The first knot came up on the twine. The mark of a hundred feet. He repeated that to himself so he wouldn’t loose count later on. Anywhere from three thousand to four thousand feet. That was the estimate by most who had tried this before. It was never the same, always a little different, both in distance as well as in content. He kept walking. There was no way to be sure he was moving straight in the dark silence. He walked slowly trying to fathom the direction even though he could not even see his hand holding the ball of twine.
Slowly, over an excruciating amount of time, maybe two hours or so, he reached the thirtieth knot on the ball. He had brought six thousand feet of twine just to be sure. He had to move even more carefully now. His heart started beating faster as a small lump of fear started to rise in the pit of his stomach. His confidence was starting to fade, slowly being replaced by the threat of failure as well as his life. There was no way to back out of it now. He didn’t have the time anymore to return back. If the darkness disappeared before he got back to the exact spot where he started, he would never return to his world and would forever wander in the unimaginable space and time this portal came through.
He quickened his pace and started moving faster. There was nothing to worry, he told himself. He had planned this well and he knew what he was doing. Still, a nagging doubt struck his mind. He knew the many who had survived this and chronicled it in details for those who were to follow. But there were countless others who never made it back alive to write about it. There were an unknown statistics. Even now, as he walked, there must be others around doing the same thing for the first time and most of them would fail even with all the precautions they would have taken just like him.
There was no way to be sure.
He continued walking at a little faster pace. Time moved on.
Five hundred more feet were added to his total. His was getting afraid that somehow he may have missed the straight line. The twine may have gotten caught in a small bush and he may have veered off course and now he was lost forever. He was getting scared now. It should have happened. The average was correct. No one would ever remember him anymore, he would never have existed in the only world he knew as his own.
Suddenly, he thought he saw a very dim light in the distance. Maybe, he thought, my eyes are playing tricks on him. Maybe it was just a shadow in his eyes. He squinted hard but the impression remained. He almost started running towards it. There would not be much time left. If the light was real, he had to get to it before the darkness moved on. The twine slipped from his hands. He stopped. He had no clue where it landed. The tension in it would have snapped it back. There was no way to figure out how far. Since he was using the tension in the twine for direction, he couldn’t figure out which way to go.
He squinted hard again ahead to try and find that dim pin-point he thought he saw. He thought he saw it again, a little brighter now, he was sure of it.
… cont
Leave a Reply