The Hole

It was an ink-black night. Two plain white SUVs drove down a gravel road surrounded by flat, fallow fields on all sides and in every direction. The vehicles headlights cut through the dark, illuminating the dust from the gravel and unused earth, as they traveled down one perpendicular road after another. Finally, they reached a ramshackle shed made of little more than corrugated aluminum walls and a shoddy roof. There they parked and three men emerged, including myself.

We entered the shed and a light hung from the ceiling, swaying back and forth, casting stark shadows about the cramped space. In the middle of the dirt floor was a small hole, from which protruded the upper-half of a man in a biohazard suit. The hole was too small to accommodate anything more than his legs. I noticed the men I arrived with carried machine guns, and were dressed in military fatigues.

The man in the hole began to fidget, then to struggle. His face gnashed in pain, then agony, as he was forcibly pulled into the hole by something unseen. He shrieked as blood filled the hood and drained from his nose, mouth and eyes. In a sudden burst, the mask of the hood was splattered with gore, and the man was violently sucked into the hole. The men readied their guns, and I ran from the shed.

Outside, screams and gunfire cut through the dark somewhere in the distance. I ran past the cars and into the fields. The other men ran from the shed, jumped in the cars, and raced off. They were in pursuit of me. I didn't know why, but I kept running.