In The Dark

I wrote this after reading a book called The Mole People, which relays the reality of life and death for the thousands of homeless that frequent the tunnels under New York City, inspired this story. This is a fictional story, but the occurrences and conditions of the environment and character of this story are all too real for thousands of people.


The pain is what woke him. It pierced through his restless sleep and forced his half conscious mind back to reality. He tried to ignore it, hugging his dirty and torn pack close to his chest and rolling over in attempt to shake off whatever had woken him. Bernard wanted nothing less then to be brought back to reality, to feel the despair and emptiness of a life without hope. He had been on the streets for two years already, but it had only been six months since he first found his way through a crack in the sewage line, into the tunnels. Only six months in the tunnels and yet they had already taken from him his last and most precious belonging, they had taken his hope. The next time the pain was harder to ignore; he was jolted from his revelry when his body crashed against the hard concrete wall he had been sleeping beside as he felt another cruel blow hit its mark against his ribs. “ Get up, we are moving you out” shouted a male voice somewhere above him. Alarm started sifting through the haze in his brain and he haltingly rose to his feet. As his eyes began to focus in the dark of the tunnel he saw two police officers in navy blue uniforms in front of him, their pistils raised, their faces half filled with disgust, half with pity. Tyler, 2 “Get out, we are taking you to the shelter” The taller of the two officers demanded as he moved closer, raising his bludgeon in the threat of another blow. Bernard knew these men well; they had been after him ever since he moved down below. Twice he had been caught and sent to the murder house (shelters) and twice he had escaped back into the tunnels. He stood for a moment letting his mind clear, a moment to long. The police officer that had spoken to him moved forward with quick deliberate steps, bringing his hand up, and letting the bludgeon he held crack down across Bernard’s back. Bernard heard the crack of his ribs before the pain came, washing over him like a wave. Stumbling back, his knees buckled and he crumpled like a dirty rag doll against the hard cement of the tunnel wall. The officer buried the tip of his steal towed military boot against the boy’s back, legs, stomach and head for what seemed like an eternity. The agony soon turned into numbness, as one blow fallowed another and blended into each other until all that he was aware of was the thud, thud, thud of the boot as it struck his body. Before Bernard lost consciousness, he became aware that the thudding had ceased. Bernard raised his head and tried to see through the blood and dirt that covered his face. He thought he could make out a shadow beyond the head lamps worn by the officers but it vanished into the gloom before he could be sure. CRASH! A bottle slammed against the wall just 1 foot away from his head. “Damn! They are so damned quiet!” exclaimed one of the officers as they began to back away from where the bottle was thrown. A whistling sound filled the air as another bottle hurtled from the darkness toward the officers. Tyler, 3 They backed quicker, and soon vanished around one of the curves in the tunnel. Bernard could hear their footsteps fading as the two men made their way back into the world above ground. Before passing out, Bernard thought he saw a shape moving in the darkness, it was going deeper into the tunnels but perhaps it was only an illusion, in any case, he was to sick and tired to care. When Bernard awoke, he found himself lying in a pool of blood and vomit and, as always, surrounded in darkness. He attempted to rise, but his head spun and his battered body screamed in protest, so he laid still. For the next two days Bernard laid there, his stomach empty and his body shaking from his injuries and the lack of alcohol that was customarily surging through his body. His mind was tormented with the past as he lived his childhood over in over in his head. He never told anyone in the tunnels about his past, most people didn’t. That was the beautify of the streets, no one judged, everyone simply lived for the moment because none of them had a future and their pasts were what they had come there to escape. Survival was all that mattered on the streets and in the tunnels. Bernard tried never to think about his family, how his mother had been to addicted cocaine to care for him or his little sister, or to stop his stepfather from raping Bernard when he came home drunk at night. He tried not to think about the day when he found his mother dead from an overdose and he tried not to see the way his little sisters had looked when she was torn from his arms and taken to a foster home; but all this filled his mind as he lay there on the concrete floor of the tunnel. Tyler, 4 The heart rending sobs of his sister, the angry shouts of his stepfather and the pitiful moans of his mother echoed through his head. Silent tears stained the concrete and mixed with the vomit and blood that surrounded him. Soon, hunger drove him to movement. The angry growling from his stomach urged him to wake up, to move, to survive. Bernard slowly arouse, every movement reminding him of the beating he received two days before. He groped the walls of the tunnel, the smells of urine, garbage and everything that had been discarded by the people above mixed to create a stench that would cause most to become sick. Bernard however had become used to it, like all who lived in the tunnels, and he pressed on. Not toward the light of day, but deeper into the tunnels where it was safer then the streets or the entrance to the underground. Lack of food was not a problem, it was protection and acceptance that was hard to find on the streets. Bernard had run away from foster care and lived on the streets since he was 14 years old. A man took him in by the name of Squeeze, so named because of his ability to squeeze through small places. Squeeze had taken him in as his son and never touched him, which was an exception among the men Bernard had known on the street. Squeeze had died seven months ago from Aids, which was the reason Bernard had taken refuge in the tunnels. Bernard thought of Squeeze now, the closest thing he had ever had for a father, and missed him. A footstep broke the silence of the tunnel, and Bernard was jerked back to the present. He froze, sensing a presence near by. As he peered into the darkness, two black eyes glared out from the shadows. Tyler, 5 A man stepped forward, and it was immediately apparent that he was a threat. Bernard thought of running, but knew he was to weak to get far. The man was lanky, lean, and disheveled with a visible layer of filth coating his body and cloths. It was not this, however, that caused Bernard’s stomach to tighten, it his eyes. The cool black pupils darted back and forth, and the slight switch in his face made it apparent that he was either in the throws of a drug binge, mentally ill, or perhaps both. Bernard stumbled backward as the man approached. As he attempted to find his footing in the dark, his heel struck against something cold and metal. Electricity surged through Bernard’s body; he had hit an active subway rail. The third rail, that was the rail that delivered death. Bernard’s body writhed and made a shallow thud as it struck the floor twitchings lightly before lying still. The man who had been approaching him stood for a moment, and then vanished once again into the dark leaving behind him yet another casualty of Americas internal war, yet another story that will never be remembered.