300 Days of Writing
Day 57 Underneath:
In every home, there is an underneath space. This is the space you cannot see but you can feel. It’s the place your keys go missing or one earring out of a set. The underneath space is full of bobby pins, loose change, and playing cards.
You look for the underneath space. You become obsessed with finding it. With finding what is lost. You know that the underneath space is growing. Slowly. Like lava pooling across the ground, red hot and cooling to black.
You begin to experiment looking for a way in. You think heat might be the answer and you burn your hand on the stovetop. You leave the oven on until the smoke alarm is blaring and smoke is filling the little apartment.
This was the closest you got to the underneath, but the fire chief pulled you out from it. Pulled you away from the lost land and back into the cold reality. They bandaged your palms and put ointment on your skin, but you cursed them all the same.
You join a discord page called “Finding the Underneath” and spend your days in the hospital reading about peoples’ near encounters with the lost land. The land beneath the ground.
Some people say that it is filled with spirits. The corpses that are buried in the earth get trapped there. Unable to escape they roam the Underneath searching for keys out or shiny things to pass the time, or people to converse with.
That’s when you find your answer to the underneath. Your only way out is to be pulled back down, down into the ground, and so you sneak out of the hospital ward, purchase a shovel, and march into the wild, ready to dig your way into a new life.
Сайхан Бичээрэй!
H