THE TUNNEL PERVERT

Davis Tillman was not surprised when he awoke to the sound of furious car horns coming from outside his bedroom window. Nor was he surprised when he heard threats of violence also coming from outside his bedroom window. For Davis Tilman lived in a cheap duplex at the corner of Virgil and Conti, widely known as the worst intersection in the entire city, especially in the morning. 

It didn’t used to be like this. It used to be a fine intersection, if a bit narrow and pothole-riddled, situated at the border of Lakeview and Mid-City, two large, respectable, neighborhoods in the city. But then the city decided to shut down for repairs the only highway on-ramp in Lakeview that headed west. And at the exact same time, the city decided to also shut down for repairs the only highway on-ramp in Mid-City that headed east. And then the city created detours for both groups of aggrieved commuters, complete with signs and arrows, that lead to the open on-ramps in Mid-City and Lakeview heading east and west, respectively. Both detours had different starting points, obviously, and different end points, obviously. But the detours did meet in the middle at exactly one intersection, Virgil and Conti. 

Davis’s corner. 

There was no particular reason for any of this, as far Davis could tell, as it would have been perfectly possible for the detours to reach their destinations without ever even brushing up against one another. And he had no doubt that in any other city this is exactly what would have happened. But Davis knew that he lived an illogical city. A maddening city. A city that strived on chaos and short-sightedness. A city that would create two major detours at the same time and not realize they both met at the exact same narrow, residential corner, ensuring countless traffic nightmares each and every day, especially in the morning. 

So no, Davis was not surprised when he awoke to all that noise from outside his window, for that had been his nonconsensual alarm clock for the last two months.  

Nor was he surprised when he awoke to find the river of sweat that was flowing over his body and soaking into his sheets. His illogical city was notorious for its humid summers. But this particular summer had been even worse than usual, what the attractive people on the news referred to as “one of the worst heat waves in years.” Worse still, the air conditioning in Davis’s duplex had broken down three weeks ago, and he still had yet to convince the repair company to come fix it. 

And lastly, Davis was not surprised by the vicious hangover currently wailing on him, as there was simply no other way he knew of to fall asleep in the hot humid jungle that was his bedroom besides indulging in the drink beforehand. 

No, none of these things surprised him. What did take him aback on this particular morning, however, was just how depressing his life seemed when he added all these things up. Here he was, a sweat-ridden, pained man at the mercy of rage-filled commuters in a city that logic forgot. Yes, that was very depressing. Frankly it was no way to start the day, and yet that was how each and every day had started for him the past three weeks, and each time it cut into his soul a little more.  

He reached out toward the windowsill, past the empty bottle of Lafitte’s Loot, his favorite brand of whiskey, for his phone so he could make the same two calls that he made every miserable morning. The first was to City Hall. A movement had arisen in his neighborhood to pester the powers that be until someone fixed the damn detour problem. A phone number had been distributed among those in the movement, supposedly a City Hall hotline that was meant as a way for the people of the city to complain about problems such as these. Of course, in the two months of calling, not once had someone answered on the other end, it always went to a voicemail. And of course, after two months of leaving irate voicemails, not a single thing had been done about the issue. But Davis still called every morning. It felt good in a way. Cathartic. 

“Fix the goddamn traffic problem at my intersection! Change the detours now!” He screamed into the void. 

His next call was to the loathsome and incompetent AC Cool City Repair Shop. Davis had only been calling them for three weeks, not two months, yet he hated them just as much as ol’ City Hall. But, he reminded himself, at least they had the decency to pick up the phone when he called. 

“Hello, AC Cool City Repair, how may we help you?” a calm voice answered. 

“Fix my goddamn AC already! It’s been three weeks!”  

“Go to hell, Davis!” The voice shouted back. “We’ll get to you when we get to you, like I tell you every damn day!” Click. 

Davis resisted the urge to throw his phone at his wall, and was rewarded for this when he realized he had an unread text waiting for him. 

Maybe it’s from Irene, he hoped.

But it wasn’t. It was just another worried text from his older sister, Stephanie, asking him if he thought he was an alcoholic and if he should give up drinking. This time Davis did throw his phone, which landed with a great smack against the far wall before falling to the hardwood below. 

  That’s enough activity for one morning, he decided, letting his head fall back onto his sweaty pillows and closing his eyes. But outside his window, the horns continued to honk, and the drivers continued to curse at one another. Inside his head, it felt like hammers were being slammed into his brain. And, of course, there was still the river of sweat flowing from his head to his toes. No man can sleep in these conditions, he realized, so he grabbed the sweat rag that he kept next to him in bed to deal with one of these afflictions. Originally, the rag had been a stylish hand towel gifted to him by Irene, his now-ex-girlfriend, but he had stopped using it for its intended purpose after they broke up. He had forgotten about it entirely until one day he noticed that it had somehow made its way to the corner of the bathroom, now dirty and nasty with various lavatorial specimens. Davis let it stay there for some time, feeling as it was a rather appropriate symbol for his failed relationship, rotting there in the corner, forgotten. And there it remained, this badge of floundering love, until three weeks ago when his air conditioning broke and he picked it up from the corner and cleaned it off so he could use it as a weapon against the bodily water that tried to drown him in the heat of the night. 

Davis continued to consider the state of his life as he wiped away the sweat with his ex-girl’s gift. But all his big-picture wallowing was replaced with immediate horror when he realized he was not actually holding his hand-towel-turned-sweat-rag at all but rather his special bed shirt. The crusty, stained, white t-shirt he never wore but always kept at the side of the bed for when his bouts of loneliness had to be dealt with.

This realization made him shudder in repulsion. What have I become?, he wondered as he threw the decadent shirt across the room where it hit the far wall and fell in the proximity of his, most likely, broken phone. I’m a full grown man with no family, no children, but two rags that I keep on my bed for my various daily bodily oozing. He then wondered how many people in his life suspected he was this way behind closed doors? How many of his friends and family secretly understood that he was this disgusting and pathetic in the privacy of his own duplex? He made an earnest attempt to figure out the exact number. But this ended in great failure, as the question was, ultimately, a math problem, which was something one should never try to solve when in the midst of a great hangover. And so, for his foolishness, he was rewarded with harder hammers against his brain. 

And all the while the damned car horns continued to blast away outside.

How is this my life? Davis agonized. What’s the point of it? What’s the purpose? What am I doing?  

In the middle of this existential crisis, Davis realized he could hear another familiar sound coming from outside. It was the sound of his neighbor’s voice barking orders. Mr. Benson, Davis thought with a shudder, the portly, mustachioed real-estate agent who lived in the pretty, lily-white, stilted house on the other side of Virgil Street. Davis didn’t care much for his neighbor. He was one of those cranky religious conservative types, the kind that never swore but also never seemed to be happy about anything either. 

But, if there was one person who hated the detour traffic hell more than Davis, it was Mr. Benson. As surely that their streets would be filled with angry commuters every morning, almost as surely would Mr. Benson would come out of his home at some point and start berating the drivers for their cursing and honking. 

“Why don’t you all just calm down!” Davis heard Mr. Benson demand that morning outside his window. “Stop honking your damn horns and try acting respectable for once, my daughter’s still sleeping for Pete’s sake!” 

Davis’s thoughts now turned to Mr. Benson’s daughter, who seemed to be in her early-to-mid twenties, yet still lived at home. Not that Davis minded, as she was a gorgeous, tall woman with auburn hair. While he had never actually spoken to her, and didn’t even know her name, Davis had seen her a number of times coming and going from the white stilted house across the street, and that was enough for him to develop an affection for her. Now Davis began to have more thoughts about his neighbor’s attractive daughter, and it wasn’t long before these new thoughts brought about a certain pleasurable action under his thin, sweat-drenched sheets. 

Davis’s hangover felt a bit more distant now, as a barrier of clouded delight somewhat blocked the hammer blows. Yet the sound outside, the horns and the screaming of threats, continued unabated, and Davis distinctly heard what sounded like a middle-aged lady threaten someone with a knife. 

And then there was the sweat, too, as the river had returned thanks to this under-the-sheet action, and it soon felt like Davis might legitimately drown in the puddle of his own making. But Davis refused to let this affect his activity. He pressed on with rigor, taking in the mental image of the daughter with a focus that he rarely applied to his actual life. And then, something funny happened. He found that as went about his business, he also began to take in all the external distractions and used them to fuel his activity. The car horns, the threats, the lake of sweat beneath him, the awful pain in his head, all of it he used in motivation.

 Fuck this city, he thought as he went to work. Fuck everyone in it. Fuck City Hall and AC Cool City Repair. Fuck the lazy and the incompetent, the rich and the corrupt. They could all die in a fire while I give it to the tall daughter next door all day and all night. 

He could now feel the end coming soon, so Davis grabbed his ex’s hand towel off the bed, as his special shirt was no longer in reach. And as he desecrated his ex’s gift, he felt a familiar flash of bliss come over him. 

But just beyond that pleasure, just as the climax hit, Davis heard something outside. Something that sounded like a crash. Almost like a car crash, but louder, more severe. And although he couldn’t be sure, he thought he might have also felt the ground shake below him.  

Davis raised his ear to the window now, eager to hear the commotion that this new crash would stir, hoping it would give him some answers. But instead, he heard something far more disturbing.

 Silence. 

The incessant honking had died away, no more screaming either. Just silence. Deep, unnerving, silence. 

And then a familiar voice boomed with a fury so great it caused Davis to actually recoil in surprise. 

“WHAT THE FUCK!!??…OH MY GOD MY HOUSE!!”  

 In all his years living next to his easily aggrieved neighbor, Davis had never once heard Mr. Benson utter a curse word, or a blasphemy, and in just two exclamations he had heard both. Now more than ever, Davis felt compelled to find out what kind of crash could cause such a man as Mr. Benson to spew vulgarities in public. So despite his hangover, he rolled out of bed with a grunt, threw on a clean-ish shirt and some jeans from off the floor and staggered his way into the kitchen, where the backdoor was located, which offered the perfect view of his ill-tempered neighbor’s home across the street. 

He opened the backdoor with excitement, wondering if perhaps some idiot had somehow crashed into Mr. Benson’s front porch. 

Wouldn’t that be something?!

But instead he opened the back door and saw… nothing. Literally nothing. The same kind of nothing one sees when they close their eyes. A sort of black nothingness. Deep, dark black nothingness.  

For just a second, Davis felt a similar sensation to when he used to take LSD back in the day with his college buddies. They used to go to the park together to trip out. He used to love staring down into the waters of the park pond. The dark, mysterious waters swirling around together, creating some sort of ultimate void that seemed to breathe in and out, in and out. That’s how it felt now, as he stared into the blackness of his back door. 

 How could this be? It was morning. He knew it was morning. Certain of it. Just to make sure, he looked over to the window on the other wall, just above the pile of dirty dishes that used to be a functioning sink, and found disgusting morning light pouring into his duplex. 

Yes, it was unquestionably morning.  

And yet, still the darkness from his back door. It was as if his back door wanted him to believe it was still night. No, not night, but nothing. Like it was nothing o’clock. It simply didn’t make any sense. 

As he struggled with this new reality, Davis could feel the slightest of breezes coming from this new abyss. It was a nice push of cold, refreshing air. Soothing. Inviting. No longer did he feel like he was living in a hot jungle, but rather on a peaceful, heavenly cloud. For just a brief moment, Davis had the absurd idea that maybe AC Cool City Repairs had finally arrived, but instead of fixing his existing unit, had simply installed a new one that covered his entire back door. Of course, he knew the idea was absurd, but standing there, taking in the cool air and staring off into the abyss, he didn’t much care. He stopped caring about that crash outside too, stopped caring about his pathetic life altogether, in fact, and just…was. 

And he might have stayed like that all morning, standing in front of the black abyss in the cool air, just being, but then a furious series of knocks began from the other side of his home, from the front door, released him from his trance.  

More pits of darkness, he wondered? Perhaps they are taking over the whole neighborhood, one door at a time. He managed to free himself from the nothingness before him and went off to see what this new interruption wanted from him. 

Thump! Thump! Thump!

His front door continued to call for him. The obnoxious noise brought his hangover back. 

Thump! Thump! Thump!
“I’m coming, dammit!” he yelled. 

“Davis! Answer the door immediately!” 

Oh crap, he realized, that’s no abyss, that’s Mr. Benson. He must blame me for the conundrum that’s hanging out in my backyard. ‘Once you start letting one of these ambiguous enigmas hang around,’ he imagined Mr. Benson yelling at him, ‘there’ll be a whole army of them showing up the next day. And then, boom! There goes the neighborhood!” 

He opened the door to find Mr. Benson’s prim and proper mustachioed face staring at him, backlit by the morning sun that apparently had not been banished from his front porch. 

“You wanna tell me what the heck is going on?” Mr Benson growled.

“If you’re referring to the dark abyss in my side yard, I can promise you, I’m as clueless as you.” 

Mr. Benson gave him a long hard stare. 

“Are you being cute with me, son? I’m referring to the monstority that’s just destroyed MY GOSH DARN HOUSE!” 

Mr. Benson’s face seemed to be turning into a volcano right in front of his eyes, and Davis didn’t like it one bit. What an odd morning this was turning out to be.  

“Mr. Benson, please, calm down. I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but-” 

“Then come with me, and I’ll show you what I’m talking about!” Mr. Benson did not wait for him to respond to this command, and instead pivoted his rather large, awkward body so that the rolls of fat on the back of his neck were now staring at Davis as he hobbled his way down the porch stairs and then down the sidewalk towards Virgil Street.

 Davis followed his neighbor off his porch and down the sidewalk. As they walked, Davis looked down Conti Street. His eyes grew in surprise. Even for the “worst intersection in the city” this was bad. The line of cars coming from Lakeview, going down Conti Street before turning on Virgil, didn’t seem to end. Miles and miles and miles it seemed to go.  

“Come along, young man!” Mr. Benson shouted from further down the sidewalk at the intersection. 

Davis shuffled his feet toward his neighbor, while his eyes went in every direction, trying to take in all the sights. There was just so much going on around him. The volatile faces of the drivers in their cars as they slapped their steering wheels or punched the ceilings. There were his other neighbors too, standing on their porches, all peering down Virgil Street while muttering to themselves.   

And then there was the man in the expensive-looking suit, pacing furiously on the sidewalk across the street, yelling into his phone while holding the hand of what Davis assumed to be his little boy, who looked to be around age eight and for some reason wearing a superhero costume, complete with a black mask and cape. 

All of it so strange. 

Of course, the cherry on top was that nearly every tree and pole growing out from the sidewalk had the same poster taped to it, the same poster that had been there for two months, the one with a black and white picture of the very intersection Davis was now standing next to, complete with a horrendous mess of traffic, and below that a series of words printed in large bold font read: LET THE SCUMBAGS AT CITY HALL KNOW YOU WILL NOT PUT UP WITH THIS!  along with the phone number that Davis already knew by heart. Davis wondered if that was the number the man in the blue suit had dialed, if he was leaving a nasty voicemail similar to the one Davis left every morning. 

 But then Davis turned the corner toward Virgil and all of those thoughts vanished in an instant. Again, just as when he had first opened up the back door in his kitchen, he felt as if he was experiencing the effects of LSD. For in front of him, extending from his house, across Virgil Street like some careless, never-ending pedestrian, was a giant red cylinder-shaped structure. It reminded Davis of an enormous straightened-out snake, but made out of some sort of steel. As Davis took in this sight, he tried to guess its height. Maybe eight feet? 

He followed this steel snake with his gaze, muttering his horror exactly twice. First when he found a destroyed convertible sports car, with its front end completely smashed under the structure, and then again when he realized the snake-like thing had crashed through the front of Mr. Benson’s house, creating a giant hole in the process.  

“Can you please explain this to me!?” Mr. Benson shouted at him. “Can you explain why this…thing is going from your backdoor and right in through my wall and then up INTO MY EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER’S ROOM!!” 

Eighteen years old? But she’s so tall… Davis couldn’t believe it. He felt a dark shame.  

“I hope you realize you’re in a world of trouble now, son,” his large neighbor spat with venom. Davis took a few steps closer to the Benson house for a better inspection. Nothing he saw could refute what his neighbor was telling him. It did appear as if, right after the tunnel tore a sizable hole in the front wall, it immediately made a ninety degree angle upwards towards the second floor, presumably where Mr. Benson’s daughter’s room was located. 

“I always knew you were off, like all you young liberal punks are. But I didn’t realize you were a full-blown pervert.” 

Suddenly, Davis felt like he was about to pass out. Between the sun beating down on the top of his head, the angry drivers smashing their horns once again, and of course, the impossible snake-like structure connecting him to the man he hated and the daughter he didn’t, it was all just a bit too much for him. 

Davis bent over and put his head in between his knees, taking in breaths of air. 

“Vomiting won’t save you now,” his neighbor assured him. “I’ve already called the police, they should be here any minute. You can give your story to them.”

Davis wanted very much to defend himself. He wanted to point out that it would be impossible for him to create this contraption, whatever it was, and then carry it across the street and somehow connect it to their two houses, in broad daylight, no less, with Mr. Benson standing right in front of his house. He wanted to say all of this, but at the moment he was having a hard time just trying to breathe. 

“Do you two assholes know what the hell happened here!” Davis and his neighbor turned to find the man in the business suit storming toward them, his superhero son in tow.  “My fucking car is destroyed!” the man said, pointing at the annihilated convertible under the tunnel.  

Davis ignored the man and looked down at the boy. The boy wore a face of misery and fright. Whether he felt this way due to the accident he was just in or the behavior of his irate father, it was tough for Davis to say. 

“Do not use that sort of vulgarity in my presence, sir!” Mr. Benson roared back at the man. “I have had a traumatic day. If you haven’t noticed, there is a giant…thing crashing into my house! The last thing I need is to hear are those toxic, ungodly, words coming out of your mouth!” 

The two began to argue back and forth, and almost as if by instinct, something told Davis to run back into his house while he still could. 

And so, without thinking, he ran. 

As he reached his front porch he heard Mr. Benson begin to call after him, but he quickly opened his front door, retreated inside, and slammed and locked it behind him. Once inside his place, Davis immediately headed to the kitchen. He shielded his eyes from the abyss until he could get a hand on the door and slam it shut. 

Deep breath.

No more blackness. 

Deep breath. 

No more screaming. 

Deep breath.

Everything will be ok. 

But from outside, he could still hear the incessant honking from the inconvenienced motorists, he could still hear the drivers making threats, but now the threats seemed to be directed at him. And now there was furious knocking on his front door, no doubt by his large, unkind neighbor. Bits of sweat from his top lip dripped into his mouth. Salty. He needed water. He rushed to the fridge and grabbed the plastic jug that stood on the middle shelf. No time for a glass, he chugged straight from the jug.

How the hell did this happen? Someone must have set me up. But who? Who would want to do this to me? I am the most insignificant person in the city, possibly the world.

Davis scanned his brain for the names of any people that might want to sabotage him. 

I am the most insignificant person in the world, he concluded. 

He finished off the jug of water, and yet still found himself thirsty. Was there another bottle of Lafitte’s Loot whiskey in the cupboard, he wondered.

“Mr. Tillman!” he heard Mr. Benson’s voice shout from behind the front door. “You’ll be happy to know the police have arrived! I hope you’ve enjoyed your little fun, because it’s about to come to an unfortunate end!”  

The image of the police breaking down his door with one of those steel pole things began to play on a loop in Davis’s mind.   

Again, without actually thinking, Davis rose to his feet and opened the back door. He stared into the dark abyss once more. He felt the cool air pushing against him. 

It felt so good. 

He gulped hard and entered the unknown, closed the door behind him and left the honking and the knocking and the hell that was his life behind.   

Inside the structure, everything was perfect. The air was cool and refreshing, the light was nonexistent, and no sound could be heard from the outside. It was a beautiful chamber of nothingness. Just perfect. Davis could have stayed there for the rest of his days. But he knew that would be a bad idea. There was a good chance his neighbor or the police would open that back door and find him standing there in complete contentment in the dark, and then where would he be?

So Davis made his way down the tunnel. Oddly enough, despite its apparent great size from the outside, he soon found the ceiling gradually lowering until he was forced to get on his hands and knees and crawl. And so crawl he did, in the dark, wondering what the hell he was doing.  

After a good amount of crawling, his head made a nice thud sound as it hit the wall of the tunnel that was apparently right in front of him. After rubbing his head a bit, he put out a hand and felt for what was in front of him. There did appear to be some sort of wall there now. He lifted his hand up and found there was no longer a ceiling above him. 

This must be where the tunnel goes up… he thought. He reached his hand out and groped the wall once more until he felt what seemed to be a holding spot for a hand or foot carved into the tunnel. He moved his hand up and felt an identical holding spot about a foot above, and then another a foot above that. There it was. A ladder of sorts for him to use. But the question was, should he use it? He knew perfectly well where this would lead. How would that help? But I can’t very well just stay in here forever. Maybe, he considered, maybe he could just pop out and run out the room and down the stairs, and then out the backdoor, make his way from the Benson’s backyard to City Park Ave. He’d have to jump a fence or two probably, but from there he could just haul ass to a friend’s place, go somewhere safe where he could think, talk to someone. It was far from a perfect plan, but it beat simply waiting in the dark to be found.  

 Carefully, Davis pulled himself up with the built-in steps and then, once he was standing, he lifted his feet onto the holes and began to climb up the tunnel. With each step, he tried to make out any noise or light that might be coming from above, but he saw and heard nothing. 

After a few more steps up, though, he suddenly found himself, or at least his head, popping out of the tunnel, and his eyes burned as they were blinded by the light that he was no longer used to. He made a surprised noise of pain now, and that’s when he heard what sounded like a sort of frantic rustling next to him. His eyes, still adjusting to the light, could barely make out the sight of limbs flailing and long auburn hair shaking about. Just behind this, he could see what looked to be red hearts and crucifixes pinned to a white wall.  

And then the screaming came.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

 It was the ear-piercing screaming that could only come from the vocal pipes of a teenage girl. He automatically lifted his hands up in a gesture of non-aggression, and while he did this he turned to the figure to show he meant no harm, but by doing so he accidentally moved his feet off the last step of the tunnel and felt himself fall back into the darkness. The last thing he heard before everything went dark was a single word cried out in complete horror.  

“Daaaaaaaaaaddddyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!” 

 Davis scurried in the darkness now. He had no real plan, he just wanted to get away from whatever he had just been through. But as he crawled, an image came to him. It was an image of a bottle of Lafitte’s Loot. He knew, or at least hoped, he had a bottle of it back in the cupboard in his kitchen. He knew going back there seemed rather foolish, but he had a small hope that the screaming from the daughter’s room had brought Mr. Benson and the cops over to the stilted house across the street, which would allow him to dart inside his kitchen and grab the bottle before retreating back in the tunnel, like some absurd game of pickle. 

 Davis crawled for a long time. Long enough, in fact, for him to realize that something was wrong. He should have reached his back door by now. He had learned that crawling as a method of travel was slow and tedious, but even still, he should have come to his back door by now. And then he came to long turns and quick twists in the tunnel and knew for certain that something was indeed not right. God dammit, he thought, where the hell am I going?   

He crawled for what seemed like forever, but very easily could have been less than ten minutes. His knees were beginning to hurt. Since he was a child, Davis suffered from particularly weak knees. He had no trouble jumping or anything like that, but when it came to kneeling, or putting any kind of pressure on his kneecaps, he always felt a great amount of pain. Even as an adult, he would sit criss cross to tie his shoes, no matter how ridiculous it looked. And his knees were not happy now that he was suddenly asking so much of them, not happy at all.

And then, just like when he reached the daughter’s room, everything changed with a single lurch forward when he found himself out of the tunnel and surrounded by blinding light. But now he also found himself falling through the air. It wasn’t a long fall, only a couple of feet, before he hit the metal edge of something, bounced off that, and then fell again, this time landing on a floor that was hard, cold, and slightly wet. It took him several moments to collect his senses, but once he did, he realized he was lying on the floor of a bathroom. But not just any bathroom, a bathroom he was familiar with. A bathroom with a familiar smell of repulsion, a bathroom with a familiar incessant dripping noise coming from the long metal urinal trough that hung off the wall. It was the bathroom at Mick’s, he realized, the dive bar in his neighborhood that called itself an Irish pub for reasons that were unclear to Davis.

 Jesus, of all the places to go, he muttered to himself and rose to his feet.  He noticed the giant protruding entrance of the tunnel sticking out, and the nasty metallic urinal trough just below it. What a sight. Davis remembered his earlier cry for whiskey and decided he had to risk it. He headed out the door to the bathroom and put on a smile. Perhaps if I just act casual I can walk out unnoticed.  

 Davis walked out of the bathroom not like a casual man but rather one who had just been through the most illogical morning of his entire life. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice, as the few people at the bar were staring at the flat screen television that hung just above the array of various booze bottles. 

“Hey there buddy, I didn’t even see ya comin in. Can I get ya a drink?” the bartender said absently, barely moving his eyes away from what was being shown on the television. 

Davis studied the bartender’s face. He was a man in his late thirties, maybe early forties, with a salt and pepper beard and a good set of crows feet next to his eyes. Davis didn’t recognize him. Which made sense, he only really came to Mick’s at night, late at night, when he had nowhere else to drink. 

“Yeah, lemme get two fingers of Lafitte’s Loot,” Davis answered as cool as he could manage. While the bartender reached for a glass and a bottle, Davis’s eyes caught what was being broadcasted on tv and his heart stopped. For on screen stood an attractive female reporter with brown hair, right next to his neighbor, Mr. Benson, and his daughter, on the street they all lived on. And behind them all, the tunnel loomed in the background. 

“We are standing here with Mr. Brent Benson and his daughter Tiffany, who have had quite the traumatic morning, to say the least,” the reporter said to the camera before turning to her interviewees, “Now, would one of you mind explaining to our viewers at home exactly what happened?” 

The bartender placed the glass of whiskey in front of Davis without his eyes ever leaving the tv.  

“Oh, you bet I can tell you,” Mr. Benson’s voice barked from the tv speakers. “This punk, Davis Tilman, that’s T-I-L-M-A-N, destroyed my house just to get to my daughter in her room, MY EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER!” 

Davis took a big gulp of his whiskey. 

“I see,” the reporter said with strong empathy in her voice. “Now what do you mean destroyed? Are you referring to this cylinder structure behind you?”

“You darn right I am,”  Mr. Benson replied, “This is some sort of tunnel, you see. One of those above ground tunnels, I suppose. Mr. Tilman used this to invade my home and get into the room of my daughter, MY EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER.” 

“That sounds horrifying,” the reporter replied. “Now, you’ve lived next to him for a few years, correct? Did you have any suspicion he might be capable of doing this?”  

“Yes, absolutely. I could tell he was a pervert the second I met him. He has that look to him, ya know?”

“And you, Tiffany,” the reporter moved on to the daughter now, who had watery eyes. “Can you tell us what it was like from your point of view when all this went down?”

“Well,” the daughter said with a sickening combination of fright and sadness, “I never actually heard the tunnel, or whatever it was, come in. And my parents didn’t wake me up, I guess they didn’t want to scare me. So I slept through the whole thing… until, until…” Davis could see her breathing heavy now, hands over her heart, struggling to get the words out, “I heard someone make this weird noise and I looked over and there he was…his head…sticking out of his… tunnel!” she begin to cry now, full on sobs, in fact. Her dad put a protective arm around her and kissed the top of her head before he turned and faced the camera with a look of pure hate. 

“I would just like to say one thing to my neighbor, if he’s listening,” Mr. Benson said. 

“Of course, go right ahead,” the reporter responded with clear eagerness.

“Davis Tilman,” his neighbor said directly into the camera, “I don’t know what what’s going through your mind right now, or where you might be, but I have one thing I want you to know. Jesus has no tolerance for perverts, especially tunnel perverts, and he will punish you for your sinful ways.”

 Davis stared at the tv with an open mouth. Dumbfounded. Tunnel pervert. He did not care for that term. Not at all.

“I’m tellin’ ya, this is what I been sayin’, ” Davis heard one of the drunks at the bar tell his buddy.  

“What’s that?” The other one said. 

“Tha’ this country has been goin’ to hell ‘n a handbasket. Tha’ all these damn youn’ punks are perverts and d’generates. Smokin’ dope and creatin’ tunnels to git to our dau’ghers.” 

“I still don’ see how sumone cou’ jus’ make their own tunne’ like that. Don’ make no sense.” 

“Well-”

“Will you two shut up,” the bartender silenced them. “I want to hear the rest of this.” 

“As we reported before,” the brunette reporter told the viewers, “this tunnel has apparently grown in size. We take you to our Channel 8 Eye-In-the-Sky chopper which is now hovering above us.” The screen switched to a bird’s eye view of Davis’s neighborhood. “As you can see from this angle, the tunnel clearly splits off into two paths. One going into the Benson home, the other heading east through the abandoned firehouse parking lot before merging onto City Park Avenue and going into Midcity. We will now switch to Marty, our Channel Eight reporter who is in the helicopter as we speak.” 

Davis realized he had finished the whiskey in his glass. He tried to get the bartender to pour him another, but his eyes were still glued on the tv, so Davis boldly grabbed the bottle off the bar and poured it himself. As he poured, he stared at the label of the bottle. Lafitte’s Loot. The words were printed black, sloppy ink, as if they had been written with a quill pen by some 18th century pirate. Staring at the label, a thought struck him. Pleasuring myself, the daughter’s room, the thoughts of whiskey, the “Irish” bar…   

 Of course! Why hadn’t he realized the connection earlier. Must have been the madness of the morning messing with his brain functionality. 

“Thank you Rachel.” A new voice could be heard above the whirling sound of helicopter blades. “As you can see from the shot, we have this… tunnel here, this red, big tunnel that has just pillaged its way through the lovely neighborhood of Midcity. You can see some of the turmoil it has caused so far. Can you see all that traffic gridlock stretching down Bienville and City Park Avenue?”

Jesus Christ, Davis thought, if this is true, if I actually had this power, well that would be huge. Unbelievably huge. 

“That’s due to the tunnel. See how it’s blocking off the various driveways and intersections along Bienville? It’s causing quite the bottleneck situation in Midcity, not to mention plenty of irate morning commuters, I imagine.” 

Settle down Davis, he told himself, don’t freak out yet, this is still just a theory. I need to run another test for confirmation. This filled him with a new surge of exhilaration. For now the question was, where should he go? 

“Now, Harold,” the attractive reporter asked off-camera, “Can you tell us where this tunnel leads? Where it ends?” 

“Yes I can, Lauren, the pilot is taking us there now, it’s just up the road a ways…”

 Davis, still pondering his next move, looked back up to the television just in time to see that he was about to be screwed. 

“If you look right down there, Rachel, at that brown and green building on the left. That’s Mick’s Irish Pub, a favorite local bar in the neighborhood, and as we pivot around this corner, you can actually see where the tunnel goes into the bar…”

“Hollee shit!” cried one of the barflies. 

“Mudder of God!” the other echoed in sentiment. “It’s the tunnel pervert! He’s here!’ 

Suddenly, Davis felt all eyes on him. Not so much angry eyes, but more fearful, as if the group around him just found out the devil was sitting at their bar. Now it really was time to run.  Davis jumped off his stool and ran for the nasty bathroom. It didn’t seem like the bartender or the barflies were pursuing chase, but he continued his sprint anyway and, once in the restroom, he leapt onto the nasty metal urinal trough before diving back into his tunnel. Excitement, odd, sick excitement, overwhelmed him, filling his guts and dancing in his belly. What an unusual morning this turned out to be. But there was one phrase that kept ringing in his ear as he descended into the safe darkness.  

Tunnel pervert. 

Not the best nickname… not by any stretch. 

In the tunnel, Davis picked a destination to test out his theory. He told himself he picked the spot because it was a private residence, which is what he needed, as he wanted to avoid large public masses, and it was close by, only a few blocks away. But if those were the only conditions, then his sister’s place would have qualified as well, and made a lot more sense. 

No, deep down, Davis knew why he had chosen this spot. Irene, his ex, left him because she said he wasn’t going anywhere. Those were her exact words. 

You’re just not going anywhere, Davis.  

 But look at him now! Not only was he going places, but he was moving in a way no one else had ever moved before. How could she not be impressed by that!  

And so, with Lafitte’s Loot boosting his confidence, Davis pictured her place on Banks Street in his mind and began to crawl. Once again, the crawling took an unbelievable amount of time and it wasn’t long before his knees were screaming at him once again. 

I need to find a better method to do this, he told himself. 

Eventually, after more turns and twists and what seemed like an eternity, what happened the last two times happened again, where, with no warning, he found himself in new surroundings. 

  And with this new environment came a new pain. It was his back. He realized he was underneath some low-hanging structure, and whatever it was, the top of it was rapidly, methodically bashing down into his back. Just in front of him there was a great deal of light and what looked to be like the floor of a room. He quickly crawled his way toward the light, realizing as he did that he was hearing a certain kind of noise. An unmistakable noise. The sound of two people having sex. He turned back and saw he had previously been under a bed. A familiar bed. And, still on all fours, he looked up to the top of the bed and his ex-girlfriend in the middle of intercourse with someone Davis didn’t know, who was slamming her and the bed down time and time again. 

She seemed to be having a great time. 

“Are you kidding me?!” he said, more to himself, or the tunnel, than to the two people in the room with him. But his words were certainly heard by them. Immediately Irene, and her new mating buddy jumped off each other and covered themselves with sheets. As Irene looked down at the sight of her ex suddenly in front of her, on the floor on all fours, she made a face that Davis could only describe as a combination of horror and disgust. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Davis, what the hell are you doing here?! How did you get in?!” 

Davis opened his mouth to say something, but as he took in the situation he had put himself in, he knew this was one of those times where there was nothing he could say to save himself. So instead he simply pointed to the tunnel coming out of the wall, half-hidden by the bed, answering her last question. Then, as the two lovers gaped at the sizable hole in the wall, Davis reached for a throw pillow that had fallen to the floor, crawled back under the bed and then into his tunnel.   

Davis stormed through the nothingness of his tunnel in fury. His knees and palms slapped onto its floor as he went back and forth from biting his lip to grinding his teeth. What an idiot he had been. What the hell had he been thinking? And who the hell had she been screwing? He knew they were broken up but by god, it was a little soon to be hopping in the sack with some new guy, wasn’t it? And before noon? Who does that?! They certainly never did when they were together! 

To make matters worse, the throw pillow he had snagged was disappointing him greatly. He had hoped that the cushion would help with the pain in his knees as he travelled through the tunnel, and it did, but it also made moving much slower than it already was. By this time, he wouldn’t reach his sister’s til tomorrow. So he gave up on the pillow idea, leaving it there in the darkness, and endured the pain as he continued on his way.  

His way, incidentally, was to his sister’s house, where he should have gone in the first place. She would most likely be at work, and he would be able to rest and think about his next move. 

Upon arrival though, he found that his assumption had been wrong, his sister was home, and she was furious.   

“Of course I’m still home!” she said to him as he lied on the floor, holding his knees in great pain. “You and your damn tunnel have made traffic come to a standstill. Don’t you hear the honking coming from the street? I can’t leave my driveway!” 

Davis realized he could indeed hear the familiar sound of honking, as well as nasty threats from frustrated drivers, coming from outside. 

“Stephanie, please, can you just give me some bags of ice for my knees?” 

“Davis what the hell were you thinking?” She ignored his plea. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?” 

“I didn’t do anything!” Davis protested. “I woke up to a bad dream. All I’ve been doing is crawling, how is that a crime?” 

“Davis, look what they’re saying about you.” Stephanie reached for the remote and turned her tv on. Davis found the same brunette reporter from before talking into the camera. Next to her was a mystified Irene and her new turd of a lover, standing there with a deer-in-the-headlights stare . At the bottom of the screen were the words, in large white text: TUNNEL PERVERT STRIKES AGAIN! 

“God damn it,” Davis muttered. 

“He was just there, all of a sudden, looking at us with this face of… subtle pleasure,” he heard his ex say to the reporter. 

“Turn it off,” Davis begged his sister. “I can’t hear this right now, turn it off.” 

Stephanie did as he asked, and then left for the kitchen to grab some ice for his knees.  

“You need to turn yourself in,” she told him as she handed him a couple of ice packs. 

The idea had occurred to Davis, too. And he considered it again as he pressed the ice on his busted knees. 

 “No,” he said aloud confidently to his sister, as well to himself. “I’m not going to do that.”

“Why not, Davis? Why the hell not?” 

To that question, Davis had no real answer. Or at least, none he could put into words. It just felt wrong, turning himself in. That would be the mature thing to do. The realistic thing to do. And how the hell could that be the right response here? When something this insane happens, something this illogical, how could one’s response be to deal with it with any sort of seriousness? Everyday he had to deal with real life bullshit that demanded a serious response. But this? A magical tunnel that took him wherever he wanted? How could he deal with this in any kind of real, mature way?

But he had no way of communicating that to his rightfully frustrated sister, so instead he asked her if she had any whiskey around, preferably Lafitte’s Loot. For that, she gave him a quick kick to the stomach before leaving for the kitchen again and bringing back a beer. 

“Here. It’s all I got.” She dropped the can on his chest. “Alright Davis, so what do you wanna do?” 

Davis sat up from his spot on the floor, cracked the can open and guzzled down about half of it. He tried to think. What would you do if you had this kind of gift? 

Beads of sweat began to form around his forehead again. Davis became aware that his sister’s place was about as hot as his own. 

“Turn the a/c on, will ya?” 

But she only frowned and told him the air conditioning hadn’t been working the last five days and the repair company refused to come fix it. 

Davis considered this, and as he did, he heard the honking coming from outside. All of a sudden a lightbulb went off in his head. Davis realized what he had to do. It was silly, it was absurd, it was extremely unlikely to work, but Davis knew it was what he must do with his new power. He threw the ice packs aside and rose up confidently. 

“Sis,” he said, “Do you have any kneepads?” 

Crawling through the tunnel now, his knees felt slightly better. Well, not better, really, as they still hurt every time he put one down on the tunnel floor, but they hurt less now than before. His sister didn’t have any kneepads, but she had been willing to tape some teddy bears to his knees. Yes, it looked ridiculous, but hell, he was about to look a lot more ridiculous soon enough. There was a costume shop just a block ahead, where Davis and Irene had purchased their Halloween costumes last year. He couldn’t recall the name of the place, but he remembered it’s location, and so he crawled and prayed, hoping that was enough. 

It turned out it was, as sometime later he ended up in a room with row after row of costumes on hangers. Better still, Davis found the place dark, as the lights were off. He let out a quiet cheer for this. He had been hoping the tunnel madness had made it impossible, or impractical, for the shop to open up that morning, and he had been right. The place was closed. He had the whole store to himself. Still, he couldn’t dawdle. That damn helicopter would be above him any moment now… he had to find his outfit quick. 

Finding the mask was the easy part, as he soon found one black and thin, like a raccoon’s. Sleek and cool, just what he wanted. The rest of it though, that proved to be more difficult. He tried on one jumpsuit, a blue and red type thing, but found in the mirror it wasn’t the look he was going for, and besides it was much too big. He tried on a few more as quickly as he could, but midway through taking off the third outfit he heard the sounds of a chopper’s blades above him. Shit. He had to go now. 

In a panic, he grabbed the only outfit in reach, the blue and red one he had first tried on, and jumped back in the tunnel. It wasn’t ideal, he told himself, but it would work. 

His next stop was the bicycle shop over on Lunder Street. Davis had been there a number of times before when he needed repairs for his shoddy five-speed bike, and he knew they sold more than bicycles. 

Once back in his tunnel, he was giddy as a school boy. For underneath him was a long, flat skateboard. No more crawling for him! No more screaming knees! Now he could coast through the tunnel with ease, thanks to his trusty new ride. 

The Tunnel Pervert has arrived, he said to himself. He’d considered a number of various names for himself, but he settled on the one that was forced upon him. He decided he was going to take the name back, the same way oppressed minorities refer to themselves as the derogatory terms others call them as a way to take the power back. Yeah, that’s what I’m doing, the tunnel pervert thought to himself, I’m taking the power back.

The tunnel pervert was in full costume now, and mobile! was rolling now! Off to fight the injustices of the city! 

Traveling through the tunnel took a fraction of the time now, and made Davis feel like a real superhero. As he sped off to his next destination, his mind reeled with new places to go after his first two wrongs were righted. Why, there were so many elements of this city that needed fixing. So many nefarious characters that needed the swift lash of justice of the Tunnel Pervert. The possibilities were damn near endless. 

It was in the middle of this creative brainstorming that Davis and his new wheeled vehicle made it to the conference room of the AC Cool City Repairs headquarters. Davis had not considered that the speed with which he travelled inside the tunnel might affect how he would exit the tunnel, so it was to his great surprise when he found himself flying across a new foreign room and crashing down on the long, black oak table before tumbling off and landing on the soft carpeting below. He was even more surprised to hear the desperate screams of agony coming from inside of the room. Davis raised his head to see what the issue was, only to discover four men in suits with sizable chunks of glass sticking out of their heads and faces. Davis had not considered, or known, that the conference room of AC Cool City Repairs was surrounded by glass walls. Nor had he considered, or known, what the results of a giant tunnel crashing through a glass wall would be. But now he could see the results right in front of him, and needless to say he was horrified. One poor bastard with a neatly trimmed goatee screamed as he clutched at the center of his face, blood seeping out of the cracks of his fingers. In front of him, on the table, Davis noticed would looked to be the dismembered tip of a nose.

 Another businessman was trying to pull a shard about the size of a cat from the back of his head. Of course the worst of the lot was the tall, broad shouldered gentleman next to him, who Davis assumed had been sitting at the head of the table, who was now crying out in a sound that was almost pterodactyl in nature. He was pawing at his right eye, which had a long sliver of glass protruding from its socket. 

Davis took all this in and decided he had to ignore this horrific new development. He must stay on task! 

“You all! The miserable and incompetent head members of the city’s number one AC repair company! Listen to me!” He shouted above the screaming, doing his best to recall the speech he had memorized in the tunnel beforehand, “You have all done the citizens of this city a great disservice. We count on you for comfort! We count on you for help! And what do you do?!”

“I can’t see out of my eye!” the suited man next to him cried. 

“That’s right, you turn a blind eye to our pain!” Davis continued, more than a little proud of that improvised line. “And so now, you have been visited by me, the Tunnel Pervert! And unless you want to see me again, I suggest you change your dastardly ways!” 

The man with the sliced off nose had made his way to the door and started screaming for security. Davis knew that was his cue to leave. But before he did, he noticed something rather conspicuous sitting in the middle of the table, next to several glass cups. As he ran back to his tunnel, he swiftly grabbed the conspicuous object off the table and inspected the label. His heart turned happy as he found a familiar name staring back at him from the bottle. Lafitte’s Loot. Thank God. He needed this. 

Davis drank from his bottle as his skateboard carried him off in the darkness. That had not gone to plan, he thought, trying to shove away the sounds of the screaming that were still in his head, that had not gone to plan at all. 

But he wasn’t ready to give up yet. He was still a superhero, goddamnit. Sure, maybe one of the odder ones, an unconventional type, to be sure, but he had still gotten the job done. But of course, the job wasn’t over yet, not by a long shot. AC Cool City had just been the appetizer, the main course of justice would be City Hall, which he was presumably heading off to now, although not at the same high flying speed as before. We must learn from our lessons, he thought as he drank again from the bottle.

And then the screams returned inside his head, and he took yet another gulp from the bottle. 

Davis came careening out of the tunnel into a drab, small government office, not nearly as fast as he had back in the conference room, but he still landed with a rather hard thud against the opposite wall, before falling to the ground below. Lying on the floor, dazed, he heard the incessant sound of a ringing phone. 

“What is the meaning of this?!” A wormy-looking man with tiny wiry eyeglasses perched on his nose cried out.

“I am the tunnel pervert!” Davis belted out with whiskey confidence as he rose to his feet. “I have arrived because you have failed the people you swore to protect!” 

“What in god’s name are you blabbering about? And what the hell have you done to my wall?!” 

“I am here on behalf of those that live at the intersection of Conti and Virgil, an intersection that has been destroyed by traffic, thanks to your unscrupulous detour! You must pay for your poor behavior!”

“Wait, this a traffic issue? That’s not my department, you wanna go three floors up, to the Traffic and Road Services Department.”

“I see…” The Tunnel Pervert responded with uncertainty. “Very well then, I bid you adieu!” and with that, Davis retrieved his bottle of Loot and skateboard before jumping back into the tunnel. 

But his next stop offered him no conclusion either. As the government folks up on the third floor told him that they only deal with traffic matters that were municipal, not residential, and suggested he try two floors down at the Department of Public Roads and Roadways. But down there they simply shook their heads at him and said he had been led astray. What he wanted was the Public Works Department four floors up. But the Public Works Department informed him that he was incorrect in his belief they could help him, what he needed was The Safety and Permits Department on the Second Floor. Each time he was rejected, Davis would hop back into his tunnel and go to wherever he was told. Blasting hole after hole into City Hall, realizing he preferred the sound of screaming businessmen, sliced and bloodied, to this. But he persisted. At the Safety and Permits Department they directed him to the City Planning Commission, and the City Planning Commission redirected him to the Community Development Department, who told him to go seek the Redevelopment Authority Department. And finally, the Redevelopment Authority Department told him confidently to check out the Office of Performance and Accountability on the first floor. At which point, Davis bursted his way back into the very same room he had came to in the beginning, with the same wormy man with the same tiny spectacles perched on his nose, ignoring that same damn incessant ringing of the phone.  

“GOD DAMMIT!” The Tunnel Pervert screeched. “That does it! I have been led around in an infinite loop of madness! Do not tell me to try another department, do not lead me to another fucking floor! You, you wormy little weasel, are going to help me right here, right now!” 

The wormy government official opened his mouth, whether to protest or to actually help, Davis would never find out. For just before he spoke, the ominous sound of strained steel began to emanate from above. And then the floor and the walls around began to shake. Davis could see bits of the ceiling falling from the above. Dear God, he realized, the whole thing is gonna coll-. 

But before he could finish the thought, a tremendous roar let out from above, and the ceiling from above left its position to meet him below, and both the ceiling and him found themselves on the floor, trapped under hundreds of tons of concrete and wreckage. 

At first, Davis thought he had died, as everything went black. But then he recognized the tremendous pain coming from his ankle and realized he must still be alive, just trapped in the rubble. He reached down to his leg and was able to push a sizable chunk of concrete off his ankle. While the pain was staggering, he had to note that aside from some various cuts and bruises on his body, the rest of him was fine. He must have ended up in some small pocket of space amidst the rubble of City Hall. The Tunnel Pervert is a lucky bastard, he thought, in a sense.  This postscript to his thought felt all the more true when he heard the screaming coming in all directions. Others, trapped underneath just like him, but in far more pain.   

What misery have I caused now? 

 Next to him, in the rubble, he heard what he could only describe as a death rattle, presumably from the wormy government worker with the tiny spectacles. 

Davis pushed this out of his mind and tried to think rationally. How was he gonna get out of here? He put a hand out behind him, praying that he should be so lucky to have found himself stuck next to his tunnel. As his hand pressed down upon the lower lip of the mouth of the tunnel, he muttered only two words. 

Lucky bastard. 

Skateboardless now, he army crawled through the darkness, his knees still bleating in pain and his busted ankle doing the same. But this time he did not complain about the great discomfort. He knew he deserved this. And he knew it was time to do what his sister had told him to do earlier that day, turn himself in. 

What seemed like an eternity later, Davis came spilling out of his tunnel, landing on hard concrete, holding his knees and ankle in agony. He was sober now, more or less, and more terrified than ever about what was going to happen to him. But right was right, and this had to be done. Still blinded by the light, thanks to his considerable time in the tunnel, he lifted his hands up in the air while remaining on the floor. He heard murmurs and shouts in front of him and assumed when his sight returned there would be a gaggle of cops, standing over the Tunnel Pervert with their guns drawn. But as his vision slowly came back, he found that he was not facing a group of cops at all, but rather a group of men wearing orange jumpsuits. As he took in the surroundings–the tables and chairs built into the floor, concrete all around save for the bars around the windows–he realized the tunnel had not taken him to the police station at all, but rather the county jail- or parish prison- as it was known in this illogical city. One final slap to the face, he thought morosely. 

There was a long pause now, as Davis faced his new hosts. They stared with hard looks, as if deciding what to do with him. They’re gonna rip me limb from limb, he thought. 

But then he realized they weren’t actually looking at him. They were looking just above him, to the entrance of the tunnel. Davis understood what they were considering now. 

“What in the name of holy dog shit is going on here?!” It was the unmistakable cry of a prison guard. And like that, the men in orange jumpsuits snapped out of their indecisiveness and collectively sprinted toward Davis, toward the tunnel. 

Fearing a trampling, Davis curled up into a ball, while the prisoners leaped over him and into the tunnel, one by one. Davis tilted his head up, watching this event from his unique point of view on the floor. The horror of the situation hit him. Each prisoner going into that tunnel. Will each one get their own tunnel?. He tried to picture twenty different tunnels spreading out into the city in all different directions, going wherever the lawbreakers deem desirable. 

Dear God, what have I done now? 

After the last man went in, Davis felt something fall on top of him. Something light and soft. He looked over and found the colorful throw pillow he had grabbed from Irene’s. The tunnel had returned it to him, it seemed. He also saw the entrance to the tunnel above him was sealed shut now, wanting nothing to do with Davis anymore. He then turned and found the prison guards had surrounded him, but just like the prisoners themselves, they weren’t staring at him. They were staring at the sealed tunnel in abject horror.  

Davis gently grabbed the pillow from his side and crawled his way toward one of the open cells on the opposite wall and away from the tunnel and the confused guards. He had a feeling they would not try to stop him, or even notice his leaving. Once inside one of the cells, he lifted himself up onto the bed and laid down. Placing his ex’s pillow underneath his head. The bed felt more like a thin blanket laid upon a steel grid than it did an actual bed. But the plush pillow gave his head ease. His ankles and knees still throbbed, but at least it was cool inside his cell. The AC seemed to be working just fine. And best of all, no more loud honking or screaming coming from outside his window, no window at all in fact. Just pure, uncompromised silence. Despite everything that had happened, he felt a rare peace move within his body, and he closed his eyes. Just before he drifted off into sleep, he heard one of the guards say something to the others. 

“What the hell do we do now?!”  

Davis smiled at this. He could appreciate the sentiment. 

The End