. “It’s kind of embarrassing. Dante was certain he got the ritual right. We must have summoned it 7 or 8 times before we found out it arrived here.”
Her voice trailed off. “Now that I think about… I hope this is the only one. Hmm. We should check on that.”
She carried on. “It’s bloody inconvenient though. If it were central Leeds we could just get a bus into town. Now we have to get a bus into town, just to get a bus back out of town. And they never show up. Bring back the trams, I say.”
I agreed. “I’m with you there. Did you know we’re the biggest city in Europe without a railed public transport system?”
“Did you know they started building an underground tram system back in the 1940s?” she responded.
“I did not.”
“Yup. But they never opened it to the public. Not surprised really. In this city, things get weird the deeper you get.”
“Well, that sounds ominous,” I thought to myself while peering down the very, very deep hole that opened up opposite my house. “If you don’t mind me asking, are you gonna be here long? And why are Occultists summoning holes in my park?“
"Excuse me,” she protested. “We’re not Occultists. We are a perfectly respectable book club.”
Oh, that’s right. Occultists were banned last year after the incident on the Headrow. If I remember, it was the called the Abomination of the Fire Breathing Hydra. Actually I think they had the same robes as these guys.
They had set up camp on Briggate and were trying to summon a very small demon they could use as a group mascot. Things didn’t go according to plan and they ended up summoning a six legged, three storey tall, 42 tonne fire breathing hydra outside PC World.
Fortunately it was quite friendly. And they managed to banish it in the end, but not before it had trampled its way to the bottom of The Headrow. The road wasn’t built for that kind of heavy foot traffic. The council are still repairing the damage to the street.
“So not the Abomination of the Fire Breathing Hydra then?”
“Nope. We’re The Followers of Virgil. I’m Rosalind by the way.”
The person handing out newspapers approached us. “Copy of Socialist Worker?”
“No, thank you.”
They moved on to someone struggling to set up a pyre.
Rosalind continued. “Don’t suppose you fancy joining our club?”
“I’m more into manga. I’d watch your step around that hole. I lost my phone down it earlier this week.”
“You mean this one?” Rosalind pulled my rose gold iPhone out from under her robe.
“That’s it! Thank you! Wait, how did you get it?”
“It’s how we found the hole. Dante got a text from your phone saying he screwed up the coordinates. Then the hole spat it out when we got here.”
“It’s not even cracked. Nice. Really appreciate it.”
“No problem, neighbour. Glad we found its owner. I got to get back to setting up the tents, but it’s been nice chatting. You know where to find us if you do wanna sign up for the book club.”
It’s definitely a cult. “Sure. I’ll think about it.”
“Abandon all hope, neighbour.”
“You too.”
Now here’s where it gets weird. My phone was absolutely fine. It even still had a charge! But now it can connect to my mobile network even while I’m underground which is weird because I could never get a signal in my basement flat before. And the WiFi isn’t working properly. It keeps disconnecting from my home network and reconnecting to some other network whose WiFi name is just corrupted ASCII characters. Complete gibberish. It’s got good bandwidth so I’m not complaining. It’s just weird.
I went back to the hole to try and get my phone back but no luck. Sent a whole roll of string down it but still can’t find the bottom. That makes it at least 100 meters deep!
I’ve tried ringing it from a land-line, but surprise surprise, no signal. (damn you, O2). Would have been funny if someone answered. But with how deep it’s gone, it would probably count as an international call, and I don’t really wanna pay for that.
The hole was wider. About a foot across now, And about two feet down it, I spotted something was stuck in the side. I reached in and grabbed it along with a handful of the dirt.
It was a little sprout. Nothing weird for a change. I was about to cast it aside when I noticed a noise coming from somewhere close by. It wasn’t coming from the hole. I closed my hand around the sprout and the noise stopped.
Weird.
I pulled my hand up next to my ear and listened carefully. Not a sound. I slowly opened my hand and the noise started again, and it was definitely coming from the sprout! It sounded like it was crying? I cupped my other hand over the top of it, and the crying stopped again. I guess it doesn’t like the light.
Well, little buddy. You’re in luck, because I live in a basement flat with no windows.
So I brought my little buddy home, and planted them in a Nine Inch Nails coffee mug.
I live in quite a nice part of Leeds. Outside of the centre. I guess you could call it a suburb. But my home is garbage. It’s what’s known as a bedsit, which is a single room that acts as my bedroom, living room, and kitchen combined. Think studio apartment, but smaller. It has no windows due to it being a basement bedsit and just one door going in. Very miserable and gets really cold in winter. The damp is becoming a problem as well. I have to have an air filter running 24/7 to try and keep the mould problem under control.
So it probably won’t come as much of a surprise that I spend as much time outside of this burrow as possible. Fortunately, there is lovely park opposite my place. It isn’t huge, but it’s well maintained. It’s mostly a large grassy field with a few chestnut trees scattered around.
Today I was sat in my favourite spot under one of the chestnut trees. The sun had come out for a few minutes and I had a couple new manga to read which a lovely friend gave me for my birthday It was quiet except for a few dog walkers and a group of kids mummifying a dead fox they found. Nice day.
Then this bouncy golden retriever runs up to me with a tennis ball.
“Hello, pretty doggo!” I greeted it.
But it ignores me and circles round to the side of the tree, towards a random hole in the grass. I didn’t even notice it before.
Pretty doggo drops their ball into the hole and bounces backwards, tail wagging in anticipation. I thought maybe they want me to pick it up, so I start to stand when suddenly the ball rockets out of the hole and shoots about 25 meters away! Doggo chases after it.
I investigate the hole. It’s about 6 inches wide. A bit like a burrow, though there isn’t any loose soil around it. And it’s deep. Straight down. Completely vertical.
Doggo runs up again and pushes me out of the way so they can drop their ball in again. Just like before, it shoots off into the distance and doggo chases after it. Doggo’s owner walks past and smiles at me.
“She loves that hole,” they tell me.
Doggo doesn’t come back to the hole again so I continue investigating.
First I thought to drop a pebble in. It quickly disappeared into the dark. Then a few seconds later the pebble pops back up out of the hole, and plops down next to me. Pretty weird.
I turn the torch on my iPhone on and shine it down. Still can’t see the bottom. This thing is really deep. Again, I drop the pebble and see it travels a bit further this time, until it inevitably disappears. Then it comes back into view and hurtles towards me! I leap back just in time to avoid getting hit by the returning pebble and it lands a couple of feet from the entrance.
I was starting to see a pattern.
Wanting to see further down, I keep the torch on my phone on and, only somewhat hesitantly, drop it down the hole. Now I could see how far it goes! Maybe even the bottom!
It fell.
And it fell.
And it kept falling.
And falling.
The light from the torch got dimmer and dimmer.
Then faded away into the dark.
And I waited.
And I waited.
The sun was setting.
I still waited.
The sun set.
Street lights began to flicker on.
It was getting cold out.
I headed home.
The effing hole robbed me.
So yeah, if anyone finds a phone, it was an iPhone SE in rose gold with an “I believe in fairies” Tinkerbell sticker on the case.
