“It’s freezing in here,” Peter says to you.
Neither of you can see a thing. You are both desperate for warmth yet stand apart and frightened in the dark cave.
“We need to do something before we slowly freeze to death. I will use my phone to give us some light then we’ll use yours once mine dies,” Peter says to you.
You shuffle through all your pouches and pockets to find your phone, and think you’ve got it, but Peter pulls his out first and illuminates the dark cavern. Long sharp icicles hang from the cave’s shallow ceiling sparkling, and the ice-covered rock at your feet gleam in the phone’s light. There is one dark area left, and you both notice it. It appears to be a deep, black, infinite, passage or tunnel. You don’t look at Peter, but Peter looks at you with one thought in his eyes. We are going that way.
Peter watches your teeth chatter as you shiver, and you watch him do the exact same. “You’ll lead. Here, take my phone, and I will be right behind you,” he says.
The ice is so slick you can’t pick up your feet to walk and instead you have to carefully slide across the creviced, uneven surface.
“Don’t bother turning back. You won’t see me anyways. It’s too dark,” Peter says.
You keep carefully progressing. The moist vapor of your exhales is the only warmth in this cold, dark, and eerie place. As you get closer to the mysterious passage, it stays completely dark and nothing can be seen inside it.
“I have never been so scared,” Peter tells you with a cold, chattering voice. “It is so fucking cold, and I don’t want to freeze to death.”
When Peter spoke, it was like he was a voice in the back of your head as you entered the ominous passage.
Now inside it, you are swallowed by its darkness, and at the same time Peter’s phone dies. You go to reach back, and…
“Don’t turn around,” Peter yells!
Your hand shakes madly from the combined effect of nervousness and chill. You drop Peter’s phone trying to put it into your pocket. It makes a clack on the cold rock beneath you and you can hear it slide away. You exhale to calm yourself, but can’t relax. You are freezing. Your exposed skin is so cold that it burns. You look around but there is nothing to see.
“Keep moving, or we’ll freeze to death standing here.”
Carefully sliding one foot at a time you move forward. You pat your jacket and pant pockets and still can’t find your phone.
“Old habits haunting you at the worst time. Don’t worry about your phone, we will be fine. The only light we need will be at the exit.”
You fold your arms and hug yourself to retain warmth. You can feel your blood cooling and your eyes freezing. You shut your eyes because you can’t see anything anyways.
“What do you see?”
You see everything. Everything but Peter, so you go to turn around.
“Don’t turn around!”
The arm of your favorite person extends out in front of you. That same hand, a hand from someone you loved and want to grab onto so much also appears on your left. The beautiful fingers then reach out to you from the right as well. You know who’s reaching for you.
“Hold my hand and stay here with me,” a familiar voice you love tells you.
Your frost covered mittens reach out to multiple hands. As your hand approaches that special person’s grasp, you wonder how everything you’ve ever known has gotten here? You open your eyes, and everything returns to black. You stand there confused.
“You’re doing what those hands wanted! You have to keep moving or this freezing cold will kill us!”
You solemnly nod your head without turning back. Once again you start sliding your feet on the icy rock in complete darkness. Your bones become numb as you move. Within a few steps you’re shivering so violently you can hardly keep balance. Then your foot slips from underneath you. Instinctively you try use your arms for balance, but they are too cold to move quickly and you land on your side crashing onto the cold rock.
“I know it’s tough, but you gotta get up. I will die here too if you stay there.”
You look up for Peter but it is too dark to see anything. Instead of getting up you begin to drag yourself along the cave’s frozen surface. Your mind begins to unwind as you struggle with pain you’re too cold to feel. You forget how you got here and that you’re freezing to death. You just keep slowly and miserably shuffling along. An icicle crashes onto the cold rock near you. Reacting to the explosion of ice, you turn away and close your eyes. Suddenly someone is yelling at you. But isn’t just someone, everyone you know is looking down and screaming at you. It is impossible to make sense of so many faces all saying different things. But even in your frigid, confused state you still catch a theme.
They are all repeating your thoughts back to you. All the people you’ve blamed, your excuses, your disagreements, and why this or that isn’t your fault. You are dying to stay there and explain yourself to all of them, but you are also really dying. But you do not have the will or energy to do anything but argue with your past. So you start explaining everything to everyone as you have done so many times before.
“No matter how many times you confront that stuff it never changes. You can only change what you think of it. Think, think, think to move on! The sun does not shine on both hemispheres at once. And you can’t live in darkness much longer.”
You stop arguing and look at all the familiar faces. Then you open your eyes and everything becomes black again. Hating the darkness shut your eyes from it, and all those faces are still there ranting at you. You want to scream. The helplessness you feel is only surpassed by the numbing cold.
“You can’t escape your past by avoiding it,” Peter says.
You grab a person from your past staring at you, and pull them down, to help you up. Making it to your knees, you pull down another to get to your feet. You can see something beyond the large cluster of so-called friends, exes, family, acquaintances, bosses, and coworkers. So with newfound energy you try to push through them to see more. No matter how hard you try, there are too many people to push through. But you have to see what lies ahead.
You regretfully look at an old acquaintance before kicking in his knee with the bottom of your boot. He capsizes, and your view gets better. You punch a person right next to him in the stomach and they duck over. You don’t stop assaulting a path through your past. As bodies fall your view improves. The less of the past you see, the clearer your vision gets. Until with the last kick, it all goes black.
Then you open your eyes.
“What do you see,” Peter asks you?
