A Peak Into The Bottomless Pit

Amid the scorching heat, Olle sat straight off her bed whilst holding her chest. Her eyes widen, drops of sweats streaming through her cheeks, while the others streaked her forehead like the colonies on a petri dish. She hit it mildly a few times, trying to get her breath back. Inhales… exhales… inhales…

“Olle.” Malla grabbed her hand. “You had that dream again?” 

Olle closed her eyes and nodded. It had always been painful, but tonight it was even more so. 

“I’m here. Let’s count down together, OK?” 

Olle nodded. 

“10, 9, 8, 7, 6,5-“ 

“I can’t,” Olle said. 

“Sis, I’m really sorry. Still, I hate to say this, but I need to remind you about them. I have to drop Kalan and Moran to school at 6. I’m afraid I’ll miss the alarm if I don’t keep these eyes shut now.” 

Olle sighed. “You go first.”

“Sis, please… I only have you.” 

The silence conquered the rest of the night.

---

 The tailor shop was crowded with 60-year-old socialites wearing a fur coat and high heels. Olle juggled her way through them, aiming for the carnation dress embroidered with magenta floral pattern. 

“Sloppy, when are you going to put your eyes back to its place?” 

“You rude crack, I’m checking the news, mind you.” 

The talk swings by Olle while going half-noticed. 

“What news, you fool?” 

“They’re closing down the 9th station. Says the tip are spreading near the platform, and already reaching the other side.”

“Hell no.”

“Hell yes! That means for a little while, I get to enjoy my strolls with the cab, which calls for the petty pocket my kids barely sent in those coins of!” 

“They said it will be allocated to a station somewhere in the south. They got a nice seaside view there, y’know.” 

“Surely our trip will last longer here!” 

“Ladies.” Olle interrupted their chitchat. 

“Yes, Dear?” The three of the socialites headed to her in sync. Olle only realized now that they were in front of her, how similar their faces were, perhaps a triplet. 

“I would like to ask a question.” 

“Go on.” 

“How do you retrieve your most precious belonging?”

“Hmm. I would personally use a tool that the belonging is likely to reciprocate.” The first madam said. 

“But what if the retriever doesn’t know?” The third madam asked.

“Sounds like trouble!” The second madam said. 

“But I…” Elle pondered a bit, “I think I can figure it out.” 

“That would be nice, though I have a second input for you!” said the first madam again. 

“And what would that be?” Olle asked. 

“Never try to get your feet on it. Because once you do, it sticks.”

“Honey, you know she’s not playing around when she shares with you her second input.”

“Just never ever ever do against the input!” 

“All hail the input! To the wild and west, we belong!” the first madam held up her fist, marching out from the tailor shop followed by the other two madams. 

 Olle knew what she had to do next. She changed her current long sleeves and skirt to the dress in the fitting room, paid the tag, and exited the shop shortly afterward. Now she only needed to buy one more thing, and then she could start her long-awaited mission. Something that she had always held back, trapped and manifest in the form of series of dreams that choke and screech her like no other, stealing her hardly gain oxygen, making her older sister, Malla, worried for good, while she was just as occupied about her two kids who were on the beginning of their delinquent phase, playing prank on friends, terrorizing the teachers with red paint-smeared chair which made the whole class learn about period from the teacher’s ambushed and forced explanation, adding a fixed weekly schedule of confrontational meeting to the principal’s office in Malla’s calendar. 

The streets looked painfully familiar too, like that day where her late husband was beside her. And they were looking very morbid, yet exhausted, dark circles cornering their eyes, with bated breath that kept getting worse as they’re almost at the intersection. Olle kept on following the invincible trail she once steps, the pavement, the spot her boots once landed, and also the air, this time full of dust and the scent of dry soil and withering grass, enveloping her body, but her mind too. 

She went into a second-hand store and got herself a ukulele. 

“Are you going for a proposal today? You know how these days women made the first impression too.” Said the beardy shopkeeper with thick eyebrows.

“No, actually, I’m getting my date fixed,” said Olle with a faint smile. 

“A wedding you say? Oh, I’m so happy for you! I wish you a very lovely and candid picnic!” said the shopkeeper while showing off all his glazed teeth. 

And now here she was. The place that made her scurried around, bending her knees, and as if all the fluids from the sky wasn’t enough, she didn’t know how much she cried, but she did remember how as she got home, felt her eyes could roll down any second. 

Olle walked toward a bench. As she had expected, the station was gone. What was left were the abandoned train and platforms, and the lingering silence that surrounded her. Just like all her nights for the past two years since the passing of his husband, and now this one seed, that had grown so big and one that she nurtured with love and compassion inside of her, to the 9 months full of tears, puke, and pain, along with the joy, the warmth, the feeling of owning so much of it, of the whole seconds it spent there and growing, to the form of a young kid with heavenly smile and spirit. 

She held her ukulele and starts singing a song. 

O, my loved one

Gone are your trails 

But o, lucky me 

The pathfinder the world doesn’t need

I see you 

And I’ll go down to you 

Olle closed her eyes. She could hear someone was calling her. Olle stretched her arms, slowly took a step further until she reached the tip of the platform. When she opened her eyes, what she saw remained the same, only bigger. The void looked like a miniature of the black hole, but Olle could hear it from inside of the void. A tune, the exact tune she also sang earlier. She was upset to realize that the voice was just like hers, while she had hoped it resembled her son’s more. 

Come to me, my fair lady 

I’ll show you the trails of your lost belonging 

Which well and alive he is 

Come here, I’ll show you, my fair lady 

Come down and we’ll have it your way 

Olle gasped. The singing voice didn’t sound like her son, but somehow Olle believed what it said. 

She subconsciously let out a small nod and stares straight into the pitch-black circle. The void that had people in a panic the first time it appeared, but didn’t manage to swallow a train when it first appeared. It was all over the news every day. Some people even held down a ritual, said it was a sanctuary, a sacred phenomenon. For Olle, it was the cruelest verdict of her life, when she had to lose her son to it, to a mere void that she couldn’t even annihilate. 

But now she had to face it, the source of her anger, fear, and grudge. 

“Young lady!” Shouted the three figures across her. 

Olle lifted her head. Before she was three madams she had met at the tailor shop. They were still managing their voice. 

“Sorry to interrupt your ritual, but my sis here forgot to share with you her third input!” the second madam said. 

“But I’m almost finished.” Said Olle. 

“The third input is, you need to let your family know that you’re going down, but- only after you’re inside it.” 

“I can’t do that. I didn’t bring my phone.” 

“You should have. Otherwise, your plan would have failed.” Said the first madam. 

“But what if there’s no signal, even if I bring one? That means I couldn’t tell them either way.” 

“That means you cannot go there at all.” 

“What’s left of me here? I need to get back the part of me that I have lost.” 

“Honey.” The third madam gave her a sad smile. “You need to let go.” 

“For him to be happy.” Said the first madam.

“And for your sake, too.” Said the second madam.

“We lost them too, you know. Not exactly here. But somewhere in other voids, we lost it, but we decided we shouldn’t get them back for now.” 

“Why?” Olle asked. 

“We’ll just stick to the schedule we have here. And when the time comes, you will get to meet your lost part in a better place. This one we’re very sure of.” 

“So come, come, and come with us, to the parfait shop. Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream…” sang the three of them, while raising their hands, cueing her to join them to the other side of the platform. 

Olle looked at the void one last time, before grabbing her ukulele and crossing the platform. As the three madams kept on singing, she wiped her watery eyes and started to accompany their raspy and warm voice with the tunes from her ukulele.