Is that internal bleeding? he wondered. No, dummy, you just swallowed half your tongue, remember? That’s your goddamn brunch today, boy-o.

What about Mr. Baskin? he wondered. What had happened to the elderly lawyer he was supposed to interview with? He’d never even met the man. Matthew wondered what the old coot had been doing when his world literally collapsed and he was dropped forty feet down, crushed amongst the bodies of his subordinates? Had he been chatting with his wife, the lovely Mrs. Baskin? Making dinner plans, maybe? Or had he been reviewing Matthew’s CV, boning up for the interview? Preparing the hard questions, wondering if this young man would be the right fit for his prestigious firm. A protégé, perhaps? A future partner in the making?

Doesn’t matter now, Matthew knew. Baskin’s firm was done. Literally wiped from the face of the earth. Force Majeure, Matthew thought involuntarily. The big Delete button. He couldn’t help himself thinking about all the life insurance policies that would not be paid out, the property damage that would not be reimbursed. Although, if Baskin was half as good a lawyer as Matthew had heard, the old man’s assets were likely fine. An old eagle like Baskin would cover all his bases, allowing for such things as lightning strikes, tsunamis and, yes, earthquakes.

For his part, Matthew had no life insurance. No savings, either, for that matter. What Matthew would be leaving to Diane and their child was debt. Shitloads and shitloads of debt. Student loans upward of a hundred thousand dollars. For what? A law degree he might never be able to use.

“If it please the court,” he mumbled, choking out the words, “this really fucking sucks.”

He wanted to laugh again. To find levity... but could not. He rested his head down lightly, forehead pressed against something cool and hard, a pillow that stank of concrete and dirt. He closed his eyes and waited for someone, anyone, to rescue him.

“NOT ADOPTED. DUMPED,” he told her, she with her Pinot and he with his lager.

Their second date. Time for storytelling. Time for This Is Your Life. If you think there’s a chance, if you think she’s the one. Then you give it up. You let if fly.

“My grandfather raised me from infancy. I never even met them. They left the country, never came back.”

She spun her glass, treading carefully. “You never tried to find them?”

Matthew shook his head. The din of the restaurant disrupted his thoughts, irritated him. “By the time I was old enough to give a shit, to fully understand, they were dead. Well, at least that’s what I was told. I got a letter once...” he trailed off, not ready to let her into the place that talking about the letter would take him. The painful doors it would open, showing her the twisting insides. He swallowed some beer, waved his hand dismissively over the spattered remains of their shared plate of grilled Brussel sprouts and mini Ahi tacos. “Plane crash somewhere in Spain. I was sixteen when my grandfather told me. He woke me up one Saturday morning, sat on my bed, and said ‘Your parents were killed yesterday. I’ll be gone a week or so. Get up, there’s things you need to do.’ And that was it. He left. A week later he came back, and we returned to our lives.”

“Jesus, a real sweetheart,” she said, appearing to instantly regret the words. The reaction of a college girl who knew nothing of the world. “I’m sorry, I mean...”

“No, it’s okay.” Matthew tried to smile, sensing her self-admonishment, hating the idea of her feeling uncomfortable. “He wasn’t a real emotional guy.” Matthew hoped his words, his smile, would relieve her apprehension. Because she could be the one, couldn’t she? “He’s a good man, a fair man. I love him.” He shrugged. “Besides, he’s all I have.”

Diane slowly spun the spine of her glass. “He’s alive, then?”

Matthew nodded. “I talk to him every day. Well, almost. He still works the farm, although it’s smaller now. No animals, just the fields. He’s a good man,” Matthew repeated lamely.

She reached out a hand and he took it.

I’ll take care of you forever, Matthew thought. And we’ll have children and I will love the shit out of them.

He pulled his hand away, laughed self-consciously as he swiped a stray tear from his eye. She smiled and handed him a clean napkin. He laughed again, falling, wondering if she was falling as well.

4

MATTHEW JERKED HIS head from a half-sleep, a sharp pain immediately stabbing his neck. He became abruptly alert as the earth beneath him, and the rubble of the building surrounding him, began to violently shake.

Oh fuck oh no no no no... he thought as the world trembled.

The slab of heavy concrete wedged against his back vibrated like a mountainous chainsaw, sending tremors up his spine, turning his legs cold. It pressed into him harder, as if he were not yet bearing the full weight of the thing. As it slowly shivered loose from its anchored position, he realized with horror it was sinking – inch by inch – into his lower spine; deliberately settling itself into his lower back, crushing him with agonizing slothfulness. He gritted his teeth and screamed, out of pain or fear or both he didn’t know.

As the earth continued to shake, small chunks of debris fell on and around him, choking the air with concrete dust. As he was pressed downward, downward, the hard object beneath him pushing into his pelvis shifted, but thank you God it miraculously shifted away from him, creating open space in that small area below his stomach and hips. As the great weight continued to sink, he felt his spine curve, his feet raising higher as his midsection bowed. He flayed his one free arm outward, waiting for that moment when his spine would snap, his stomach burst and his insides rip through his skin and spit themselves over the dark ruins.

He screamed again, louder, praying his lungs would allow the air back in once he’d expelled it, that his compressed body would not reject his next breath.

When the shaking stopped.

He could barely breathe, the pain unbearable. He groaned, gritted his teeth. There was the sound of a deep rupture – a land mass being snapped in two – loud but muffled, down in the belly of the ruins beneath him. A monster’s belch.

There were a few more splintering snaps, as if two-by-fours were breaking in half – SNAP – SNAP – CRACK-SNAP – and then everything beneath him sagged a few inches, and Matthew’s body sank along with the debris. Mercifully, the slab ramming itself into his spine did not lower, and the pressure released itself from his back, guts and groin as his body leveled out. Breath leapt into his lungs.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he whispered in a hushed, torn voice, breathing in more easily now as the incredible pressure, threatening to break him, ebbed. He could feel the blood in his body racing to his legs and chest, free once more to flow without obstruction.

After a few moments of nervous gratitude – waiting for another aftershock, praying his body was not too badly damaged – Matthew took a deep breath and made an attempt to once again assess his position. He was still unable to turn or twist his body, the weight of the slab still resting on top of him heavily, if not with the deadly force of a few moments prior. He imagined the Thing, that rock monstrosity from the Fantastic Four comics and movies, was resting his bony ass on Matthew’s spine, waiting for backup to arrive, and Matthew could do nothing but squirm and try to keep breathing beneath Thing’s bulk – a trapped, feeble villain.

For the moment, at least, the ground had ceased its final vibrations, and Matthew was still alive. But with the release of that sharp fear came cold despair, an icy blanket that wrapped around him, filled him, and he abruptly began to sob like a child. Tears ran down his face and into the broken concrete. He realized, with no small sense of shame, he had pissed himself, whether from terror or the immense pressure on his bladder he did not know, but he could feel the urine cooling along his hip and thighs. He wiped his face with one dirty hand, then cried some more. The sobs became louder, more ragged, soon pitched into the air as panicked screams. It was the weeping and cries of hysteria – of terror – of a person slowly, and quite painfully, dying.

Am I going to die? he wondered. He desperately wished he could see what was around him. I’m so goddamn sick of the dark! he thought, straining to make out anything, any shapes that made sense, that brought an element of reality to his slowly unraveling mind. He wondered how deeply he was buried, how precariously. Was he ten feet above-ground, or twenty-feet below? If above, would he collapse downward with the next aftershock? Sliding down and down into the bowels of the earth? And if below, what if the rescue teams because surely there were rescuers they always showed them on TV always always always brought in heavy machinery and accidentally drove over the rubble sitting on top of him, squashing him beneath like a bug?

He felt panic rise again and wanted so desperately for the ability to just turn over and look above him. Would he see light? A pinprick, perhaps? The proverbial ray of hope?

Or would there be nothing but more darkness? The total inky black submersion that did not let you see the hand in front of your face. The kind that muffled the sounds you made as if your body was trapped in warm outer space, wedged between dimensions like a dead rat between the walls of a rickety old house.

Matthew started to hyperventilate. He had to get out. He had to get out. He had to get OUT. With a fresh surge of mindless panic, he began to push and twist, crying out in pain as the edge of slab on top of him dug deeper into his flesh. He felt skin tear and a warm gush of blood spill down his side, seep into the waistband of his boxers.

He stopped, exhausted, knowing he was making things worse. “Damn it!” he screamed, feeling more helpless and alone by the moment. He tried desperately to get a grip, to slow his breathing, to calm himself. The beat of his strained heart began to slow... his breathing steady...

He was just regaining some of his composure, when something – something behind him in the dark – pulled at his foot.

His head snapped up, eyes wide with surprise.

He had time to think: Wait... did something... when he felt another quick, sharp tug. Not his foot. His toe. Or, more accurately, the sock of his toe. It felt as if two tiny fingers were pulling at the very tip of his sock, teasingly trying to pull... it... off.

Matthew had just started to wonder how he had possibly lost his shoes when that unseeable Something pulled at the tip of his sock once more. He almost laughed through his misery, the sheer madness of someone pulling at his foot...

His smile died. It died quickly, between one heartbeat and the next.

The next tug was more insistent. More frantic. More needful. He felt a sharp prick, as if a pin had poked the bottom of his big toe.

“Ow!” he snapped, then held his breath, focused all of his attention on the sound reaching him from around his feet. He closed his eyes, listened closely to the dark.

He heard his own heartbeat, the pulse of his life thumping steadily in his head. And then, so faintly he would have never heard it were he not focusing every fiber of his body to receiving the sounds made in the space around him, he heard a scuffling around his legs.

He let out his breath. No.

This time the tug of his sock was more certain. This time he felt the undeniable pinch of teeth sink into his toe. And then the thing... and then the thing was chewing.