text: It was impossible to tell the smoke from the dust, great plumes billowing into the sky above. The coal was burning in earnest now, consuming the oxygen in the shaft like the wick of a candle. It would burn for decades to come. The floor under my bare feet was hot to the touch. *Why would something be alive down there?* I stumbled. The cuts across the soles of my feet were too many to count now, and although the lightning pain begged me to tend to my wounds the little voice of fear in my heart pressed me onward*.* *Away, get away, get away from the mine!* it begged me. In that moment it was louder that the voice of pain but I suspected that - if I lived long enough - the opposite would become true. My legs ached from the climb, not just in my feet, and my shoulder felt like it might be broken from where an explosion had thrown me against the wall. *But something was alive down there.* I looked behind for survivors. All I’d seen were fingers moving amidst the coal. Maybe we’d dug too deep. Maybe it had been waiting for us. I was the only one left, but how could that be? Seventy were down there when the fires broke out. At least half of those managed to get to the emergency respirators before the lifts failed. Hell, even when the central shaft caved there were at least fifteen who avoided the worst of it. That felt like moments ago. How could I be the only one left? Moisture coated the inside of the respirator’s mask. Without thinking I reached up and drew my dirty fingers across the lense to try to wipe it away, leaving long smudge marks like runways along the visor. A dark shape stirred amongst the haze, beyond the runways. At first I thought it was a tree or a bush, but then it stumbled. A man. Another survivor. I nearly stumbled myself as I bolted towards him; the ground was uneven, and *hot.* So burning hot it felt like I was walking on the sun. There was a road somewhere around the mine but in the chaos I’d gotten turned around. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t found the others. A young face fell through the wisps of smoke towards me, landing cradled between my hands. I had often thought of Paolo as cherubic, even beautiful. Less so now, although there was something entirely messianic about him. Even in this state. Blood plastered his long hair to his face in dried rivers, and one of his handsome eyebrows was split in two. He wasn’t wearing a respirator, and his eyes seemed to focus on a point in the middle of nothing as he drew each laboured, rattling breath. Something clear and viscous was leaking from his eyes, bubbling away and rolling like thick tears to meet the corner of his mouth. “Paolo!” I cried, my voice strangled by the respirator. “Paolo, it’s Eduardo! Where is your respirator?” He stirred, dark pupils locking with mine as I cradled him on the ground. For a second there was something in them, some recognition of the person he was staring at. Then it was gone. “I saw,” he wheezed. I shook my head. “You’re delirious from hypoxia. Save your breath-” “I *saw,”* he pressed, as if the words carried something urgent. I nodded. He didn’t look well. These could have well been his final words. “Okay, what did you see?” For a second he just stared, transfixed on that point behind me as his lungs rattled for air. Bubbles formed in the corners of his eyes and between his lips and that stuff kept dripping and *dripping.* What was it? Liquid from his sinuses, or some effect from inhaling the burning particles of coal? I thought I was losing him as the colour drained away from his face. His eyes relaxed and his fingers uncurled, but then he locked his vision with mine and hissed a defiant intake of air. *“How long have we forgotten the nightmares that lie beneath our feet?”* The ground shook as he slipped from the world, his head rolling sideways at an angle that would have been too uncomfortable for a living man to maintain. I figured more of the mine was collapsing, but the way he lay there in my arms reminded me of our crucified lord as the earth rumbled and tore the temple in half. Slowly it dawned on me that my friend - a man to whom I had once drunkenly confessed attraction - was dead in my arms. Paolo, beautiful Paolo, was gone. And then something moved. My face whipped to where it had been, wisps of smoke curling in the empty space that it had left behind. Something had been standing there, watching me. I was sure of it. Something fast enough to disappear before I could lay eyes on it. Could a human do that? Or an animal, maybe a deer or a horse? I felt Paolo’s body twitching in my arms, his face smacking the stones beneath as I recoiled away from the fluid pouring from every orifice in his head. What the fuck was happening to him? He shook and convulsed but as if it weren’t his own muscles doing the moving. It was like something was *inside* of him trying to get out. I had to get away from this place. I had to find the others, and the emergency crews that had to at least be on their way. I turned and limped back in the direction I’d come from, tracing my own bloody footprints until I came to the shaft entrance, still billowing smoke like a volcano. Good. At least the building was still there, even if the fire had warped it beyond recognition. If I walked around the building like so, I might be able to... “There!” I exclaimed, pointing at my discovery of a sealed road. Who was I talking to? I shuffled forward, to where I imagined emergency crews were gathering to take us away from this hellhole. The bitumen was hot, even torrid, searing the exposed flesh in my cuts as I shambled but that little voice was still in my head. Go, it said. Go. *Run. Get away. Never come back. Don’t look behind you.* Somehow I knew that all hope was forsaken. I felt like I was stuck in one of those dreams you thank God for awakening you from, only somehow I knew there was no God to be found here. But I found the others. Fifteen, maybe twenty of them, crouched with their faces pressed to the ground. Why weren’t they fleeing or tending to the wounded? None of this made any fucking sense! When they rose, kneeling in formation, I noticed the bald head of my supervisor, a heavy man named Nicolás. Nobody looked at me as I scuttled towards him, skidding to my knees at his side before I even had a chance to count the others. There was something wrong with him but the mines were burning. There had to be something wrong with all of us. “Nicolás? Nicolás! It’s Eduardo! We have to get to safety. We can’t stop here to-” I fell backwards, jamming my feet underneath me as I threw myself away from him. The same viscous goo was pouring from his face, roiling and bubbling as it flowed down his chest and onto the ground. His mouth moved in the shape of words, but all that came out was more of that *stuff.* BREATHE. The word rang through my head like a struck gong. I looked up, to where something towered over us with arms outstretched. It was so big. It looked like the cross of our lord Himself. How had I not seen it? Had it always been there? BREATHE. My left hand reached up for the respirator before I realised what I was doing, my fingers pawing at the straps holding it to my head. Some disembodied voice sounded in my mind, commanding me to take it off. The air felt so hot, so claustrophobic. I longed to breathe the cool air outside my mask but it all felt so *wrong.* I scuttled to my feet with a roar, vaguely aware that something was trying to trick me. I didn’t get far. Hands closed around my shoulders before I had a chance to get more than a metre, and I saw the angelic face of Paolo and the viscous tears he wept for me. I wanted to embrace him, to wrap his arms around me and forget any of this had happened, and a dark cool settled over my mind as I watched his lips forming silent words. *Breathe,* he said. “Breathe,” I repeated, offering my head to him so he could undo the straps. The mask fell away, slapping my shins as it caught the line that attached it to my air supply, but it was not cool air that I inhaled. I was tricked. It was sickly, and warm with something acidic that assaulted the walls of my lungs. My body protested my decision with coughs, heaving and choking in its futile attempts to respire as the burning crept out of my chest and towards my limbs. Tears welled up in my eyes, but all I could think was that one, horrible word. BREATHE. It was not my voice, nor a voice of my subconscious. It was something else. Something *outside.* Not spoken with sounds but with some dark, guttural language of thoughts and impulses. In obedience, I drew deeply and ignored the urge to vomit. Eduardo reached down for me and I caressed his forearms as he pulled me to my feet. Finally, my love, we will be together. He led me to a place at the back of the formation, glyphs and nightmares forming in the back of my mind as if someone were reading a grimoire to me, and I saw that thing smile at me through the haze. I couldn’t see it through the dust but I knew that it was happy with me, and that made me *glad.* Smile at me, my Lord, for I am your willing sacrifice! SUCH LITTLE THINGS, the voice boomed. SUCH FRAIL, LITTLE BODIES YOU HAVE. My lips moved, though I knew not the words. Wetness formed in the corners of my eyes like spittle, and I could feel the fluid boiling up from the bottom of my lungs, forcing its way through my larynx as the nightmare became my reality. The ground rose up to meet me, and I realised in the shrinking parts of my free mind that I had bowed without intention. Again, that thing smiled. *Yes, Lord,* I thought. *I will obey.