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storyunrelated · 2 months

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Bottled up

Perhaps a good fifteen or twenty feet across, James’ platform was just one of many such little outcrops throughout the cave, albeit one of the few large enough to live on. Lucky him.

The light from his fire cut through the gloom of the cave and let him see maybe two or three others in the distance but they were more like stalagmite than platforms, really. Too small to stand on. No use to anyone.

He didn’t mind though. Life on the platform was more comfortable than you’d expect, though lonely. James didn’t think he’d ever seen another person, now he came to think about it. Or if he had he certainly couldn’t remember it.

Every day in the cave it was just him on his platform with his tiny hut and his fire and the silent, echoing sounds of absolutely nothing else.

He was pretty used to it. Being alone was normal.

After gathering cave wood (which sprouted from just under the lip of the platform and was only moderately perilous to collect), getting his fire going and seeing to the essentials of life James would - without fail - settle down to write something.

What he wrote varied, though he tried for narrative consistency in his story about an adventurous cave vole. He named the vole Harold (a strong name), and enjoyed thinking up nail-biting events for him to wrestle with. Harold went through a lot, but endured it with bravery, good humour, and a smile.

Sometimes James just didn’t feel like doing that one though, which was okay. Sometimes he liked to mix it up. Dipping a specially sharpened piece of cave-wood into a puddle of cave-ink (the source of which remained a mystery to him) and setting it to cave-parchment James would write down whatever he felt like that day.

Once he was done he would roll said parchment, slip it into his bottle and send it off into the cave dangling beneath the heavily repaired lantern he had for just such a purpose. It just felt like the thing to do.

He would sit and watch the little light of the lantern growing smaller and smaller as it drifted off into the cave before finally turning that far corner and winking out from sight. It’d be back. It always came back.

The origin of the bottle was another mystery (most things in the cave were, to be honest). Many years ago, when James had been a younger man, he had once woken up to find the bottle on his platform. This had been a first for James, and he had been understandably surprised - so surprised he didn’t notice the sad, deflated remains of the lantern the bottle had ridden to get there until afterwards.

Inside the bottle had been a poem. He hadn’t even liked it that much if he was honest, though it had helped him get the fire going that one time the cave-wood supplies had got a bit thin.

More though, it was what the poem represented that hooked his interest. Someone else was out there! Someone else sitting in a cave James had always thought he was the sole occupant of. What was more, this meant there was a definite means of reaching them!

A quirk of the airflow within the cave - which was well-known to James, pioneer of the parchment-airplane as he was - was a particular stream of air that ran more-or-less in a complete circuit around the known interior of the cave. Around and around, carrying things far and along.

Or at least that was what James thought. Given the darkness it was hard to tell, but his few experiments with it had seen a crude craft of his own design float off into the gloom and return the next day none the worse for wear.

The lantern, he had imagined, would fly much better. It did.

No-one ever replied. Nothing he sent ever got any kind of response. Whoever had sent the poem in the first place - and anyone else who might have happened to be in the way, assuming they existed - apparently didn’t feel the need to comment.

James knew they were getting them, too. It wasn’t like they weren’t. The bottles always came back and they always came back empty. There was no-way the parchment could just fall out. He’d fixed the bottles so they couldn’t.

The first time his bottle came back sans-writing he imagined that their response would be forthcoming in another bottle. Perhaps they needed some time to write it, but thought that James would still need his bottle.

How considerate of them, James thought. So he waited.

But they had never sent anything. James was torn between the terror of sounding needy by producing something new and the nagging worry that they might need his bottle to reply in the first place. He kept waiting, just to hedge his bets. Some time later, he finally cracked and wrote something else, sending it off into the dark, towards whoever was out there.

The bottle came back empty, again.

Maybe they were still writing responses to the first and now needed time for the second, he thought, starting to wait again. Eventually James stopped waiting and just wrote something every time the bottle came back. It kept getting opened and it kept getting emptied, and James continued to sit on his platform alone and in silence, writing for when the bottle would come back and sending it off again when it did.

Maybe his work wasn’t good enough. This idea popped out of nowhere one day and stopped James in his tracks.

Objectively, living without any real constructive feedback, James had no way of knowing how good or not what he was doing might have been. But now the idea was in his head. He quickly became convinced that it must have been pretty bad - why else wouldn’t they reply? Why else wouldn’t they say anything?

Not having a single clue what was expected of him, James tried much harder. If you tried harder, that would mean you were more likely to succeed. Right?

Of course, he had no idea what this meant, so in practical terms he just ended up losing weight from worrying about his performance - which dipped. The bottles kept leaving and kept coming back empty, and James’ desperation grew as his frame shrank.

He had to do better, he had to try harder.

Maybe they didn’t like Harold the vole. James could understand that. Now that he looked back over what he’d done, he could admit Harold the vole was stupid. He could see why they’d ignored it. He’d have ignored it too. It was stupid. Boring.

How had he not realised that before? He’d do much better. Forget the vole. He’d never waste his time on that again. He’d try something else. He’d make something better.

Or at least he’d try. He told himself he would. He thought he’d tried, but they still hadn’t replied. Maybe he was getting worse? Maybe he was doing it wrong? Maybe he was bad at trying?

He asked the cave but the cave said nothing. It was just dark and quiet. It told him nothing. Swallowed up everything he said in silence.

James was pretty sure he was getting worse. It didn’t help that his trousers kept falling down. They used to fit him quite well, now not so much. He made a belt but it stopped working after a while. He was finding it harder to get to sleep. It was just so quiet. He’d never been bothered by it before but now it was impossible to ignore.

With his hands shaking so much now it was hard to write. His fires weren’t as bright anymore either since he was getting so difficult to gather wood for it, and it didn’t help that he was just so tired all the time these days. Eating hurt.

Some days he couldn’t even gather enough energy to write. Some days he forced himself to but all that came out were scrawls he couldn’t read and couldn’t remember what they meant in the first place.

Not that it mattered. No-one ever replied. He doubted they even noticed, whoever they were, wherever they were.

One day, lying curled up by his dying fire in an effort to ward off the cold - he was always cold now - James caught a flicker of something moving in the corner of his eye. With supreme effort he pushed himself onto his elbow and peered up.

His heart practically burst when he saw another bottle drifting towards his platform. A new bottle. One he’d never seen before.

Dragging himself on his belly across the platform he frantically swiped at the bottle, catching it out of the air. Rolling onto his back he struggled with trembling fingers to open it and, after much effort, managed.

The cork rolled off the edge and fell away out of sight, but James didn’t care. Up-ending the bottle he held it with both hands and gave it a shake, watching the rolled parchment sliding its way out before plopping onto his chest. He unfurled it.

It was another poem. From the same person as the first, judging by the style. It made no mention of James’ vole, their opinions on James’ vole, their opinions on anything else he’d ever done or indeed any sign they were aware of him at all. Even though they clearly must have been. They had to be. They’d been opening his bottles. He knew they had.

James read it twice to be sure, then a third time, then a fourth through tears. Maybe he just wasn’t good enough yet. Maybe he still had to try harder. Maybe he'd almost got it. Just a bit more. A bit harder.

Letting the empty bottle follow the cork off the side of the platform James pulled himself over to his hut and fumbled around inside for fresh parchment and his old bottle. Sniffling, his writing completely illegible, ink splashing down and mixing with his tears, he forced himself to start something new. Something they’d like this time.

He’d try harder. He had to try harder.

END

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