I Was Once a Miner

Being a miner was hard. The conditions were execrable in my opinion. You’d have to brawl with the scorching temperatures down there, usually because there are large furnaces at work, smelting all the ores. But most of the time it was the radiance of the lava pools. The monster infested caverns were blocked off, but that didn’t stop flesh craving zombies from punching the wooden plank walls down. There are at least ten grisly casualties every year in the mining business, and it could happen to anyone.

I almost died myself once. There was a pillar of iron ores hanging above me. Once I extracted the last one, a jack-ton of gravel fell on top of me. The weight of the gravel sent me on my stomach. I felt my own breath fading into nothing before a fellow miner named Paul grabbed me by the legs and dragged me out of the heap. We became the best of friends ever since.

The team I was on would usually preformed tasks around the old mineshafts, fixing rails and slicing through cobwebs with our trusty shears. We would chat with each other to keep our minds off the heat and munch on some dry bread on our breaks. It almost tasted like grains of sand, but with the energy I wasted on striking stone, I would wolf it down eagerly.

My life was filled with danger, and I was practically used to it. But one day something happened. Something that would put me in the state of paranoia and inexplicable terror. And to this day, I cannot process it. I feel insane. I want it all to end. I fear that it is still pursing me. There is no way anyone can help me, pull me out of deaths reach like Paul did. I don’t know what to do. I’m too afraid to face the inescapable horror that is the wicked being which dwells in the caves.

It was the beginning week nine, year 904. The village needed some lapis to upgrade the tools, it would make farming, as well as combat against monsters much easier. Seeking lapis was going to be tough, with none to be found in the familiar mines, we would have to deeper.

In order go deeper, we would have to find cavern that already existed. We would put our ears to the cold stone ground and listen for the squeaks of bats or the ancient cave sounds. This was a slightly long process, and once we did confirm something was beneath us, we mine downwards and pour buckets of lava down to flush out any monsters that could be nearby. It was an 30% chance that monsters would be right below us, but we would always use that technique just in case. Who knows? Those green, explosive bastards are fairly silent.

I was with Paul that day, and two men and a woman as well. There was Mark, a rather jittery person, you’d almost think he’s schizophrenic, though that’s not the case. The other man’s name was Carl, he’s probably the laziest person on our group, people have reported him to the warden for resting a lot on the job, but he simply laid it off as something that will cause his own punishment. I guess natural karma is a better way of putting it. And finally, we have Mia. She never talked much but she was certainly skilled with finding ores, and we would usually put her at the front of line, so she can lead the way. As for Paul, he’s pretty much the leader, he makes all the decisions for operations and such.

We strolled past the large furnaces and onto a small iron platform which was basically a redstone elevator that would transport you down to level 20. That’s where some of the new mineshafts were being constructed.

The outer walls in the hallways of level 20 were made up of wooden pillars that supported caves above, but I was always worried when I heard a minecart zoom above us because I could see a small portion of rubble fall during the impact. I figured the pillars wouldn’t hold up for more than a year and I felt that I should notify the warden sometime.

Mark was placing torches down every so often to light up dark areas and Paul told him to stop because it would waste resources. I couldn’t help but feel a little bad for Mark, so I gave him an apple. I wasn’t sure how that would help him get over his nyctophobia, but he smiled and accepted my gift. He took a few bites out of it before tossing it aside which I thought was kind of rude, but it didn’t really matter.

Paul would periodically place the right side of his head to the ground, wait a few seconds, and get up so we could continue our journey through the seemingly endless hallway.

After about twenty minuets of searching for a deeper route, Paul stopped dead in his tracks, he raised a hand, telling us to stop and we did.

“Listen.” He commanded.

The sounds of rattling bones could be heard.

“Oh dear,” Mark said nervously, “it must be close.”

I patted Mark on the back and walked over to where Paul was standing.

“As I expected, “Paul claimed, “it’s right beneath our feet.” He kneeled and ran his fingers through the cracks in the stone, then he stood up and said, “Get the TNT, we’ll blow up the floor and slaughter those skeletons, it’ll be like a surprise attack.”

“What about the lava buckets?” Mia said, holding one up.

Paul shook his head, “No need, those skeletons have some intelligence. The lava is a slow flowing source, they’ll just run off and start targeting us when the lava clears, and we hop down.”

“Sounds like a good idea.” I spoke up.

“I’m glad you think that, now let’s get started, shall we?” Paul snapped his fingers, waking up Carl who was in a doze. “You heard me, Carl.”

“Uh, oh! Yeah, yeah.” Carl walked over and placed down an explosive and with a few flicks of a flint and steal, the TNT was ignited and hopped to the side, flashing red and white. We ran back at least twenty blocks before the TNT exploded. White smoke sprayed everywhere which made Mark and I cough dramatically.

“Boy, that TNT is some powerful stuff!” Mia exclaimed.

“Yes indeed.” I responded.

We ran back to the large crater and looked down. There were no skeletons insight. Paul looked at Mia and pointed down. Mia nodded her head, and without hesitation she jumped down. She waved her torch in all directions and then said, “Um, I don’t see any baddies.”

Paul responded, “Is that so? Go forward a bit, place down a torch or two.”

Within about thirty seconds Mia began to speak up again, “I still don’t see anything.”

“Well that’s strange,” Paul said, “I swear I heard them beneath us, um-hey, could you go down there with her?” He was looking at me.

“Sure thing.” I said, and I hopped down. I walked over to Mia, she was standing there running her torch light around the walls.

“Found anything?” I said. She spun around with a surprised look on her face. “Argh, you scared the shit out me!”

“Yea, sorry about that.” I said, scratching the back of my neck. Mia, with her lack of speech she uses, usually results in physically attacking someone when they tick her off on purpose. But she is very understanding. That’s why she didn’t punch me in the nose, thank goodness.

Paul, Mark, and Carl made there way down to where we were and scanned the area. We walked through the caves which snaked in multiple directions. I couldn’t erase the thought from my head. Where were the skeletons? They couldn’t have gone far. I gripped onto my stone sword incase we encountered them somewhere, or any other monster that popped out to greet us in an aggressive fashion.

Mark was worrisome as always. Every time the cave sounds would sound off, he would shudder. I couldn’t blame him, the sounds pretty disturbing.

Suddenly, something unexpected happned. I began looking around, and realized Carl wasn’t with us.

“Hey, have any of you seen Carl?” I pointed out.

Everybody stopped in their tracks and looked around.

“Where the hell could he be?” Paul muttered.

Mia called out Carl’s name, her voice bounced off the walls. We waited for ten seconds but there was sadly no response.

“I’ll go back and look.” I said.

“Alright,” Paul responded, be careful, and don’t take too long.”

I nodded and ran off. I was worried about Carl. Despite he was lazy and wasn’t too good at his job, he was a good friend. His engaging sense of humor got us through the rough days, and he would always run to get help when one of us were badly injured. He was great man, and I’m sure everybody would agree.

A few minuets later I came across something horrifying. I yelped, and the rest of the crew dashed toward me to see if I was alright. When they reached me, they stared in horror at the appalling sight. Mark began vomiting, Mia looked away, shivering. Paul just stood there and continued to stare, and so did I. Carl’s horrendous body was sprawled out on the ground. His neck was twisted multiple times, making it look unnaturally elongated. His arms and legs were contorted, and his torso was slashed and bloody. His eyes, they were gone. Blood ran out of his empty sockets. I was too in shock to feel saddened.

“What the fuck happned to him?” I shouted.

“I-I have no fucking clue, he…he’s dead. Aah shit, shit, shit!” Mark sobbed madly, Mia did the same.

“We need to get out of here!” I exclaimed.

“Yea let’s go.” Paul agreed.

We tried to make our way back to were we came from, but something wasn’t right. Mia was the one to point out we were going in circles, but Paul said she was wrong, stating that if that were the case, they would’ve come across Carl’s body.

“But, whatever killed him could have dragged him off. Maybe it was a zombie, they usually do that.” Mark groaned at the thought.

“Keep it together Mark,” Paul said firmly, “were almost there. No, no. It couldn’t have been a zombie, the state we found him in…never mind. Let’s just keep going.”

I felt like a fool. I was the one who convinced Mark to come along on our quest to find lapis.

“Hey, Mark. Are you doing okay?” I put a hand on his shoulder as we walked.

“Y-yea. I s-suppose.” He stammered.

“I understand your afraid,” I responded, “we all are. But as long as we stick together, we’ll make it out just fine.”

He smiled lightly, tears running down his face. I kept my arm around him, keeping him close. Everybody was silent for a while, but the exit was nowhere to be found, so Mia spoke up.

“Okay, this is insane,” She stopped walking, “we are obviously lost. We need to think this out, Paul.”

“There is something out there,” Paul barked, “if we keep moving, that thing won’t get us!”

“And then what? How in the actual fuck will we get out of this hell hole?” Mia shot back.

“I don’t know, but if we want to escape, we have to be alive to do it!”

“You guys stop fighting.” I let go of Mark and walked over to Mia, I grabbed her arm and she slapped me.

“I-uh. I’m sorry. I was just…” I interrupted Mia. “Its okay, I just didn’t want the argument to escalate. How about we try and work things out.”

Mia was about to speak up when Mark let out a, “What in the son of bitch!”

I turned over to Mark, surprised by his comment, “What? Whats going on?”

“I saw something! In the corner of my eye, it looked human!”

“Your eyes are just playing tricks on you.” Paul said angrily, “come on, let’s go!”

“Fine.” Mia said, I noticed her eyes were dreary and watery, the sign of fear, or perhaps sadness.

To our surprise, we somehow came across a large ravine. It was so tall; the bottom was shrouded in darkness.

Paul estimated the distance, “Should be a five-block jump. We’ll be able to get across.”

“J-jump?” Mark’s heart sank.

“Oh, for fucks sake Mark,” Paul said, “you need to man up, or you won’t survive!” It wasn’t like Paul to be so mean, but I assumed he was highly stressed due to Carl’s death.

“Shut up Paul,” Mia barked, “Don’t worry, I’ll be there to hoist you up if you are close to falling.” And with that she jumped across and did a roll when she hit the edge. “Come on Mark, you can do it!” Mia held out her arms for a longing embrace.

“Yea I’m going to jump! I’m going to do it!” He shouted confidently. I was proud of him at that point. He took a few steps back and sprinted to the edge, he took a leap of faith. Hope filled the air. But then something came out from the depths of the ravine. It was a dark blur, I didn’t know what it was. Its gripped Mark’s left leg in mid air and yanked him down into the darkness. His blood-curdling screams came to an abrupt stop with the sound of his body hitting the ground below. Then silence.

Mia clamped her hands over her mouth, she began welling up.

“What…was that?” I choked out.

“He’s gone,” Paul replied, “there’s nothing we can do about it. Mia, leave us here, we’ll figure something out.”

“But-!” Mia was about to finish her sentence when Paul intervened, “Do as I say! If we jump across here we might end up with the same fate as Mark. I promise we will get out of here.”

“Paul…this might not be the way to escape! It might be a dead end!”

“There is nothing we can do! Wait there, we will find a way to get to you. You are the bravest woman I know, you can handle this!”

“He’s right!” I shouted to her.

“Uh…okay. Please, be careful you two.” She said.

“We will.” I assured her.

As we left, I could hear Mia crying, I almost cried myself, but instead I was angry.

“Why were you so cruel?” I broke the silence as I walked along side Paul.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged.

“Mark was afraid, you could have just in courage him.”

“Are you saying it’s my fault that he didn’t make the jump?” he barked.

“No. That thing…whatever it was, it dragged him down to his doom.”

“Exactly,” Paul snapped back, “I cared about Mark, I cared, about Carl. I didn’t kill them. That thing did! Its still out there hunting us!”

“You left Mia! You don’t care about any of us!”

“Oh yeah? Well you left her to!”

I fell silent. He was right. I was then overcome with guilt.

Paul sighed, “I try to get the best out of people. Mark was strong, he just needed help realizing it.”

“I apologize,” I responded, “I should have never doubted you.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he replied, “I should have been nicer, and-.” Tears trickled down his face. I put a hand on his shoulder.

“We will make it out alive. I know we will.”

Suddenly, something materialized behind Paul. It was a dark, twisted creature with large, orange eyes that had a black mist swirling inside them. The creature resembled a human figure that was very tall, taller than an enderman. It had nightmarishly long arms with sharp, grey claws that would feel as if it pierced you by just looking at them. It didn’t have any legs, it simply floated.

“Paul! Look out!” I shouted.

But it was to late. Paul turned around and stared in horror. With one swipe of the creature’s talons Paul’s severed head fell off and rolled onto the ground, stopping in place to have his stare directly at me. I screamed in horror. I could here the creature making a strange, demonic noise as if it were laughing manically.

The menacing creature slowly floated toward me. I back against a wall and continued to scream. I could feel the creature’s hot breath pounding on my face. Suddenly, I could hear voices of multiple people. Something between the lines of, “I think I can hear sombody down there,” and “It sounds like they’re in danger!”

I gained the courage to open my eyes. The creature…it was gone.

I could see shadows of other people coming from around the corner. Sure enough, it was a search and rescue team. About six people were there. I was overcome with relief. A few of the men examined Paul’s corpse and one of them looked up at me. “What happned here?” he asked.

I began to cry hysterically. After they took me back up to the surface of the overworld, I told them everything I could remember. A few people were skeptical of my story, but that didn’t stop the warden from having the cave closed off.

I was told that before the search and rescue team found me, they discovered Mia’s body. At least, the top half of it. The news made my stomach churn. All my friends were dead, I felt like I had nothing to live for.

I became mentally ill, and I have never left my house because of my hallucinations of my friend’s gruesome bodies showing up in random places in my head. I might as well close this off by saying, goodbye. For I believe my fate, is still the creature who lives in the caves, pursuit.

To be concluded…