As the old woman lays sleeping, there comes a sound from beneath her four post bed, a sound coming from beneath the blue and white tiled floor that looks like a checkerboard. Beneath the rusty bed, beneath the tiles that are perfectly square, the sound of the earth falling away as she sleeps, a sinkhole grows; a perfectly round hole in the great sphere of the Earth. The scraping sound of a few of the tiles falling away as they are swallowed by the widening hole awakens her. She listens to the echoes of banging rise from the depths in the darkness as the tiles collide with the walls of earth.
She does not yet know that what was once firm and solid is now gone; a deep chasm in its place. She lights the lantern on her nightstand, puts her pale bare feet upon the smooth cool floor. she kneels and crawls on hands and feet to look under her bed. Bewildered, terrified, she discovers the hole and in the cool damp air the taste of dirt that smells of decay. Timidly she lifts the lantern over the hole and peers into the depths. She sees only darkness.
"Helloooooo?" she calls down.
Her call is swallowed up. Suddenly she is horrified. The lantern slips from her fingers. Paralyzed she watches the lantern's light travel down, down, down.
Fading, fading, fading.
Becoming
a single
point
.
diminishing in luminosity until like a dying ember
it is gone.
Her arms and legs give out.
She topples in, somersaulting slowing through the cool damp air. It whistles in her ears.
Falling.
Accelerating into the darkness, she is too bewildered to mind.
She loses consciousness.
She gains consciousness.
She sees the light of her lantern, and struggles towards it. The air is hot and humid. The walls are fleshy, they contract around her thrusting her toward the light.
Slowly.
Painfully.
She is born.
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