The Cave
By: Samuel Ade
Tags: Literature, Fiction, Short Story, Imagination

The bed of stone was wet, and so were the rusty iron bars. This was a common sight for a town that resided near a lake. Moreover, this place was underground, water flowed downwards anywhere in this world. Mosses covered the small, frustratingly incapacious three-walled room, which could barely accommodate two people. The sound of incessant streams of dripping water was the only thing that stood out in the ear, felt like a rhythmic heartbeat of this soulless place.

In there, was a skinny-looking man, wearing nothing but a pair of rugged trousers, tainted with dirt and some horse shit. He was dragged on the road up there around a week ago.

This man had the appearance of a normal man, like that of a hunter who appeared very agile due to his slender figure. But his bones were more visible now more than ever in his entire life. A week almost without food could cause something like this to a man.

He was indeed a hunter. He had lived alone most of his years, in a cabin in the woods, several hundred tree-heights away from the northern gate of this town by the lake. His life of forty winters worth was mainly undisturbed. Raised by a father who had also hunted for a living, a mother who was capable and strong, he too, was not a complainer. But both of his parents died during a harsh cold winter when he was only thirteen. A thought of his said they were eaten by bears, some other thought said the cold got to them. He never knew since their bodies, or bones, were never found. The people of the town were completely unaware of his situation. When he started going to the town market to sell the game, no one even asked why his father never came anymore. Everyone had their utmost attention on getting their needs fulfilled in this poor dirty town of never-ending wetness and fishy scents.

(a tree-height is around fifteen-meters)

However, this hard-working man’s life had been turned upside down exactly a week ago, when a little girl had been reported to be lost for several days. Last seen, she was heading north, outside the northern town’s gate. Unfortunately, no one lived in the northern region except wild beasts and that man whose cabin was the only man-made structure there. Naturally, people of the town had no other suspect. Their suspicion reached a point of absolute belief that the skinny hunter did it when they found the little girl’s torn red tunics on one of his drawers. This rips on that tunic made the villagers believe that that man had raped the girl forcefully, which, without the slightest doubt, worsened their fury.

He had pleaded his innocence over and over again, but his effort seemed futile.

“I only kept the red cloth in the cave, only the red cloth, pieces, pieces of it torn in that cave that I saw… I was going to give it to them when I once again enter the sickening town, that sickening town.”

For days that man had been shivering. He often hugged his own knees while resting his back on the cold, damped mossy wall. That sentence he frequently muttered resounded throughout the underground cave prison each time he said it.

His lack of interaction with people had already made him appear like a strange, dangerous fellow. Now after a week of almost without food, his mind wandered to places it shouldn’t be, trying to distract its body from the physical pain which he was in at the moment.

Though he seemed far from normal, he was not insane. He knew his fate was determined when those people from the town stormed into his cabin in the middle of the night, carrying torches and various sharp objects in their hands, asking no questions and dragged him back to town.

All of a sudden, on the seventh day of his imprisonment, the sound of flutes, stomping feet, clapping hands, and cheerful cheers sounded faintly on the ground above. His mind felt like it had been shocked by thunder. He regained his calmness as a hunter, his senses once again sharpened. At this point, he had let go of everything that burdened him, his thoughts, his doubts, his plans, his worries, amidst the celebration up above.

He figured the people of the town were celebrating because they tomorrow would likely execute him. There had been talks from the guards which he overheard.

“I have been alone all my life. At least they’re celebrating my day of birth tonight. If tomorrow is the last time I’ll ever breathe this cold damped air, then so be it.”

The next morning, everything had been set up when he breathed the upper ground air once again; a chopping block with a basket for his head, an executioner with a black mask that showed only his stern eyes, big nose, and yellowed teeth, and the townsfolks who revealed faces of eagerness. That morning was quite uneventful actually, he was escorted to the chopping block, then right after his head was decapitated without any fancy rituals. People went back home not long after that. His limbs were next, the executioners cut them from his body without any audience from the common people. Then those body parts were put on spikes, in five corners of the town.

A month later, a hunter came back from his hunt from the north. He had found a necklace in a cave when hunting a bear he had been following for days. He took it to the market and sold it to a merchant. That merchant coincidentally was a close friend of the deceased girl’s parents, naturally, he was shocked. That very necklace was his gift for that little girl on the day of her eighth birthday. When the hunter was asked where he found the necklace, the answer made the merchant rush to meet the deceased girl’s parents.

This news spread like a wildfire. The entire town was gloomy for a whole week. Nobody knew any way to wash them from their guilt. Priests had been summoned from many towns, to perform rituals that would soothe their souls. But nothing yielded results. Their conscience was tainted; they had murdered an innocent man out of irrational fury.