Michael Further Underground

Michael's first reaction upon stepping through the door was a relief so profound he nearly stopped breathing. His second was immediate and just as intense suspicion.

Spread out before him in exacting detail was his father's study. It couldn't possibly be his father's study and yet it was. There was the spot on the carpet where Michael had spilled his orange soda. His mother's sewing was in the corner where it usually was. And just as dusty with disuse as usual. The papers on the desk looked freshly rustled. As if his father had just been in here minutes ago. Michael's throat closed without warning. He wanted his parents horribly bad. He'd always loved them, but he'd never wanted them here with him quite as bad as this. It also hit him for the first that he might not see them again. He had no idea how to get out of this land, and he wasn't going without Mireia, anyway. The thought of getting home without Mireia was even more awful than never going home again.

He walked around the desk, breathing in the familiar paper-smell and sat in his father's big chair. He didn't touch the papers, but peered at them. They were some sort of bill or statement. And then he noticed the date--the exact date that he had accidentally (okay, disbelievingly) wished Mireia away. Was it part of the trick, or had no time passed in the normal course of things? This heartened Michael, enough so that he could push his grief-tinged-with-panic back down to manageable levels.

The door he'd entered through was still there, having swung closed, but it looked strange for the study door. There was nothing to do but go back the way he'd come. This was a dead end. He approached the door and tugged it back open by holding the grills. It slid obligingly inward. Michael started towards the opening. Only to stop abruptly when he realized that he wasn't heading into the same place as he'd been. There was no blue-lit underground tunnel of false alarms.

In fact, it was fairly hard to see anything beyond the door because the light was so dim. He sensed more than saw two walls rise up on either side of the door and a warm musky emptiness in the middle. It was still the only way to go, even if he wasn't precisely going back. He was being led. To what, he didn't know and didn't particularly want to think about. Turning back into the room, he looked around for anything useful. There was the emergency candle in the bottom drawer of the desk for when the power went out. He remembered a snickers bar he'd hidden behind one of the books ages ago and put that in his pocket beside the candle. And then there was his mother's sewing. He approached it thoughtfully and disturbed the coat of dust in order to dig around in the basket. There was some embroidery thread left over from an abandoned project. Something to do with making costumes for the community theater group. There was a lot of it left, thankfully, and it was an annoying shade of bright orange.

Michael made his way back to the door and tied the end of the thread to the grill of the door, making sure the worm wasn't there. Then, with a deep breath and a last look at the study, he pulled the door closed and started slowly off into the darkness, one hand outstretched so that he wouldn't run into anything.

He wandered in a straight line for quite a while. Occasionally there were drifts of different air from the sides of whatever corridor Michael was walking down, but he didn't leave to explore. He wanted to go straight for as long as possible--the better to find his way back, although what good that would do him, he didn't know. The darkness was starting to creep him out. He was doing his best to ignore the feeling, but he knew eventually he'd probably have to give ground to his fear. It reminded him of the time they'd gone to the children's science museum and he'd crawled through the touch tunnel with the rest of the children. The textures changed under hand, and sometimes the walls would disappear. At first it had been exciting, but soon, after it had gone on for what seems too long, He'd started to become afraid. And that was how he felt now. Except this wasn't a controlled exhibit. There might not be an end to this place. He shoved the thought away as forcefully as he could manage.

It was a relief to feel his fingers finally jolt up against a wall. He felt carefully to the left a few feet and encountered another wall, so he switched directions and started feeling down the other way, all the while debating about lighting the candle. He didn't want to waste even a second if he could do it without sight, but at the same time, it was so incredibly uncomfortable not being able to see anything.

He was still debating when he ran face first into something llving--and furry.

Michael screamed. He couldn't help it.