The roar of the cars passing by in the tunnel fills your head with static. You've never liked the tunnel, but today, it's unavoidable.

Ethan wants you there for his graduation party, so you'll be there. Cynthia be damned.

You scratch the back of your neck. Dried skin clogs your fingernails.

Red lights flare in your periphery. The cars in front of you slow to a crawl before coming to a stop.

"Shit," you mutter.

As if he can hear you, the driver of the car in front of you twists around in his seat. He stares. You stare back. He looks away.

Maybe you should’ve just taken the toll road. If you’d taken the toll road, you’d be there by now.

You don’t know when you’ll get there. It’s possible you’ll miss the entire event, and Ethan will never forgive you for it. God knows you’ve been absent enough as it is.

When he was a baby, you swore you’d be different from your father. You promised to spend time teaching Ethan to throw a ball, helping him with his homework, and discussing the birds and the bees. For the first few years of parenthood, you followed the plan without a hitch. You and Cynthia were happy. Ethan was happy.

Then came the bills and the time constraints and extra hours at the office that never seemed to end. You had to keep working to keep food on the table. Years ago, you listened to the song “Cat’s in the Cradle” and cried. The second time you heard it, after Ethan turned six, you were sitting in traffic like this on the way home from the office. Your white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel was the only thing holding you together as the tears poured down your face.

You are just like your father.

Now, Ethan will be eighteen in a week, and time is passing faster as if it wants to spite you. Although you served your family well as a provider, you can’t help wondering how different things might have been if you’d spent more time at home.

In the passenger seat, your cell phone rings. You keep your eyes on the tunnel.

“Shit,” you say again. In the quiet of the car, the curse is grounding.

Someone ahead of you honks. It feels like an hour has passed. Still, no one is moving. You can’t understand the cause of the traffic, and no matter how far you crane your neck or twist in your seat to get a better view, you don’t know what’s going on.

Your cell phone is still ringing. How do you even have service in here?

You reach over, grab the phone, and answer. “Hello?”

“Where the hell are you?” Cynthia asks. “You promised Ethan you’d be here. I don’t give a damn if you show up myself, but he wants you here.”

“I know he does. I’m trying—”

“Remember when promises meant something?”

You wrangle the urge to hang up on her. Cynthia never fights fair. You should’ve anticipated this.

“I’ll be there,” you say.

“You’d better be.”

She hangs up. Once again, you’re alone with the rumble of your engine and the engines all around you, and not even the breathing technique you learned from your therapist helps you.

It feels like the road is rumbling, too. Moving and trembling beneath you. With your foot on the brake, you feel the tremors come up through the car and into your body until you’re shaking, too.

You tell yourself you’re losing it. You need to get a grip.

The car at the front of the line disappears. Just like that, it’s gone. You can’t see what happened, but you feel it in your bones—something bad is coming.

The next car falls. You see it plummet into what looks like a hole in the ground, stretching wider to swallow every vehicle in the tunnel. If you don’t do something, your car will be next.

You turn in your seat and wave your arms at the driver behind you. She shoots you a glare, but doesn’t seem to be able to see the hole like you can.

“Back up!” you yell, knowing full well she can’t hear you.

You grip the steering wheel with both hands, debating your options.

Another car plummets. You’re running out of time.

“Fuck!” You slam the heel of your hand against the horn, which lets out an impotent blare. What are you going to do now?

The ground rumbles again. It feels much closer than before, and it reverberates through your chest. You take a deep breath.

You must do this for Ethan.

With all your strength, you turn the car off and wrench open the driver’s side door. You all but fall to the pavement in your scramble to exit the vehicle. Someone opens a door. He is shouting at you, but you don’t know what he’s saying.

“Ethan,” you murmur. “Ethan, I’m coming.”

The sinkhole devours the car in front of yours. You take off running toward the entrance of the tunnel, beholding the light like salvation.

Another rumble shakes the earth. The ceiling of the tunnel cracks and crumbles, crushing the cars as it caves in. You’re almost there. Almost.

Ethan will be so excited to see you. As you run, you picture his freckles and crooked smile. You love him then. You love him forever.
​
Until the sinkhole finds you. 

Come for the characters, stay for the scares. Briana’s writing combines her fascination with psychology and interest in the darker sides of life to create rich, compelling narratives. Her most recent work, The Reyes Incident, has sold more than 16,000 copies to date. Other books include Mouth Full of Ashes, The Tricker-Treater and Other Stories, Unboxed: A Play, and more. Briana is a proud member of the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and has a BA in English from Georgia College. When not writing, you can find her reading, traveling, playing video games, or spending time with her husband and cat.

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Belinda dragged her walker down a back staircase at Sunset Gardens, cursing the metal contraption with each thump. Back home, she’d gotten around just fine with her twisted oak cane. Carved it herself, but the doctors claimed it wasn’t stable and took it away.

Belinda argued. They’d patted her hand and didn’t listen.

Sunset Gardens—an understaffed, government-run, eldercare institution—featured grounds consisting of a cracked sidewalk and a strip of weedy grass. Not even a bench to sit in the sun.

The nurses advised daily exercise and fresh air, but frowned on residents venturing into the neighbourhood.

Belinda didn’t have family to take her out, nor did she want any. Long ago, her mother and sisters had gone their own ways, as was proper. She’d done just fine on her own. Out of the way in her cabin. Not bothering anyone. Eating what she liked.

Sunset Garden’s kitchen refused her requests for her favourite raw eggs. At the care facility, the craving had grown until she could think of little else.

Back home, she’d kept chickens. For variety, she’d put out bird feeders and collected eggs from the wild nests.

In the weeks since they’d dumped her into this cinderblock anthill, she’d developed alarming symptoms. Swollen joints and patches of crawling, itchy hives. The change was upon her, but it had never been this bad back home.

“Autoimmune disease, common in older women,” the annoying male doctors intoned. What did they know about it?

They kept poking her, so she bit one.

“Dementia,” they’d said and prescribed pills.

Nonsense. She’d been fine before.

She hid the pills under her tongue to spit into the toilet later, but an iron-haired nurse who growled instead of speaking caught her. The nurse threatened to have her sedated. Belinda tried to bite her too, but the nurse was fast.

Belinda knew what she needed. She needed to eat, and no one there was going to help her.

At the bottom of the stairs, the emergency exit door almost foiled her plan. It refused to open.

So much lost strength. Belinda leaned against the door to catch her breath. Her stomach and wrists itched like crazy.

She’d loved sunbathing on the outcrop next to her cabin. No-one ever came out that way. Then a direction-challenged delivery guy glimpsed her soaking up the heat naked.

She’d yelled at him to get off her property, and the busy-body reported her to the authorities.

Two pushy, clipboard-toting women showed up the next week. They’d asked questions, poked around, and returned with an ambulance. Gentle, but not kind, they gave her no choice.

Her hands tightened around the handles of the walker and pain shot through her knuckles. Best to concentrate on something else.

Eggs.

Closing her eyes, Belinda imagined chalky shells and succulent slippery filling. Mmmm. She’d spotted the grocery store sign from the second-floor bedroom she shared with a vacant-eyed woman. A fifteen-minute walk at most.

From her roommate’s purse, she’d helped herself to a few dollars.

Taking a deep breath, she slammed into the exit door and it popped open. A flattened paper cup shoved into the doorjamb should keep it unlatched for her return. Not that she wanted to return, but in her weakened state she couldn’t find her way home.

Belinda shuffled up the street as quickly as she could manage. A young man whipped past on a bike, yelling at her to move over. A car swerved into a puddle and sprayed her with water. She scowled and shook a fist.

Standing in front of the dairy case at the grocery store, she admired the crates of eggs. Saliva pooled in her mouth. For the first time in weeks, she smiled.

A woman with a cart snorted an impatient noise, but Belinda ignored her. She carefully picked out two dozen brown eggs, size extra-large. There was just enough money in her pocket.

Back outside, she settled onto a bus stop bench, opened one carton, popped an egg into her mouth and crunched. Her entire body shivered in response to the wonderful taste.

“Eeww, gross.” Disgusted expressions and grunts.

Belinda glared, but kept chewing.

Popping another in her mouth, she tucked the remaining eggs into the basket of her walker and stumbled woozily toward the residence.

The skin at her neck tightened. Her joints burned; the itch was close to unbearable.

At long last, she slipped into Sunset Gardens through the back door, but the stairs proved too much. Gasping, she sank onto the bottom step and devoured the rest of the eggs. Licking her fingers, she sighed. Finally, some relief.

The skin around her wrists split. It felt good. She stripped off her clothing. Spent skin fell to the ground in puddles. Shuddering, she dropped to the floor and stretched. Her body lengthened.

Finally, the ability to return to her home. First, a snack to fuel the journey.

Belinda wound herself around the railing and slithered up the stairs. She stretched her jaws and went looking for the iron-hair nurse.

KT Wagner writes speculative fiction in the garden of her home on the west coast of Canada. She’s a collector of strange plants, weird trivia, and obscure tomes. KT graduated from Simon Fraser University’s Writers Studio in 2015 (Southbank 2013). She organizes writer events and works to create literary community. 

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