“The Sinkhole” - A Horror, Short Story

It was during breakfast when this all began.

There was a booming crash, and then while I was pouring my juice, this violent shaking from outside followed. It threw me off my balance, and I completely missed my cup, spilling juice all over the countertop. I was so pissed.

“What the Hell!” Everything was sticky. Worse yet, that was the last of my OJ.

I wiped down the counter and continued making breakfast. What was that rumbling?

I figured it had to be that damn construction. A jackhammer humping like a jackrabbit or something. Recently a crew was working on a new building across the street. An apartment probably.

The cartoons on my TV all of a sudden switched to breaking news. It was a newslady.

“This morning a team of construction workers were excavating a basement when suddenly a sinkhole opened up and engulfed several workers from the team.” She said. “Currently, there’s a rescue operation on course to find and extract the missing workers. Stay tuned for more news to follow.” It clicked off and my TV switched to the news channels’ paid commercials.

Holy cow that’s right across the street.

I got up and walked to my first-story window. I stared across the street at the construction site. Police cars, ambulances, and news vans filled the roadway. The lady on TV was standing there, conversing with her camera guy.

My freaking house was on TV!

I pulled down the blinds so I could spy on the up-close action. Something told me I should mind my business.

Pinching apart the window shade, I leaned in closer to try to get a better view. A giant crane was lifting a vehicle that had been barely clinging onto the edge of the excavation site.

Or rather pit. A big, fat, fucking pit.

The pit itself was massive, although I couldn’t see more than its top edge. It looked like a dark blanket being draped across the construction lot. From where I was standing in my dinky apartment, I had about a good forty feet from its edge.

While I was staring, the breaking news flipped back on and the newslady was talking again. She was standing next to this dirty construction worker who was being administered care for his wounds.

“Reluctantly, the rescue crew has been able to locate three individuals and are determined to find others. Here we have someone from the construction site who had fallen into the hole and was just rescued.” She said.

The newslady repositioned herself to interview this gravely injured, yet surprisingly relaxed-lookin’ construction worker.

“Can you tell me what was going through your head when suddenly you found yourself clinging to life, almost falling to your death?” She asked.

As nonchalant as ever, the dirty blue-collar opened his mouth. “Look here and listen, for all I can say is this. I CAN say I was in a pit. ‘Yessur a pit. And THAT’S IT. I was ‘bout in-there and currently, well, that is all I can say mah-yum. ‘Yessur I was falling and then I wasn’t. That’s all I can say, mah-yum.” The construction worker said loosely, appearing to avoid the details of the question.

“Right…” the newslady said. “Weren’t you scared?”

“Was I ‘ascared? God no. I’m assuming you’re asking me if I was ‘ascared while in the pit?” He stopped and looked out toward the hole and then back at the camera. “Well, you see mah-yum, that’s a topic related to the pit, and I can’t say ‘nuthin else other than I was ‘bout in-there. I don’t see a point ‘bout it, ‘yessur.” Again, the worker turned his head and fixated his gaze on the hole.

There was a brief silence between the two of them. “I was within the pit, good God yes,” the glassy-eyed worker finished with an unbothered, yet, sincere admiration for his circumstance.

I could hear their conversation practically in sync with my TV. I read his lips from the window.

The strange and now visibly annoyed man who was rescued seemed to have enough of the reporter’s questions. His strange refusal to discuss anything about his feelings was odd. His mentioning of being “in-there” was odd too. I kept stalking.

Right before I reached my spectator’s fill, something insane happened.

It happened abruptly, but I witnessed the worker push off from the EMT administering care and run straight for the pit. He was moving like his life depended on it.

I followed his dash, moving more of the blinds apart.

Without a thought, the worker jumped into the air and laid out into a freefall, falling down into the sinkhole. People around the edge tried to grab him, but it was too late. It was a random act and I could see everyone’s faces struggling to understand what had just happened.

Why would somebody do that?

The man had undoubtedly killed himself. I felt my stomach turn.

There was a knock on my door and it made me jump. I was still astonished at what I’d seen. I wobbled over to answer it, half-expecting some official to ask me to leave the premises for safety reasons.

I opened the door. It was my neighbor Jeremy.

This guy lives two units down from me. I met him at the community BBQ. He’s a real sad story because I knew he was recently married yet his wife hates him. I met them both and since then all the conversations we’ve had were really awkward.

It’s not like Jeremy is a bad guy either. He works hard, and he’s friendly; but for some reason, he is constantly disapproved and shunned by his wife. It’s not that I’m friends with him because I pity him. We both enjoy pizza and UFC. He’s a good guy.

“Hey wanna go take a closer look at the hole?” Jeremy said in a dumb confidence.

“Hey ‘bud.” I already forgot about the man killing himself. It was that fast. “Sure. Why not,” I said. “They probably won’t let us very close though.”

“Nonsense silly!” Jeremy joked.

I can see where his wife gets her disgust from. A grown man calling another grown man ‘silly’.

Jeremy and I walked across the street and over to the scene. I was feeling uneasy about getting closer to the pit. Along our way, we were shortly stopped by a police officer. He allowed us to stand as close as the barricade let us. We stared and Jeremy spoke.

“Did you see that man they rescued killed ‘hisself on the TV?” Jeremy said. I suddenly remembered that horrific memory, yet the thought returned to me like deja ‘vu.

“Sure did.” It happened not five minutes ago. “But did you notice how unbothered he seemed by the whole experience? He was ‘kina weird to me. It was like he wanted to be in that-there hole,” I said pointing out to the massive crater before us. It was looking bigger.

Right as I pointed, somebody else dove in.

It was like I was tracing their dive with my finger.

Of all crazies, it was the police officer who stopped us. Out of nowhere, he ran and swan-dived into the pit, as if it was a swimming hole.

At first, I thought: Maybe he was going to save the worker who jumped in earlier; but why would he jump in like that? Why didn’t he properly climb down?

He too was surely dead.

“Christ!” Jeremy screamed.

I couldn’t make cheese and crackers of what was going on. Many other people at the scene were yelling and crying and panicking. I was shocked.

Then in an instance, and I swear to the Lord, another person ran and jumped into the pit.

Then another, and another.

And another.

Soon, truckloads of people were running and jumping to their deaths.

Then the newslady threw down her microphone and sprinted toward the sinkhole.

Her turn.

Oh yeah, I had seen the fear on her face from my TV set. Just a few minutes ago she was humane, trembling, interviewing these people on live TV. I saw her. She had bawled over the police officer, a dignified individual who served a dignified duty.

Now she was plummeting into the darkness.

Soon it was people from up the street who were running full speed toward the sinkhole.

I looked at their faces. All of ‘em were expressionless, blank as if they were a bunch of mindless zombies.

They kept coming. Freakin’ people that weren’t even around to see the hole were rushing to jump in. I saw people stopping their cars, getting out, and mad-dashing toward the hole without any reason for it.

Both Jeremy and I stood frozen still, inching ourselves backward every second or so.

All ‘sortsa people came.

At first, it was just a couple; but it became hundreds and hundreds of people, flooding the streets and trampling the grass, running in flocks or packs or herds. It was like mind control the way people were commanded to jump in.

At some point, people had stopped jumping. It was more like they were tipping into the pit. An imaginative part of me figured the hole would fill up. Eventually, there was no room for anyone to properly jump.

They simply leaned in.

Oh. There was Jeremy’s wife.

“Ivanka!” Jeremy cried.

He tried running out to her but I grabbed him, keeping him back. He turned and looked at me with a terrified look. This was a bad dream.

Literally thousands of people were storming the hole. I could only watch helplessly as an unsettling arrangement of crowds motionlessly barrelled into the pit. It became perfect formations of people sprinting from several different directions.

I shut my eyes in fear. This wasn’t real.

Then everything was still. I could still feel Jeremy’s shirt in my grip. It was all quiet and the thunderous clapping of running had stopped. I could hear the birds again. I let go of Jeremy and both of us scanned the desolate land.

Not a soul was around.

“God forbid we look into that hole,” Jeremy quivered. His face was wet and red. I couldn’t tell if it was his nervousness and widowed tears or his sunburn and sweat.

“We have to,” I think I said.

We crept closer to the hole. I wanted to throw up but I had nothing to ‘yak on account of missing my breakfast.

All reasoning and logic for me had been thrown out the window. Jeremy and I peeked over the edge of the pit. Standing this close, the hole seemed so much bigger. It was.

We looked down into the darkness. As expected, there was nothing to be seen.

“What do we do?” Jeremy wept.

I looked around for any signs of someone else. It was like we were the last people on Earth. I had a sure feeling that we were completely alone.

My gut was ‘kickin in a strange way. It wasn't because of a lack of breakfast, no, and it wasn’t because I was scared, not even close.

My conscious felt commanded.

Commanded by an urgent feeling to go to the hole.

Was this my brain resorting to my only source of action?

I felt a gust of wind pass next to me. It smelled like syrup and cigarettes. Jeremy jumped in without saying anything. I watched the back of him calmly freefall into the dark.

Oh… It felt right.

I caved.

Willingly, I relaxed and fell into the sinkhole.

As I entered into the void, my surroundings dimmed and eventually, all my senses vanished.

It felt like all my worn joints cracked at the same time. My muscles were stretched and massaged all over in one sensation. It felt like my brain was cleansed, picked clean; and my soul was dusted off of sin.

As I slowly began to feel my physical presence, a voice cried out from the still dark.

“Within every accepted invitation is a granted permission to leave.” Said an angelic and foreign voice. No words were apparent but I knew what they were saying. What It was saying.

"Can I leave?” I only thought.

It was slow at first, but an orange, bright light erupted and my hearing rang out. My senses gradually returned. Everything felt fuzzy, like TV static.

My vision faded back and I found myself laying on my kitchen floor. My spilled OJ had turned into goop and was all up in my hair.

I straightened up and held my head. It was pounding like a jackrabbit gnawing a carrot.

Without a moment wasted, I ran to the window to see if the sinkhole was there.

It wasn’t.

It was just a plain ‘ol construction team building a buildin’.

I turned to the TV to see my cartoons were still playing. Oh yeah, the continuous marathon of ‘Loonie Tunes’.

I clutched my skull. I looked at the clock. It was 1 PM.

I had passed out for three hours.

All of a sudden there was a knock on my door. Before I got to process my experience any further, I answered it.

It was my neighbor Jeremy from a couple of units down.

“Hey silly, you look worse for wear! Anyway, I just came by to say thanks for what you did.” His face was bright and twenty years younger.

He continued. “Look, Ivanka and I really appreciate you for the whole ‘sinkhole’, ‘everlasting tranquility’, and ‘spirit of the beyond, realm-shabang’ you did for everyone.” Jeremy licked his lips. “We really appreciate it ‘bud! Here’s some lemon snaps my ‘hunnie baked. Have a good one!”

And like that, Jeremy walked off.

I must’ve really rocked my noggin.