Your support makes Blue Moon possible (Patreon)Josh Langdon was thirty feet beneath the earth of the Guatemalan jungle, enclosed in a pitch-dark space barely a half-inch taller than his shoulders, barely able to move vertically let alone sit up. The tiny cavern in which he lay dripped with rainwater; he was covered with grime and filth that he'd collected on his way down from the surface. He stank; he was hot, he could barely move...
And he was having the time of his life.
He was a spelunker - a particular breed of explorer fond of crawling into the deep chasms of the earth and wriggling through those hard, rocky places that even non-claustrophobics would experience panic attacks just looking at. All but immobilized by thirty feet of earth, Josh's headlamp brightly shined on a narrower section of the passage ahead of him - narrow even for his shoulders.
Some people would back up...which, in Josh's case - as there was no space at all in which to turn his body around - would have required him to wriggle backwards five hundred feet, tugging his backpack along with him all the way. But not Josh Langdon...no, this business major at Northwestern University on holiday had a particular love for feeling trapped deep within the earth having to wriggle his way out of a problem, with only the tantalizing prospect of discovering some bat-infested grotto deep under the earth's surface that no human being had ever seen before.
So, instead, the young man fought to stretch his arms ahead of himself to fit through the space not wide enough even for his shoulders, coiled his backpack - behind him down the cavern - around his foot, and wriggled onward, grunting and snarling and sweating as he forced his way through the painfully narrow subterranean channel.
He saw, in the distance with his headlamp - after perhaps thirty minutes of being unable to move his arms, legs, or torso in any controlled direction - an opening. He cried out with the ecstasy of a boy realizing a boyhood dream, beating his fist against the surface of the cavern, wriggling faster through the passage until he came to the bottom and felt...stonework. A human-crafted brick meant to be the floor of some structure.
He was there panting for a few moments before he had any idea what it was; he ran his hand over the surface of it, wondrously, breathing against the moist, porous surface of the stone. What had he stumbled across? Some ancient Maya ruins? He lifted his headlamp upwards; the cavern kept widening and rising until he could crawl, then stoop, then stand, stepping across the stonework, only the light of the headlamp ahead of him giving him the least direction and the least ability to see.
He slung his backpack around his shoulders when he could stand; it followed - from what he had just accomplished - that he was a rugged, muscled specimen of a man - however lean, in order to fit through these tight passages. There was not a speck of fat on the creature, though this was hardly apparent in the padding and thick-woven long-sleeves and long pants he wore, especially made for this sort of exploring. His face was sweaty and covered in grime, but it had an undeniable handsomeness to it that his girlfriend loved to kiss; a strong cheekbone, a square jaw, and a pair of sapphire eyes that shimmered even in the light of his headlamp, which clung to a scalp of short-cut, black hair.
The earth of the cavern gave way to carved walls; he wasn't alarmed when he saw grotesque imagery carved into the stonework - images of what seemed like snakes, serpents or...caterpillars wriggling along the stone walls. He reached out freely to touch it...his heart thumped loudly as he experienced that adventurous feeling that he'd spent his whole life longing for.
He flashed his headlamp onward, grinning as he fingered the straps on his backpack slung over his shoulders. He headed deeper.
And he was having the time of his life.
He was a spelunker - a particular breed of explorer fond of crawling into the deep chasms of the earth and wriggling through those hard, rocky places that even non-claustrophobics would experience panic attacks just looking at. All but immobilized by thirty feet of earth, Josh's headlamp brightly shined on a narrower section of the passage ahead of him - narrow even for his shoulders.
Some people would back up...which, in Josh's case - as there was no space at all in which to turn his body around - would have required him to wriggle backwards five hundred feet, tugging his backpack along with him all the way. But not Josh Langdon...no, this business major at Northwestern University on holiday had a particular love for feeling trapped deep within the earth having to wriggle his way out of a problem, with only the tantalizing prospect of discovering some bat-infested grotto deep under the earth's surface that no human being had ever seen before.
So, instead, the young man fought to stretch his arms ahead of himself to fit through the space not wide enough even for his shoulders, coiled his backpack - behind him down the cavern - around his foot, and wriggled onward, grunting and snarling and sweating as he forced his way through the painfully narrow subterranean channel.
He saw, in the distance with his headlamp - after perhaps thirty minutes of being unable to move his arms, legs, or torso in any controlled direction - an opening. He cried out with the ecstasy of a boy realizing a boyhood dream, beating his fist against the surface of the cavern, wriggling faster through the passage until he came to the bottom and felt...stonework. A human-crafted brick meant to be the floor of some structure.
He was there panting for a few moments before he had any idea what it was; he ran his hand over the surface of it, wondrously, breathing against the moist, porous surface of the stone. What had he stumbled across? Some ancient Maya ruins? He lifted his headlamp upwards; the cavern kept widening and rising until he could crawl, then stoop, then stand, stepping across the stonework, only the light of the headlamp ahead of him giving him the least direction and the least ability to see.
He slung his backpack around his shoulders when he could stand; it followed - from what he had just accomplished - that he was a rugged, muscled specimen of a man - however lean, in order to fit through these tight passages. There was not a speck of fat on the creature, though this was hardly apparent in the padding and thick-woven long-sleeves and long pants he wore, especially made for this sort of exploring. His face was sweaty and covered in grime, but it had an undeniable handsomeness to it that his girlfriend loved to kiss; a strong cheekbone, a square jaw, and a pair of sapphire eyes that shimmered even in the light of his headlamp, which clung to a scalp of short-cut, black hair.
The earth of the cavern gave way to carved walls; he wasn't alarmed when he saw grotesque imagery carved into the stonework - images of what seemed like snakes, serpents or...caterpillars wriggling along the stone walls. He reached out freely to touch it...his heart thumped loudly as he experienced that adventurous feeling that he'd spent his whole life longing for.
He flashed his headlamp onward, grinning as he fingered the straps on his backpack slung over his shoulders. He headed deeper.