The Dark Hole

A Story by Tom Aubin

Has he been here before...?

THE DARK HOLE

There is a dark hole by the bank over the river, surrounded by old bricks and crawling weeds.

Some bricks are gone, leaving only their shape in the mud, and the boy asks himself if someone already tried to go inside.

From the hole seems to float a strange feeling, hard to describe, like a mixture of happiness and sadness, like a tree in winter, less jovial without its pretty colorful leaves but still hiding some beauty inside its crackled bark.

It seems full of dark promises, desperate possibilities.

So the boy just sits on the muddy ground and looks at it from the other side of the river.

He stays there for a long time, until everything around the dark hole becomes dark as well, the darkness itself spreading like the crawling weeds, until the sound of the river disappears, until all sounds disappear.

It seems to call him, to grow larger, every second. The boy starts to go down the bank, takes his shoes off and steps into the water.

It is not cold or warm. In fact, it seems barely existing.

The dark hole keeps growing larger, and the boy puts his hand on one of the bricks to help him go up. It works but the bricks falls and disappears into the river.

One more.

And as he steps inside, leaving all things behind, the strange feeling he could almost see from the other side of the bank travels inside him, taking over everything.

Has he been here before...?

© 2018 Tom Aubin

Author's Note

I was just sitting on a park bench in Göttingen. I had a sheet of paper and a pen, and I started to write about what I could see beyond the river. It inspired this. Thanks for reading.