April Writing Competition Winner: The Last Tunnel In The World – Wayne Roux
Each month, SAIAA members are encouraged to partake in our Short Story Competition. April’s winner was Wayne Roux, a Thriller author from KZN. If writing short stories and connecting with other writers sounds like something you’d love to do, but you’re not a member of SAIAA, consider joining one of our Writing Room Chapters. It’s a space for all kinds of writers, whether you’re a poet, a journaler or simply someone who enjoys putting words on the page, this space is for you. It’s free to join!
Fucking tunnels.
Most tunnels freak me out. There is just something about the way they envelop you, as if they are the hungry mouth of some untamed beast, and you are just a late-afternoon Tuesday snack. You must be wondering if I’m claustrophobic. I assure you, I am not. I can handle enclosed spaces – elevators, dark rooms, public toilets. Hell, put me in a coffin as a dare, I will handle it. But tunnels? Well, they’re just generally creepy.
I say most, because there is one tunnel I don’t mind walking through as much. It’s on the way home from work, and I use it Monday to Friday like clockwork, and have been doing so for the past nine years. After ten-hour days crunching numbers for a London auditing firm, I actually enjoy my fifteen minute walk home. It takes me through the park – something about being surrounded by Mother Nature in all her glory just instantly heals me, takes away my stress, and lets me forget about Marjorie and her fucking stamp. She enjoys nothing more than tormenting me with her RECALCULATE statement in bright red ink across my hard work on a regular basis. I never argue. I just nod and, well… fucking recalculate.
So yes, because the park heals me, the tunnel running under the Smith Street overpass is forgiven for being associated with the rest of the tunnels in the world. I bear it. I think of it as symbolic of my energy passing through a filter, where I shed the crap of the day and emerge on the other side at peace and present again.
It arrives unexpectedly, shortly after a little bend in the paved walkway, initially hidden from view by the line of wild fig trees that line the path. As far as tunnels go, it’s not particularly spectacular or impressive. The weathered stones which form the arch and walls of it are showing signs of age. Weeds sprout from between them, and runoff from the culverts in the busy street above stains the paving at the entrance. It’s about twenty meters long, but has a natural curve in the middle, which prevents you from seeing the light on the other end, so entering it always plunges you in semi-darkness, at least until your eyes get accustomed.
I pull up the collar on my dark trench coat, shielding my neck from the early winter chill. To heighten that cleansing effect I get, I usually close my eyes for the first few seconds, just as I enter. As I said, I’m not claustrophobic, so I don’t mind the dark. I listen to the sound of my footsteps, the way they echo off the ancient stone walls, the drip-dripping of water from the roof, the way the outside sounds seem to muffle and disappear. By the time I open my eyes again, I usually find myself almost at the bend, and the light from the exit is then visible. I do so now, but unlike the other sixty-eight Tuesdays before, this time, strangely, I remain in complete darkness.
I stop dead in my tracks.
What the hell?
Something feels different. The familiar smell of dampness and mildew and standing water isn’t there anymore, replaced instead by the smell of rot. Of death. I have to wonder if some poor animal has crawled in here and died, maybe a stray cat or dog or something. It is a smell I am quite familiar with. As a child, an elderly neighbor in our apartment building died in his sleep and they only found him a week later. That stench was unforgettable. It follows you.
I have to reach out my hand and trace my fingers along the wall just to make sure I am still heading in the right direction, and after several minutes – way more time than it usually takes to traverse the tunnel – I finally see some light ahead. It isn’t the dusky light of late afternoon that I am expecting though. Instead, it is pale, splashed in distant moonlight. I walk hurriedly towards it, suddenly wanting out of this tunnel. It had lost its charm. Scratch that… it had started freaking me out.
Dammit – there goes the last bearable tunnel in the world.
When I finally emerge into open air again, I breathe a sigh of relief, resting my hands on my knees. I am still confused as to why it is suddenly dark, but it is secondary to my gratitude for having escaped those walls. I turn to look back at the tunnel exit, but instead of the familiar black hole in the side of a green hill, there is just a stone wall and a faded, crooked sign which reads: Whitechapel.
I frown, my eyes following the wall as it stretches away on either side. I appear to be in some sort of dark alley. The ground under my feet feels strange, and looking down I can tell that I am standing on cobblestones. Somewhere in the distance, a horse neighs. There are faint voices that carry with the breeze – always resting on that bed of rot and sewer-stink. A newspaper flits by, carried by the wind, and I snatch it out of the air. It is the freshly printed front page of The General London Press. I stare at the date: 2nd October, 1888.
The headline, in bold black letters, reads: POLICE CLOSE IN ON RIPPER!
A sudden, shrieking whistle sound to my left has me turning in surprise. Lanterns are approaching, and the men in dark uniforms that carry them are shouting angrily as they run towards me.
“We have him! Over here!”
Realization suddenly dawns on me. Instead of trying to run, I sit down unsteadily, my back against the cold stone wall as the angry footsteps get nearer and louder.
Letting the newspaper finally slip from my hand, I sigh resignedly.
Fucking tunnels.
