“Belly Up” - A Satirical, Short Story

In a little ditch behind our houses, Reg the Knucklehead, my brother Will, and myself included, loitered outside the neighborhood sewage runoff. I’m little brother, and like usual I was accompanied by pity. Apparently, I was “dying to be brought along”.

The six-foot by four-foot concrete entrance spat out a trickle of dirty water in its calm, wussy current. Its winding pipes and pathways ran underneath the neighborhood. Street sludge, an assortment of soda cans, blown-out fireworks, used contraceptives, and dead bugs of all varieties cruised their way out of the pipeline. Dribble-dribble the sewer trash flooded the middle. The ditch was looking full.

Over time, likely dozens of summers, the center of the ditch had formed a swamp with its own ecosystem. God forbid anyone touch the contaminated water, and if your football so happened to be cast that way it was as good as gone. Little dead goldfish lay limp on the viscous surface. Oh hey Swimmy! Oh hey Gilbert!

Knucklehead and Will are as close as peanut butter and jelly. Such different things, yet they work so well together.

Summer break had started and Knucklehead was bragging about how next year he’d be moving up from junior high to high school. He seemed to be bragging to both of us; though it made little sense since my brother Will was also in his grade. After a little more talking, I finally caught on that I was the one being dogged.

“Sorry ‘sucka. You gonna miss us next year?” Will laughed. I could smell shit on his breath.

“Hell no!” I belted.

Truthfully I knew it was time for me to be my own person. I intended to quit following in the footsteps of my older brother. Before we came out to the sewage runoff, I swore that today was gonna be the last time I tagged along for any of the idiotic antics these two wrapped me up in.

When Will asked if I’d miss them, I’m sure he didn’t take my response seriously, as it’s typical that no older brother truly listens to his little brother. My words, sprinkled with mature profanity, reached them only as sounds. Knucklehead laughed at our family banter and dipped his head into the concrete corridor that was the sewer.

“Yo!” Knucklehead’s voice echoed, causing this initial bang that slowly echoed away - down, down, down into the deep sewer cavern. I listened and it faded out. From the corner of his eye, Knucklehead was looking at me. I pressed my chapped lips into my nose. He and Will smiled at each other, a devious exchange that I knew meant trouble. I spoke up, beating them at their own game.

“Alright chickens, after me.” I boldly declared, stepping into the cold passageway.

I wasn’t stupid, I was only playing into their hands. I had a sure feeling they were going to ditch me in here. Will was chirping about the sewers last night before bed, so I had time, and I was well and prepared for taking a ‘looksie’ in the pipes. And no, we weren’t the first kids who went exploring down here, as Will had come home late from school, dozens of times, yapping about his adventures in the underground system.

It was only my first time and I was gonna prove to both of them that I wasn’t scared. This was like some ritual of adolescence, but I knew they were plotting something. We played follow the leader and I graciously took reign.

The air from inside the tunnel was restricting and sharp. It wasn’t that the air was hard to breathe, but it felt cold and still; like there was only so much of it and you wouldn’t be given anymore. At first, the scent of the air was tolerable, but the deeper we walked the more it smelled like a dead squirrel, one that’s been flattened to tar and kicked into the gutter. From all angles but behind us where we came in, there wasn’t a sliver of light to be found. No other entrances existed. No escaping holes aside from the fist-sized tunnels that collected the runoff of sludge and trash from the streets. It was nothing but smooth concrete walls, rounded, encapsulating the three of us.

Oh yes, my gut felt right. These bozos brought me here to ‘explore’.

As my eyes fell into the darkness, I reached into the back of my jeans and pulled out Dad’s military-grade flashlight. I snagged it from his workbench on the way out of the garage. It’s a footlong, decently heavy, and capable of lighting up ten feet in front of us. I clicked on the yellow bulb and cast a beacon of direction. The guys seemed to trust I’d do such a thing. They brought no lights.

Try your best, I came prepared you dummies.

I could read them like a book. They planned to invite me into this ‘cool’ and ‘spooky’ area; and when the time came, when we were deep into the sewer system, they’d turn around and ditch me. It was utterly obvious. This was some little trick, a finale, they were putting a bow on their middle school days. One last jest inflicted on me. Knucklehead and Will weren’t as clever as they thought. I was gonna turn the tables on them when the right time came.

After all, I’m the only one with the flashlight.

We walked deeper into the pipelines. Knucklehead and Will continued calling out slurs and curses, causing as much of a disturbance as they could laugh up. In no way were we supposed to be down here, but I wasn’t worried about that, as I was more worried about someone from above hearing the heinous remarks. But nobody could’ve. Truthfully, not a single soul knew of our trespass, and that is, I suppose, what made it somewhat fun.

The light from the tunnel’s exit slowly disappeared as we moved deeper inward. I caught one last glimpse of the fading white dot, to which I noticed it certainly looked darker outside. Last I checked, it was three o'clock with blue skies and sunshine till six.

It was exciting to lead, I won’t lie. I got to point out and be the first to witness all the crummy graffiti and tags left by kids from the past. After a while, I realized it was nothing new to them and my exclamations were that of pure, personal enjoyment. My words were just sounds. Nevertheless, I thought it was neat.

“Go left up ahead,” Knucklehead yawned.

His words threw me off. Honestly, I had figured that the sewer tunnel was a straight shot under our neighborhood. That’s how Will described it. A single underground path that led you from point A to point B. Last night, Will told me that if you started at the ditch, you could finish and exit out from another pipe located somewhere in the woods beyond the neighborhood.

We had gone at least a half mile inward, and there were no signs of any twists or turns. Our pathway felt secure and easy to navigate. A turn? I flashed my light ahead, lifting the beam from the splotchy ground. He was right. The narrow tunnel we had been walking split off into a fork with a big, spray-painted arrow pointing toward the left. The graffiti continued down the left pipe, but the right pipe looked completely untouched by paint. Despite this surprise, I held my head high; and unwavering, I led the three of us into the left tunnel.

As I changed our direction, only for a second did I think about that right tunnel. I thought about why there was a big ‘ol arrow telling us to go one way and not to the other. I wondered if anyone ever went down the right tunnel. Did Knucklehead say left just because the arrow said so? Was it left because he doesn’t know what leads right? Does Will know what’s down the right pipe?

As I kept walking I almost forgot that we changed direction. Eventually, the path before us looked the same as it did when we started; it all looked the same, just a straight-away, concrete tube leading further and deeper into the dark. The sharpness of the air was the same and I was beyond the stench. The graffiti was just as terrible. Not much was different no matter how far we went.

How boring. My brother and Knucklehead shuffled behind me on my heels.

We continued down the long, pitiful tunnel. The graffiti was starting to put me out, as it was nothing but horrendous depictions of contemporaries’ past, ugly caricatures, and just nonsense. I was bored and sick of walking. We had gone so far that there wasn’t even any debris from the streets or curious trash to look at. It was just these horrible faces and ugly scribbles, with the occasional quip. I spotted one that read: George Bush did 911.

If I stopped they’d call me chicken. My arm hurt from holding the flashlight. We continued walking further into the tunnel.

I felt that at any time these guys would high tail and ditch me. The idea of it stuck with me from the get-go. At first, I didn’t care, as it was so obvious that regardless if I cried or screamed it was gonna happen anyway. It got to the point where I wish they would just do it already. I was going to but I felt obligated to keep leading. I wasn’t chicken.

We went another mile further.

I slowly began to realize that the beam on my flashlight was glowing a deeper yellow. The cascaded light that once shone ten feet in front was now about five. Aside from being their guide, I felt invisible, uncared for, and purely there for their soon-twisted enjoyment.

But when? When were they gonna leave me down here?

Yes, I wanted to be the first to ditch them, but they wanted to keep going. I aimed my light ahead and this time before Knucklehead got to say anything, I was the one who spotted the cruddy arrow.

Hiking up my jeans, I approached the next fork. I whipped around, blinding both of them with the beam of my light. Their pimpled faces winced.

“So? Right or left?” I asked, trying my best not to come off nervous.

“You got eyeballs don’t you?” Will said arrogantly.

The arrow pointed left. So I led us left.

Eventually, I noticed that the tube we’d been traversing had grown smaller and tighter. I’m standing around five feet tall, and the once six-by-four foot tube had no doubt become more of a three-by-three foot. Knucklehead had his neck and back bent to avoid smashing his noggin.

However, this realization hit me the moment after I struck my own head against a concrete divider - a divider signifying the tunnel’s finish and separating the pathway from a drop.

My head rang but… A drop? A drop!  It was finally something new.

“Woah!” I exclaimed, shining my light down into a pit.

“What’s up?” Knucklehead asked, almost mocking me like he knew this was coming.

“What do we do?” I was serious.

My leadership abilities dwindled and I subconsciously dropped my confidence. At my ‘toesy-tips was a slant, a slick slant of about ten feet. This concrete slide led down to an open room within the sewer.

It was refreshing to see something other than cylindrical concrete, yet alarming because it was a big, freaking room. To think there were other rooms, larger rooms, and deeper rooms beneath our neighborhood rattled me a bit. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen and I could’ve never imagined the sort of thing being down here.

You could throw a party in here and nobody would know!

“Go ahead chicken,” Will said as he nudged me off the edge.

Tripping, I fell on my butt and slid smoothly down to the bottom. My flashlight rolled away, issuing a brief period of pitch black. My pants felt wet and in the daylight, it surely would’ve looked like I crapped myself.

It hit me. Surely this was it. Now they’d ditch me. This is what they were waiting for.

To my surprise, the two of them scooted down the slope to accompany me. I picked up the light and the three of us stood together in the vacant room.

The graffiti in the room was much better and possibly newer than all the stuff we’d seen before. The towering walls allowed for a bigger canvas of bright creation. I noticed several tossed spray paint cans discarded in the corners of the room. It was comforting to know that people had been here before.

Knucklehead and my brother gazed around at all the remarkable paintwork. A gigantic mural covered the ceiling, a good twenty feet above us. It was a painting of a bat or a goblin (or a mix of both) with its wings stretching across the ceiling, dotted with prickled red spikes. I had no idea how it was painted up there and with such grace.

I looked back up toward the top of the ramp where we’d come from. With a good running start, I could easily make it up and out of here. I knew I’d have to eventually.

On the other side of the slope and across the floor was this steep wall, though without a ramp. At the top of the tall ledge was a tiny opening, maybe the size of a bicycle’s tire, leading to God knows where.

I asked a question.

“Are we going up there?” I pointed to the ledge and tiny opening.

For once today, Knucklehead and my brother looked stumped or unsure of the next move.

“If you want,” Knucklehead said, shrugging.

I don’t want to. But I said nothing.

Finally, I felt I was in the same boat as them. Like I was finally receiving equal treatment down here. All three of us were equally intrigued. I felt satisfied knowing that I shared the awe with them, nervous or not. It officially occurred to me that they weren’t going to leave me. It was just a dumb thing in my head. My brother wouldn’t do that! I was the butthole for thinking such.

No more did I care or worry. Honestly, I wanted to spray paint too!

Joyfully I ran to one of the corners and picked up a used can of paint. I shook it and laughed as I splurged a red happy face against the concrete wall. I was leaving my mark, my legacy.

It was in my focus, my artistic, upbeat focus, that I had finally let my guard down.

I didn’t even hear them leave. I didn’t hear them scuttle up that ten-foot ramp.

I thought it was me laughing.

My happy face drooped and so did the one on the wall. I was all alone in the cold chamber. My eyes widened and I gripped my flashlight.

“Guys?” I whispered but the syllables came out detached.

Dammit, I knew it.

I dropped the paint can and bolted to the foot of the slant. Luckily it wasn’t terribly wet or anything. My butt had dried it off and I knew I could run up its tilt. The other two did anyway. Dusting my hands off, I wiped the bottom of my shoes for a good grip.

In a blink, I was over this whole adventure.

Then the stillness was interrupted.

From above, and I don’t know how above, I heard a frightening crash. I knew that somewhere above me were roads or maybe houses or the school, but this crash was unlike anything I’d ever heard. It was monstrous. It was evil.

Was it a car wreck?

The sound echoed violently throughout the sewer and its boom banged against the concrete walls. It was approaching me and I felt my heart pop, for fear that the walls themselves would come crashing down.

It wasn’t concrete.

No.

It was water.

My frantic searching effort seized as I whipped my body around and gazed upon the adjacent wall with the tiny hole. I watched the little hole profusely spit out water - black water.

My yellow beam shook as I shined upon it, like a spotlight in the ocean. My nerves were shot and I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath. It was like I was already drowning.

It wasn’t just a little bit of water. It was a force of water. An explosion. Only then did I realize the nature of the room and what it was meant for. It was undoubtedly a space to contain water. To hold water. To hold rainwater.

Oh shit.

The floor beneath me slowly became a puddle, seeping through my sneakers and soaking my socks. It wasn’t slow or gradual - it was fast, faster than filling a bathtub.

Before I knew it, and it had only been ten seconds or so, the water had risen to my shins.

“Willy!” I cried out for my older brother.

Outside in the real world, for down here was some twisted, fantasy hell-hole, a vicious thunderstorm had unleashed not too long after we entered the sewer.

Why wasn’t I moving?

I ran to the far side of the chamber, water sloshing and thrashing around me to begin my sprint up the ramp.

The water made it hard to move, and I slipped, falling on my back into the rising pool of death. Strangely it reminded me of doing backflops at the YMCA. Luckily the water protected me from hitting my head on the ground, but it was then I dropped the flashlight into the almost waist-high depths. The battery short-circuited and the flashlight was gone.

Everything went dark.

“Fuck!” I swore. The black water tasted horrible.

I splashed to find my footing and got up aimlessly to retry my attempt.

The water was exploding out from the wall behind me, drenching me from above. I had one shot at climbing this thing. I had to get out of here or else I was gonna die.

I could see it now: “DEAD KID WASHES UP FROM THE SEWERS. WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR CHILDREN.” I screamed like a maniac, looking to lighten my demise. That would be my fate. A cruddy newspaper article.

By now the water was reaching my chest. I had to give it my all to break through the pool. I flung straight for where I believed was the slope leading me back up to the pipes. My heart was thumping erratically. Pushing through, and pulling the water out of my way, I felt my feet make contact with the slope. The bottom half of it was becoming submerged but luckily the upper half was dry enough for me to get a grip. Without vision, I had to trust my strength. I slapped my hands against the dried surface, gripping and pulling myself up and out of my tomb.

The water roared and grew taller, and right as I managed to weasel my way out from that death pit, I smashed my head against the same divider from earlier. With the fear that was running through my system, I didn’t even notice the gash that formed or the blood that was pouring out of my forehead.

Thank God I didn’t fall down. I have no time to fall down.

Just like that, I returned to the tunnel, but the black water had escaped too, and was following me. I wasn’t ready to give up, but neither was the water. Soaked, I shook my disorientated brain and trembling hands and broke into a wet sprint down the tunnel. A small stream beneath my water-logged shoes was steadily widening.

In total darkness, I splished and splashed and bolted down the pipeway. Behind me, I could hear the water chasing, growling, and growing in size.

I have about two miles to go.

…

There, I think about the tunnel filling up, as it surely will.

I think about the spray-painted arrows and heading right.

I think about my fish Swimmy and Gilbert being flushed down the toilet.

I think about Knucklehead Reg and my older brother.

I think about the contraceptives. I think about eighth grade. I think about George Bush blowing up the World Trade Center.

Running, the stream of water reaches my ankles. I trudge.

I think about death.

Senseless, a sense occurs. Out of nowhere, something slams into my back. An extreme force. The black water has leveled out, filling all the space that the chamber allows; and that tiny hole I questioned earlier pushes and flows steadily.

Like a rain gutter launching water, I’m propelled forward, my feet leaving the ground and my belly up.

I think of one last thing:

Surfs up.