The Door

The door bursts inwards as two disheveled men barrel into the room, the second man securing the door behind them. It is late afternoon and the sun has already dropped behind the crowded warehouses. The room is dark and dusty, an old office at the front of a derelict warehouse. The windows have been smashed in and boarded over, the sign above the door long faded into obscurity. Enter Lee and Tom, two experienced criminals running from the law.
         “Nice fuckin’ job there, Tom-Tom,” Lee, the second man in, says while leaning back on the door.
         “Told ya to stop fuckin’ callin’ me that,” Tom spits out between labored breaths.
         “Not only did you get us lost but you dropped the money, too.”
         “Hey, s’not my fault that bitch teller slipped one of those smoke bomb things in the bag!”
         “Well now we’re trapped in here,” Lee says with disgust. He walks over and drops onto the abandoned desk. It moans under his weight as whole clouds of dust scamper away looking for someplace else to rest. The office was little bigger than two closets put together, the queer out-growth of an otherwise regular rectangular warehouse. Its few remaining occupants but a single desk and two lonesome chairs, not even a filing cabinet or single piece of crumpled paper survived the vacant years. As dusk descends even more completely the room grows darker still and soon the two men can barely see each other, not that there was much for either one to look at.
         “Ok, all we have to do is lay low ‘til it gets dark and then we can sneak out,” Tom replies. He unlocks the door and peers out as the sickly yellow street lamps buzz to life.
         “Fuckin’ close that shit! You tryin’ ta get us caught?” Lee yells, jumping off his place on the desk, he kicks the door shut with an exasperated wheeze of rust ridden hinges.
         “Watch it, Lee, I’m this close to-“
         “Fuckin’ shut up already. This mess is your fault, so just shut it,” Lee snaps. Tom takes his place on one of the chairs and takes a cigarette from his pocket and lights up with his silver lighter, his prized possession. The one thing over these years that has never failed him, old faithful, engraved with his name by his wife, before he found out the bitch was sleeping around on him. The judge ruled a mistrial.
         Lee shoves the other chair aside and tries at the door leading into the warehouse. “Shit this door locked,” he kicks it hard, but the door only rattles in its frame, “Ah, that fuckin’ hurt.”
         “Least we don’t have ta worry ‘bout anyone sneakin’ up on us.”
         “Or where to run if the cops find us- Cause there ain’t no where to go!” Lee yells at the cigarette embers that illuminate Tom’s face. Lee doesn’t usually talk overly much, unless barking orders; he prefers to let the big men with big fists do his talking for him. He’s seen his share of courtrooms as well, but every time evidences or witnesses or both just up and disappear. He prides himself on this.
         “Shit!” Tom thrusts his hand towards the boarded windows, cigarette flying from between his fingertips. A bright white light moves deliberately across the covered windows, knives of lumination trusting into their darkness, passing the door and finally leaving them in blackness once more.
         “Probably just a patrol car, don’t do anythin’ stupid,” Lee frowns. He straightens one of the chairs and saddles himself onto it facing the street-side door. The two wait in the unsettling silence of the abandoned office blackness.
         “Shoulda brought a flashlight,” Tom shifts uncomfortable on the dead wood chair.
         “Didn’t expect ta- AAHhh! Shit!” Lee yelps jumping off his chair, “Something just fuckin’ bit my foot! Shit! Right through the shoe!” Tom scrambles into his pockets and procures his lighter. With shaking hands, he has to flick it twice to bring the small but tremendous light to life and with it they watch a rat scurry off into the unilluminated shadow.
         “It was a fuckin’ rat!”
         “Big one, too, Lee, you’re gonna have ta get a doc ta look at that.”
         “Yeah, if we ever get outta here. Fuck, I think I’m bleedin’.”
         Tom’s lighter puffs out. Again the ebony silence descends with its deafening suffocation. The inky blackness itself seems as a pressure upon their flesh as their evaporating sweat fills the room with a musky atmosphere. While they wait, concealed in the warehouse night, strange eons of the mind pass in the murky hollow of an abandoned office. Maybe ten minutes passed by.
         “God, I can’t stand this sittin’ around no more, let’s get the hell outta here,” Lee gets back up and walks over to the door, unlocking it, and peeping out, “Aww shit.”
         Tom slides off his chair and slinks over to where Lee is peering through the cracked door.
         “Cops. They’re searchin’ the warehouses one by one,” Lee quietly replaces the door, “We’re so fucked.”
         “What about the other door?”
         “Told ya it’s locked.”
         “Don’t look like we got much of a choice, Lee.” Tom plots his way over and tries the handle of the warehouse door. Locked. He backs up half a step and launches his shoulder into its center. Nothing. He backs up a half step farther this time and with increased velocity slams into the portal, it gives slightly.
         “Stop that before they fuckin’ hear you,” Lee snaps again. Completely ignoring him, Tom’s shoulder collides with the door a third time, snapping the lock, he stumbles through. Lee clambers after him, shutting the door, but unable to lock it, behind him.
         The empty fastness stretches out before them. Now in utter darkness they cautiously feel their way away from the door. “I can’t see shit,” Lee whines bitterly.
         “Hold on,” Tom takes out his lighter. The faint fire seems to drown in the shadows that crowd around them.
         “Wonder what they used to keep in here.”
         “Who gives a shit, Tom. Let’s just find the backdoor and get the hell outta here.”
         “LOOK A LIGHT!” shouts a voice from behind them on the other side of the door.
         “Fuck the cops,” Lee looks to Tom, “where-”
         “I see stairs over here!”
         “Go, go!” Lee waves at him and both men chase off towards a stairwell in the near corner. The treacherous stairs are little more than welded metal grating, the railings constructed of discarded piping, and together they descend at boxed angles into an abyssal pit of shadow. Clinging onto the railing they hurriedly tromp down the metal staircase.
         “Shit!”
         “What?” CLANG. Clang. clang. clang. clang. clang.
         “My lighter.”
         “You’re a shit-head, Tom.” Blindly they continue to descend at right-angles, turning corners until the pair are almost out of breath. Ten, twenty, forty corners downwards until they see a very faint light below them.
         “How far down do these things go?”
         “How should I know?”
         “Do you see that light?”
         “Yeah, hurry up!” CRUNCH.
         “What was that?”
         “My lighter, Goddamn it!”
         “Hold up, I think we’re at the bottom, the light’s coming from underneath a door!” Lee impatiently pushes up behind Tom. The stairwell has ended in a concrete oubliette, with only a single ancient metal door awaiting the two men. “Open it already!”
         Tom shoves the door inwards. Cold, pallid light spills forth, but the two take no notice as they launch through the portal, the door slamming shut on its own behind them. Tom and Lee stand together staring down a long concrete corridor. Pale, yellow lamps illuminate the tunnel, placed at erratic intervals seemingly the design of some deranged engineer. Insulated pipes and cables run along the ceilings and walls, carrying who-knows-what to who-knows-where; otherwise the corridor is vacant.
         “Where the hell are we?” Lee asks.
         “Looks like some kind of utility tunnel under the city.”
         “What is that god-awful stench?”
         “We’re probably pretty close to the sewer, or sumthin’.”
         “Maybe we should go back, find another way around the cops,” Lee turns, “they’ve probably given up on us already anyway.” He reaches for the door handle, “Shit, there’s no handle.”
         “Looks like something ripped it off. Well we’re not getting back that way. Come on, in case the cops are still following us we’ll find another door,” Tom begins to stroll down the tunnel.
         “This is all your fuckin’ fault, Tom,” Lee’s words echo around them, “if you didn’t-”
         “Shut up and help me find an exit,” Tom replies almost absently.
         The two continue their muted march for many more minutes until they come upon another tunnel intersecting their own at a bizarre angle. They pause and examine their choices.
         “Looks like these tunnels run underneath the whole city.”
         “I don’t like this, Tom, which way do we go, you know we’re fuckin’ lost.”
         “Think about this, Lee, if we could map this place, we could disappear from the cops like that,” he snaps his fingers, “We’re talking like crime spree here, Lee. Lee? What is it?”
         “Looks like a pile a shit over here.”
         “Rats probably.”
         “Lot of crap for a rat.”
         “Ok, a big mutha fuckin’ rat. Can we get goin’?”
         “I don’t like this one bit, Tom, we can still go back.” Without a word, Tom takes the strangely angled left and walks on. The bite in Lee’s foot begins to throb when he puts weight on it, causing him to struggle just to keep up to Tom.
         “How big you think they get down here?”
         “What?”
         “The rats,” Lee glances around nervously, still favoring his wounded foot.
         “Monstrous, Lee, the size of fuckin’ horses,” he stretches his arms out wide in mocking parody.
         “Fuck you.”
         Tom chuckles, “Didn’t know you were scared of rats.”
         “Hey, one already tried to take a chunk out of me. Can you slow down, will ya?”
         “You’re the one who wants to get outta here so bad.”
         Tom quickly begins to quickly out distance Lee, who begins to hobble from the growing pain.
         “Hey man, take a look at this. Looks like rust on the wall, but I don’t see any water,” Lee examines a large red-brown discoloration cover the concrete. He runs a hand across the stain, brown flakes peel off and drop to the floor. “I . . . I think its dried blood.”
         “Seriously, now Lee, your whinin’ is really startin’ to piss me off,” Tom calls back from the next intersection. He pauses briefly and looks both ways before continuing forward.
         Hobbling faster, it takes Lee a few minutes to reach the same intersection that Tom passed through, “Come on now, I mean it. My foot’s really startin’ to hurt.” With more attention, Lee examines the intersecting corridor, “There’s more of that rust stuff down here, Tom! We need to get the FUCK out of here,” his voice rising to a panic.
         “I found a door!” Tom calls back. Lee looks down the corridor at him. “See man told you we’d find another door,” Tom calls again.
         “Wait for me,” Lee hollers.
         “It’s alright, I’m jus’ gonna take a look, make sure that rat ain’t waitin’ to take another bite outta ya,” he sniggers. Standing square to the door, Tom pushes it wide open. “Jesus Christ . . .” are the only words that escape his lips before something violently yanks him through the doorway.
         “TOM!” Lee yells. Lee’s heart begins to slam against his ribcage as he tries to run down the corridor after his partner. He half hobbles, half skips, with each step his foot surging with pain. He begins pushing against the concrete walls, heaving himself forward towards the door. Just a couple more feet, and then suddenly the door is thrown shut. He reaches for the handle and wrenches down on the knob, but the portal is locked. He pushes down with as much force as he can muster but the lock holds against his weight.
         “TOM!” he yells at the door as his fist begins to slam against the metal, “Tom!” his fist pounds again and again in rapid thrusts.
         As if in response, an inhuman shrieks eminated from behind the door.
         “Tom!” Lee bellows again and is answered by an unrecognizable howl- hinting at an agony that the human body was not built to endure. The wailing fades into a choked, gurgling noise and then nothing. Lee’s fist halts mid pound and slowly he backs away from the doorway. Sheer panic overwhelms every inch of him and after a moment of horrorified realization, turns and flees down the tunnel. Labored breath suck and flush the air from his chest, he runs as fast as the pain allows him. He hears the door click open behind him. He never turns to look.

The Globe
Wanted Man Found Dead
Yesterday, utility workers found wanted man, Lee Miller dead in a service tunnel below the city. Deterioration of the body due to unidentified bite marks has kept the coroner from being able to determine a cause of death. The police continue to search for Miller’s partner, Thomas “Tom” Hill. The two were last seen together the day before last fleeing the First National Bank after a botched robbery attempt. If you have any information regarding the possible whereabouts of Thomas Hill, please call your local authorities.