Chapter Eleven
Glow in the Dark
The makeshift torch was so about to go out!
This had been a bad idea. As if in echo to my thoughts I heard Colt grimly mutter, “Not my best notion.”
Wow, a man that could admit when he was wrong!
That was cool. I hadn’t expected such humility of a man like Colt. Actually when it came down to it I didn’t really know much about the man other than my preconceived ideas of him which he had mostly proven wrong.
The torch sputtered and went out leaving us standing in the pitch dark of the cave tunnel. I wasn’t big on small dark places, but I stayed quiet.
Colt sighed loudly and then resignedly said, “Go on say it.”
“Say what?”
“That I’m an idiot for going down this rabbit trail!”
“I don’t think you’re an idiot.”
“You don’t?” He asked sounding genuinely surprised.
“You had a good theory.”
“But I’ve marooned us in the dark underbelly of who knows where! I bet we’ve come almost half a mile or more! Can you imagine what it’s going to be like to feel our way back out the way we came?”
I grimaced at the prospect of that, but I still felt that he wasn’t being all that fair to himself.
“Well, be that as it may, we’re still alive and I haven’t been eaten yet by some dinosaur or caught and raped by pirates, all of which could have happened by now on the surface. While our situation isn’t the greatest it is still manageable and I think you had a good idea and I think we should go on instead of turning back.”
There was a moment of silence that stretched out for a long time then and I was beginning to wonder if I’d said too much.
Colt’s voice was different sounding than his usual hard-edged tone, “You have that much confidence in me to continue risking your life by following me?”
There was a clear answer to that in my head.
“I wouldn’t be alive right now if it wasn’t for you Colt, several times over to be exact. I’d be a fool not to have confidence in you. Besides what’s there not to be confident about you? You’ve more than held your own in this survival game, while I feel like I’m in over my head waiting for the elevator to stop its freefall.”
There was another long silence before Colt’s voice broke it, “All right, we’ll go on then.”
He moved forward and I quickly grasped the back of his shirt not wanting to become separated from him in the dark. He tapped away with the torch stick as he felt the way out forward gingerly. A thought occurred to me then and I gave voice to it.
“Your stick isn’t long enough for you to adequately be sure of feeling out the way ahead.”
“Your point being what?” He asked in an aggravated tone.
Somehow I knew his annoyance was more with himself that it was the result of something directed personally at me or something that I had done. Not liking it, but seeing no alternative I said, “I should go first. I’m short and it would be easier for me to feel out the floor ahead of us than it is for you.”
“Not happening honey! I go ahead first, because we don’t know if there’s something back here and if somebody’s to be eaten it should be me for getting us in this mess!”
“What if you step into a hole like I did? Do you think I’m going to be able pull you out of one? Doubtful is too hopeful of a word to describe that scenario.”
He said nothing and I took that opportunity to slide by him in the dark. There was that awareness tingle again. Awareness shot through me in spades as Colt’s hands came down to securely fasten on my hips. Why did he have to hold onto me like that?
One hand moved to my front and I took the extinguished torch stick from him.
“Lead the way, Shorty.” He said.
My teeth gritted harshly at the mention of my shortness. I wasn’t all that short!
I wasn’t exactly average height by American standards either though.
“Boy, I can literally feel how angry saying that made you.”
“How would you like to feel how angry I am right now?” I said hotly in response as I stepped forward dislodging his grasp of my hips.
He chuckled in the darkness, “Okay, whatever you say Shorty.”
That did it!
I wheeled around and swung the torch stick. My swing was arrested in action by a steel grip. I punched out with my other hand only to have its action arrested as a big hand folded over it totally engulfing my small fist. What kind of night vision did the man have for pity sakes!
Both my arms were twisted behind my back as I was pulled forward roughly against him. I was helpless and I didn’t like it. Strangely though, I wasn’t scared.
“You Miss Kim have a temper.” Came Colt’s voice in a humorous tone near my ear.
“I don’t like being called Shorty and I don’t like being restrained!”
His words were a surprise, “I apologize for egging you on, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that you were in the process of trying to do me bodily harm yet again.”
His hold on me was unrelenting and in a defeated tone I asked, “What do you want? I apologized for letting my temper act out. Now please let me go!”
I really wasn’t expecting it, but his hands released me. I made to step back, but his fingers curled over the neckline of my shirt and tugged me forward.
“Let go!” I responded hotly.
“I will, after…….”
“After what?” I asked breathlessly.
“After you kiss me.”
I swallowed nervously before responding, “I don’t have to do that! I……”
“Yes, you do.” He said cutting me off midsentence.
“Why? Who made you my boss?” I asked.
“It would seem that the simple joined task of mutual survival has seen to that and aren’t you forgetting that you said as much. Now I want you to kiss me.”
I started to speak, but his fingers touched my lips halting my words.
“Stop thinking so much. We both know that you made a choice. You willingly chose to stick with me just as I chose to come back and pull your butt out of the fire. Now let’s get this thing between us started off good and proper, because I don’t want it all to be one sided between us.”
He had me alone in the dark and I was chained by his words as much as his hands had just been upon me. He was right, I had made a choice. The choice that I’d known to make ever since the plane.
I was with him in this dark place of my own volition, but it was frustrating to have it turned against me. I hadn’t been expecting this!
I’d been expecting to be pressed up against a dark cave wall and have his kisses forced on me even though I was receptive to them, but instead he was insisting that I kiss him! Arrogant man!
“But I’m angry with you!” I said grasping at straws.
“Anger is a strong emotion. I’d like to taste it off your lips.”
My hand itched to slap him. The fingers holding my shirt were persistent in their hold on me, which kept me from leaving the engagement.
“I hate you!”
“Another strong emotion. You know what they say though. The closest emotion to hate is love.”
My hands swung, but I came up with empty air as instead my hand was captured at the wrist and a kiss pressed against the back of my knuckles.
“I’d rather kiss a pig than you!”
There was a loud sigh in the darkness, “Very well then. Consider our relationship over. You’re free to make your own way.”
His grasp of my shirt and hand were completely gone then. There was complete silence in the darkness all around me.
I felt through the air were Colt had just been, but all I came up with was empty air. I panicked inside. Oh he so knew how to call my bluff!
I looked upward and lost my last vestige of self-respect as I said, “Alright I’ll kiss you.”
I was greeted with silence.
“Colt?”
Nothing.
I turned around and abruptly ran into something solid. It was Colt.
He was silent and I tried to not let it show what a relief that it was that he was still here.
I had to live up to my part of the bargain as it were though. I felt with my hand upward and located his lips. Swallowing reflexively I rose up on my toes and gave him a quick kiss that landed off-center so much so that I more or less just pecked at his cheek.
“I’ll leave for good this time if that’s the best you can bring yourself to kiss me.” Came his sardonic reply in the darkness.
I shook my head no and said, “No you won’t.”
“I won’t?”
“You’re not that kind of man Colt. I know you better than to think that you would leave me in here alone.”
“Then why did you just panic like you did when you thought I’d gone. Don’t lie to me Kim.”
“I have deep-seated negative programming of what I expect of men that blinds me sometimes as to what reality is. You’re one of only a few men that doesn’t fall into the stereotypes that I’m used to dealing with.”
What I’d just said was the truth and then not sure why I said, “I thought you were going to kiss me.”
“Do you want me to kiss you Kim?”
I didn’t say anything. His hands pulled me closer, until I could feel his hot breath against my forehead.
“Kiss me first and then I’ll give you what you want.”
He was right there and the scent of him was oddly intoxicating and I suddenly forgot all remembrance of why I was against this. I leaned up and kissed him on the lips for a few brief seconds, but it was enough to send my heart spinning.
“That was a good start Kim. Now I’ll kiss you. Tell me if you want me to stop.”
“Stop!” I said quickly.
His hands left me, “Okay.”
He was readily telling the truth as to how I could trust him by his actions alone. Something inside of me mourned the loss of what he had been about to do.
“Colt?” I said in a small voice.
“Yes?”
“I’m not good at this.”
“It shows.”
“I don’t know how to get a hold of how I’m changing inside.” I self admitted.
The fingers of one of his hands speared through my hair to rest against the back of my neck in a warm clasp that was neither demanding nor domineering, but instead felt calming.
“Here’s a suggestion. Why not embrace the change instead of fighting it?” Colt said softly.
His hand was softly urging, but it was me that leaned up and brought my lips to his in a kiss that stretched on and on. The kiss was different and completely guiltless. Why had I been against this?
Colt was the first to draw back and with a sigh he said, “This needs to be continued, but for now let’s get out of here!”
I nodded in a bit of a dreamy stupor forgetting that he couldn’t see me. I found myself pulled around and once again his hands settled on my hips only this time I didn’t really object to it.
The stick was pressed into my hand, “Your club mademoiselle.”
I smiled in the darkness and started forward.
*****
Was this eternity of darkness ever going to end?
I was growing very frustrated with the darkness and with Colt’s hands. With every step forward that I took they rubbed into me and I…… I…… I didn’t know what I wanted.
I tripped over a stone and the hands holding me reacted as if I’d just commenced to fall into a bottomless pit. I was abruptly hauled upward and back. I landed with a thud onto Colt’s front as we both fell to the cavern floor.
“Are you all right?” Colt asked with concern.
“Let go of me!” I said in a huff, as I tried to get free.
In the process of rising I slipped and fell back on to Colt. His hands caught my hips again and in what felt like a knee-jerk reaction I seized his face with both of my hands and kissed him hard. The kiss was intoxicating and I loved it!
I pulled back abruptly and stumbled up to my feet.
“What have you done to me?” I exclaimed feeling at my lips in the dark.
I’d practically assaulted the man!
Colt chuckled wryly and I heard him getting up off the cavern floor.
“You have a funny way of looking at it Babe. A better question Honey is what you’ve done to me. You keep kissing me like that and things are going to escalate sooner than you may be comfortable with.”
“Oh no!”
“Well, you don’t need to react like that about it! I’ve gotten the opinion that you’re quite receptive to being my mate in this underground world that we’ve ended up in. The time to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion is soon upon us honey.”
“Would you just shut up and look!” I said in exasperation.
I heard him come closer and his head blocked my view of what lay ahead around the corner a moment later.
“Oh boy! Things just got a lot weirder in this little paradise of inner turmoil!”
I peered around his shoulder and asked, “What is it?”
“Beats me honey, but it sure ain’t pirate loot!”
Together we stepped forward and entered into the little cavern alcove that now lay before us. On a central pedestal that was the only apparent architecture in the room there hung a scroll in mid air. The scroll was unrolled as if by unseen hands and it glowed with a fierce brilliance.
The writing upon the scroll shifted in a myriad of highlighting colors that was eye-catchingly beautiful. It was the most ethereally beautiful piece of advanced technology I’d ever seen. No iPad, smart phone, etc. could ever compare with this item of antiquity before us.
I reached a hand out toward the shimmering colors that highlighted repetitiously upon the scroll to see if the scroll was reactive to my touch as I sensed that it would be.
Colt’s hand closed over my wrist halting my forward progress.
“Hold on baby girl. I know it’s pretty, but let’s look this over a little better first before we take a bite out of the proverbial apple.”
He was right. I pulled my hand back feeling embarrassed for my thoughtlessness of action.
Colt drew close and chucked my chin up with a finger and then kissed me hotly for a moment to my surprise. He let me go then and moved away and I blinked in consternation as I tried to refocus on the graveness of the situation.
“What was that for?” I asked a little dazed.
“Just cuzz I wanted to.” Was his simple reply before he further startled me by smacking my rear on his way by me.
I would never have tolerated such possessive behavior from a man before and I couldn’t help but feel shocked at how little I felt affronted at the liberties that Colt was forever taking of my person.
I turned to see him against the wall of the other side of the alcove from where we had come in. He was running his hand over it and as I looked more closely I could see that there were holes in the wall.
Why would there be holes unless…….I swallowed as realization came to me as to what those holes could be for.
Colt was watching me with a sage grin and he nodded and said, “Pays to scout out the lay of the land ahead sometimes.”
He’d saved my life yet once again it would seem.
There was an entrance on the other side and he stepped into it. He paused for a moment and then turned to me, “Smell that?” He asked.
I shook my head no.
“It’s the sea. We’re close. This probably comes out near the beach.”
Colt stepped back toward the scroll and got up close to it without touching it. He wasn’t really looking at the scroll so much as that he was looking at its base.
“What do you see?” I asked curiously.
“I’m not sure, but I think there’s an electrical connection of some kind between the pedestal and that node wire hanging down from the ceiling.”
I looked up and for the first time I saw the black cord that hung down from the ceiling of the cavern. Colt slung his pack off and started to rummage through it. His hand came out with something. It was wire.
“What are you going to do?” I asked even more curious than before.
“I’m going to make a connection and in the process bypass this nasty little alarm they have set up. You better move over to the tunnel in case this doesn’t go well and we get inundated with little poison darts.”
I swallowed down my anxiety and quickly obeyed, but Colt stayed where he was.
“Colt?”
“What?” He asked glancing over at me.
“Be careful.”
He cracked a smile and turned back to the scroll, “Don’t worry babe! I’ve got this under control!”
I watched him attach the bared ends of the wires he’d pulled from his pack to the base of the pedestal. I couldn’t help but think that we were taking an awful chance. Was an alien looking artifact no matter how beautifully mesmerizing it was really worth this much risk?
“Colt why do we even need this thing? Why don’t we just go on and leave it here?”
He paused in his work and was silent for a moment, which surprised me. I thought he would roundly dismiss my objections to the task at hand, but to my further surprise he nodded in agreement with me.
“I’m inclined to agree with you Kim, except for one thing. Here in this sunken world we are decidedly outnumbered by who knows what and without virtually any offensive or defensive moves of our own, we have very little to ensure a positive outcome for ourselves. This scroll looks like a game changer to me. Something like this has got to at least be worth something to somebody and it just might buy us out of a hole some day.”
On an abstracted sounding note he added, “or dig us in deeper.”
I swallowed nervously as I watched him reach up and wrap the other end of the wire from his pack around the node hanging down from the ceiling. The piece of wire that he had spliced between the two contact points began to glow and the scroll fell from its midair hover over the pedestal.
Colt caught up the scroll that had rolled itself up in a reflexive action upon having been released from the invisible electric charge.
“There we go…… oh darn! It’s burning the wire in half! It’s got too much juice on it!” Colt exclaimed before lunging for the tunnel corridor where I stood.
He dove into the tunnel to land at my feet, while I watched blue sparks snap out in abandon in the other room as the bypassing wire burned through. A blue wave of light pulsed throughout the cavern and there was the immediate sound of wind powered projectiles slamming into stone in the room beyond.
“Are you hit?” Colt asked shaking my shoulder roughly.
In a daze I said, “No, I don’t think so. You?”
“Me neither. We skated by that one! We should…….”
The sound of onrushing water overrode his voice and completed the circuit of panic driven paranoia that my consciousness had flown apart into. I turned to run for the scroll room and the way we had come in order to escape the sound of water that was coming at us from the darkness of the tunnel at our backs.
Before I could make any headway I was seized fast to Colt’s side as he pressed up against the side wall of the tunnel.
“No! We have to go out against the water! It’s the only way we can make it!”
The man was crazy! Certifiable insanity was the essence of the thing that he proposed to do!
There was no more time for thought as the water hit us and filled the tunnel up. We were pressed back against the side of the tunnel by the onrushing water and it was a miracle that both of us kept our feet under us.
I gasped for breath as the remaining air pocket was soon gone and we were fully submerged within the tunnel. There was light enough given off by the scroll to see by, but I wasn’t prepared for the sudden jerk to my arm that had me pressing against the onrushing flow of water that had slacked off some in intensity.
I had no choice, but to struggle in an attempt to follow as we walked forward against the flow of water.
*****
I needed air bad!!!
Oh God I really was going to die!
What was the deal with this string of bad luck anyway?
I’d miraculously survived falling through the Earth, escaped from pirates and flesh eating mongrels, only to end up drowning in a subterranean tunnel with a man that I’d really been looking forward to kissing again.
Our progress through the water had become easier as the flow of water had equalized throughout the tunnels, but it didn’t matter. I was out of air.
In horrified anguish I felt my mouth go against everything my brain ordered it to do and start to open.
You can’t breathe seawater! Don’t do it!!!
My mouth opened and I drowned.
I did not feel well. Weakly I looked around for Colt and found him. What was going on in this sunken hell of a place?
Why was I breathing seawater? How was such a thing even possible?
There were no answers and yet reality was its own answer.
Colt took my hand and together we swam upward toward the light overhead. We came out of the tunnel and instead of swimming we walked along the floor of the sea toward what appeared to be shallower water ahead.
In desperation to breathe air again and escape whatever false paradigm that we were experiencing we pushed through the water into the air and drowned all over again.
There seemed to be no end to the hacking and coughing up of sea water. Blindly I stumbled forward toward the blurry color of sand in the distance.
My feet touched warm sand and I fell to my face dry heaving even as I rasped air into my starved lungs which felt like they were on fire. My lungs felt like they had been pulled inside out and soaked in a hot sauce bath.
I closed my eyes against the conscious action it took to take a breath and gradually my body took over the rhythmic function of breathing again. The sand was warm and I felt myself drift into unconsciousness in an effort to get away from the pain of breathing.