There was some type of chemical war going on. Dean and I and
our partners decided to create an under-ground bunker to stay in. It wasn’t
very big; there was just a kitchen and a living room with two couches, and two
very tiny back bedrooms. There was also a small biosphere-like area where
plants and food were grown. We had decided to head below because there had
been a rumor of a chemical bomb threat broadcast over the radio. We decided that a month below could possibly be a sufficient amount of time to wait for the major threat to be over.
A month went by so slow; this trapped feeling rising in
everyone’s throats, just on the verge of panic; it left a lingering after-taste.
The hunger for sunlight was unbearable. The lights in the garden weren’t
enough, it just wasn’t the same. Being down there felt like someone else had
dressed me in my own skin, but had put it on too tight, or had thrown it in the
dryer for too long and it had shrunk. I was scratching to get out, pangs of
longing for the sky plunged deep into my gut.
We had small arguments now and then, brought on by the need
to find a place to breath away from each other; even if it was just to gulp
down fistfuls of stale air. But, for the most part we all got along pretty
well; we had already been good friends for a long while. Dean and I had known
each other for the longest. We had known each other since high school. Those
days seemed so far away in comparison to the recent days, which had been filled
with fear and running as the world fell apart in a clatter of metal and
gunpowder.
Finally, the day came when we could return to the surface.
By this point we had become more afraid of being underground than the chemicals
that were possibly raining down above our little haven of solitude. We crammed
into the elevator, pressed in even closer to each other for the last bit of our
imprisonment; perhaps so that the escape would taste that much sweeter. The
doors opened and we tumbled out in to the forest. Blinking, under that bright-green
canopy, it began to rain. Oh, the air was so clean, expanding in my lungs,
pushing out the fermented air-conditioned oxygen from the bunker. And the rain.
The rain felt like magic. I never thought I could miss the rain so much. We
danced in the forest, wet and pale, but free.
