The Hole

A man was walking to work at dawn. His legs ached and his mind was heavy. Still, he walked—as he always did.

The silence of the morning was pierced by a thin, sharp voice.

“Help… help… I’m hurt…”

He froze.

A child.

He ran toward the sound, heart pounding, breath burning, until he stopped at the edge of a deep pit—about three meters down. At the bottom was a boy clutching his chest, blood spreading between his fingers.

The man said, in a clear, urgent voice, “Oh my.”

He looked at his watch.

“Oh no. I’ll be late for work.”

Then he looked at the boy again and saw blood at his chest and mouth.

“To hell with work,” he said. “I’m coming down. Move aside, boy.”

He studied the hole for a moment, judging where he could land safely.

Then he jumped.

The instant his feet hit the ground, a violent pain exploded in his own chest. He gasped, pressed a hand to it, and saw his fingers drenched in blood.

Then he remembered the boy.

He looked around.

The child was gone.

The emptiness swallowed him. He stared into the dark, breathing hard. His wound throbbed. His thoughts grew louder than his pulse. He began to scream for help.

Minutes passed. His voice grew hoarse, then harsher, then desperate.

After about half an hour, he heard footsteps.

It was his landlord.

The man smiled weakly, suddenly full of hope.

The landlord looked down and said, “My God… are you the fool who jumped into the hole? I always knew there was something wrong with you. Do you realize how much my business is at risk because of you?”

The man looked up, shock stopping the pain in his chest for a moment.

“What?”

The landlord replied firmly, “In this hole, you aren’t going to work. And work is the only guarantee I have that you’ll keep paying me. Fine. Just wait.”

Then he walked away.

Twenty minutes later, more footsteps.

The man’s face brightened.

“My wife?” he called.

She appeared at the edge, looking down with cold indifference.

“You never stop your foolishness,” she said. “What are we supposed to do now? You need to go to work. We need the money.”

“I am bleeding!” he shouted.

She looked at him with contempt and sighed.

“Fine. I’ll get a doctor.”

The doctor came, took one look into the hole, wrote a prescription, threw it down to him, and left with her.

The man waited.

He still expected her to come back with someone who could pull him out. Then, he thought, they would get the medicine together.

At last he looked at the prescription lying on the dirt floor of the pit. Curiosity pushed through the pain. He wanted to know what had happened to him—why there was blood, why his chest burned. He picked up the paper.

It was completely blank.

For a second he wondered if his mind had split open with his chest.

Then he flung the paper away.

Then came the sound of familiar footsteps.

A moment later, the face of an angry woman appeared above him.

“So. You’re here,” she said. “I waited for you all night. You didn’t come. Who were you with? Were you hiding here with another woman? You fool… do you even understand what I left for you? My husband, who cheated on me with my own sister. My son, who abandoned me. My daughter, who died suddenly. I left them all to be with you.”

His anger exploded. He grabbed a stone and hurled it at her. She stepped back.

“I knew you were a bad man,” she said. “You need a priest. You never believed in God. I’ll go pray for you.”

He shouted through the pain, “You damn fool, I don’t need a priest. I need a ladder. Get me a ladder. Hey—do you hear me?”

Then he sat down, breathing hard, nodding faintly, as if accepting a thought that had just formed inside him:

She was a fool.

Thirty-nine minutes later, she returned with a priest.

The priest looked down calmly and said, “If God wants to save him, a miracle will happen.”

He threw a paper into the hole.

“Read this twenty times when you wake and nineteen times before you sleep for forty days. Then, perhaps, God will hear.”

Then they left.

He shouted with all the strength he had left, pushing through the pain in his chest.

“You crazy people—call an ambulance! I need to get out of here. Where are you going? Sonya! Sonya, get me a fucking ladder or anything. You hear me? Sonya!”

Then the thought hit him fully:

She was never coming back.

A scream tore out of him from the deepest place in his chest. He looked at the priest’s paper and kicked it again and again in a storm of disgust.

“All of you are traitors!” he shouted. “I sacrificed pieces of myself for nothing. I hate all of you.”

Not long after, more footsteps.

The man raised his head slowly.

It was his friend. His business partner.

The man looked down at him with annoyance.

“You’re here?!”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

“We have work. People are waiting. And you’ve disappeared? Is this the time to hide? You’re an idiot. Truly an idiot. You can’t show up when there’s work to do, but you manage to disappear at exactly the wrong time.”

He shook his head, looked around as if the place itself disgusted him, and said, “I don’t have time for this absurdity.”

Then he turned and walked away.

In despair and self-loathing, disgusted with himself and with those he had once loved, the man sank to the floor of the pit. He let the tension drain from his body and pressed his palms into the cool dust.

He tried to convince himself it was only a nightmare, that he would wake soon.

But the coolness of the dust on his palms told him otherwise.

For long minutes he stared into the abyss between his knees, searching for any thought that might make sense of his situation—anything that could tell him what to do next.

And the only conclusion he reached was this:

Nobody cared.

Once he admitted that ugly truth, he felt strangely light.

He studied the walls of the hole again, then moved closer to one side. He placed his hand against the wall and felt, strangely, that it held more tenderness than any human being he had known.

As he studied the cracks and edges that might help him climb, he thought of his mother—how she would have urged him on no matter what he was: good or bad, winner or loser.

He began to imagine a rough path upward.

Then he tried.

The first ten attempts failed, but each one taught him something, led him toward a better grip, a safer hold. He slipped again and again.

And he tried again.

And again.

And again.

After countless failed attempts, the pain disappeared.

So did the blood.

His hands grew strong, perfectly suited to the rock. Deep down, he knew he had been born for ascent.

He slipped again when he was only a few inches from the top.

And smiled.

Then he stood calmly in the middle of the hole, looking at it as though it were part of him, and slowly turned toward the wall.

With naked determination, he climbed out as if it were the simplest thing he had ever done.

He stood at the edge, gasping for air.

A child was standing nearby.

Beside him was a woman.

There was something gentle in their presence, then something strangely urgent. He stared at the child. The boy smiled slowly and gave him a thumbs-up, as if he approved… as if he had been waiting for this moment.

The woman placed her hand gently on the boy’s shoulder. She looked at the man and smiled—a warm, knowing smile—and nodded, as if she too approved.

The man’s brow furrowed.

Something stirred in his chest—not pain this time, but recognition trying to surface.

He rubbed his eyes.

He looked again.

His breath caught.

The child…

was the same child from the hole.

He took a step forward, then stopped. His feet no longer felt like his own.

He looked at the woman, then the child, then himself.

He closed his eyes.

For a moment, the sound returned:

“Help… help…”

He snapped his eyes open.

He looked at the same place where they had been standing. Gone. He looked right. He looked left. Nothing but vast empty space stretching in every direction.

No one.

No child.

No woman.

Only him.

And the hole...........