The Light In The Darkness

WHAT WOULD YOU DO TO LIVE? Surely he must be some kind of fool. Trying to prove his manhood; trying to fit in? Coming because Theresa had come. Sweet and beautiful, Theresa. Wanting to be near her; wanting to be with her. Not wanting to be the one person who said, "No, no thank you. I'm afraid. I don't like tight places. Always been a touch claustrophobic." "Spelunking? What's spelunking?" Theresa asks. The steps, all of the pieces that had to fall into place to get them where they were, they flash through his mind - an ocean of panic, held back by a barrier which was breaking, into terror. "Exploring caves," Maxo The Maximizer says. There were caves here, on campus? Yeah, for sure. All of the coastal mountains, they were interlaced with them. Like catacombs, honeycomb. Swiss cheese. There was laughter then. Joe and Danny and Max and Brian and Theresa and Jezebel laughing, maybe because of the way Max had said it. The way he'd articulated, 'Swiss cheese,' saying it in a funny way. Everyone laughing as if it was a light and laughable affair, going down into caves, then crawling around in the earth. Spelunking. You could already see it, that they were all going, and Thomas would be going, too, because he was a sucker for Theresa. "Yeah, sure, alright," he'd said. "I'll come." Famous last words. An earthquake. A tunnel collapse. Holy, holy, crap. Trapped beneath the earth. That panic, that fear, that terror. Buried alive. Was there another way out? Limited food, limited water. Limited battery on the lights. No cell service. Venturing further into the darkness, then getting separated from his friends, Thomas McAllister is pressed up against his greatest fears and his very own will to survive. Would he die down there like a worm in the earth? How long would he continue through these tunnels, in complete darkness, before giving up? Caught in a pit of terror and wrestling with despair, then slipping into a strange delirium half-way between life and death, Thomas McAllister discovers something extraordinary in the darkness, and within himself. He discovers just how far he's willing to go to live.