Jesse Binger
Listen to read story
The last time Bobby was down here, he was high. Like really high.
So it wasn’t scary then.
But now, weaving through these deserted tunnels, that rattling above his head every time the train rolls by, Bobby’s scared shitless.
Bowels clenched. Chewing down his last fingernail.
Gina told him where to go. When to go. Even sent him that map, squiggled in Notes, that thankfully his phone still has enough bars to display.
Don’t matter much though. It’s dark and he’s lost his bearings by now. It’s not like there are signs or anything. And Gina wasn’t much the artist. Never was.
He remembers as kids the two of them playing that stupid game. Pictionary? But not that one. One of the no-frills imitations.
Mom probably got it cheap or found it at one of those garage sales she loved to scour.
So Bobby walks, tee pulled up to his eyes, covering his nose. The smell worse than he even imagined. A mixture of fish and skunk, weed, and maybe the dead.
He knew what death smelt like, and it wasn’t pretty. Walked through the door to check on Grandpa Johnny. He had to be the one to find him. Two weeks decaying in a hot sticky house with a dead AC.
No bueno.
But he ventures on. No service on his phone, so no one to call, yet he can’t think of one name that could help him here anyway.
Gina hadn’t picked up in three days. The last call all heavy breathing, laughter amidst cries. Then Help me, Bobby slipped in like a key.
She’s seventeen now. Sixteen when she ran off. They stuck together through the first two fosters. Then Bobby ended up alone. Maybe he was always destined to.
Bobby makes the left under the dangling sign. About a foot of muddy water. Water. If you could even call it that. Dank, dirty and his makeshift nose guard stops doing the trick.
He gags and finds himself up against the wall. Throws up last night’s dinner. Campbell’s tomato soup and some saltines. It leaks out all over the broken glass. Green longnecks crushed into a corner. In the dark, it almost looks like lost booty. Sparkling emeralds that remind him of those pirate books he used to read. Long John Silver and his merry band of misfits.
“Yo ho yo ho….” Bobby mumbles. Hums out the rest.
Rattling above him again. This time harder. Like the train’s closer. Either that or the roof’s about to cave in.
So he thinks of Gina. That time she came home smashed, stumbled her way into his room and held it out to him. One hostess cupcake. Half remaining in the package.
Thanks, G, he whispered. Stuffed it into his mouth though he wasn’t even hungry. She kicked a high heel off and it hit the wall. They both laughed and chocolate bits spewed out.
One last look at his phone. Dark now. Dead.
Gina.
Alive, he hopes.
Jesse’s prompts were: Underground Cave or Tunnel System, Teeanger/s, Broken Glass
Jesse Binger is a fiction writer from New Jersey. His debut novel The Penitent Hours is currently on submission. His work appears in or is forthcoming at Rock and a Hard Place, Cowboy Jamboree, Bending Genres, Stanchion, Roi Faineant, and elsewhere. Find him at jessebinger.com
Connect with Jesse
Read more from Jesse:
1.
2.
TRASH CAT LIT 