I found this short story I wrote a couple of months and it made me smile. Here is the epic saga of ‘Doug’s Hole’.
Douglas sat on the front step, and held his sunken chin with his finger and thumb. He looked at the puddle on the lawn and wondered if last night was just a dream. Did Genghis Khan really sit on the edge of his bed last night? Did the Mongolian warrior, with his modern hair-cut, gently touch the side of his clammy face and demand that a tunnel be dug from his lawn through to China?
Normally, Douglaswould have discounted such ridiculous memories as manufactured, but the angry rash on his left cheek very specifically indicated that someone with poor hygiene from the past had been in contact with it.
Douglaswas a logical man, his thoughts tumbled forward with ease, never diverting off his linear brain-staircase. He worked in computer programming. He believed in cause and effect, he believed in gravity; now, he believed in the words of a dead ancient warrior. Douglas reasoned that his mind did not have the capability to imagine such an event, therefore, it was fact.
The sweat in Douglas’ hands was sucked into the wooden handle before it had a chance to exit his pores. He was stuck to the spade. He had never done any ‘man jobs’ before. Digging a hole to China would definitely be categorised as a ‘man job’. He was nervous, but surprisingly exhilarated by the brute masculine force and strength that would be required to complete his order.
A track was forming in Douglas’ sodden front lawn. Douglas was prowling back and forth in his black leather work shoes. The tread in the rubber soles filled up with mud. Traction was no longer a feature of these shoes. Douglas slipped. His arms were pre-occupied with the spade. They were not there to break his fall. He landed heavily on his rear. “Rhythm!” he yelled, forDouglas did not swear. He theorised that the cathartic release others felt when swearing had nothing to do with the inflammatory word itself, but the vowel-to-consonant-ratio. He saw no point in swearing and substituted cuss-words for words with minimal vowels. Douglas was a logical man, but logic can not be applied to all things, especially the euphoric high that follows the over announced use of the words ‘fuck’, ‘shit’ and ‘cunt’. The smugness Douglas felt was intense, but was merely a nicotine patch compared to the head rush of smoking a four letter word. ButDouglaswas a logical man. To him, feelings and emotions were as manufactured as Windows Vista. He was logical, but had a lot to learn about humans in general.
Douglas slowly peeled himself from the Douglas-shaped crater in the earth, still grasping the spade. He let go of it with his right hand to answer the phone ringing in his back pocket. The phone was dirty. Douglas was more disappointed than he would ever admit.
“Hello,Douglas speaking?”
“Douglas! Are you OK?”
“I’m fine.”
“Oh good. But you are not at work. We were worried.”
“I will not be at work this week. Or next week. Something came up.”
“Is everything OK?”
“Yeah, I just need to dig a big hole.”
“OK. I’ll tell Simon you are sick…”
“Not sick. Digging a hole.”
“Yeah, but you have never used a sick day…”
“I’m not sick.”
“OK Doug. Good luck with the hole?”
“Thanks Chris.”
Douglastucked his tummy, then his phone, back into his pinstriped pants. He looked at the puddle in his lawn. He began to dig.
Doug dug.
Douglasthought of the wonderful globe in his lounge that sat quietly next to his dusty book shelf. At 4.01am that morning, he had placed a pin into his current location. Fiji. At 4.02am, he placed another pin in his destination. China. He calculated the angle in which he should be digging. He was delighted to see that he would not have to tunnel through the core of the Earth. He had read reviews of the Earth’s core on Lonely Planet and he did not care to visit. He was also delighted to see the just how bigChinawas. Though he had no intention of making a mistake, there quite a large margin of error. This made the onerous task seem slightly more friendly. The task did not seem so friendly in it’s actual execution.
A spade, when in motion, is heavier than Doug predicted . The prickling in his arms was foreign to him. His brain was the only muscle he had used in excess since he was twelve. He grunted and was surprised by the animalistic noise that escaped the throat of such a logical man. Looking down, he saw a hole. Looking up, he saw a row of children that had accumulated. They were sand dumped by ocean currents on a coastal spit. He did not care for their attitude. He did not care for the way in which they encroached his fence’s personal space. He did not care for the way they taunted “Ginger! You digging to China?”
He was digging to China. Modern Genghis would reward him. That was logic. He dug until the growing deposits of humans on the edge of the earths crust were out of view. Good.
He dug for seven days and seven nights. He did not stop. He did question this quest, but he did not stop. His muscles grew stronger with each dig. His muscles did not tire, so this was not logic.
He stopped.
He looked at his sweaty biceps, they bulged obscenely. They had ripped through his computer programmer’s shirt. No shirt could contain muscles this size. That was physics. They shone in the moonlight. Doug had never cast a shadow like this before. His silhouette was magnificent. His pinstripe pants hung loosely off him. In seven days, he had developed the physique of a super hero.
China suddenly seemed less appealing. Modern Genghis suddenly seemed less abominable. Doug wondered if a ginger man with the body of a God and the mind of a calculator would ever truly fit inChina.
He started to climb the walls of his self-made ravine. The sounds from the human deposits grew louder. He could hear helicopters and film crews. Lights flashed. He kept on climbing. He pierced new layers of sound. More details emerged. He could feel the rumble of anticipation as he was borne from the sodden ground. The crowd cheered. Women gasped. Men watched the women gasping. They would have resented the effect he had on the ladies if they did not wish to be him so badly.
Douglas threw his sodden clothes into the crowd. He threw his business card to the most attractive of his lady friends. He strutted inside his house. He left the media to battle for story angles.
That night, Modern Genghis sat on the edge of his bed. Doug was not afraid.
“Genghis. I am not digging toChina.”
“I know man. You weren’t meant to.”
“Then why?”
“You know why. Look at your sweet abs. The world is yours. The destination was irrelevant.”
“I get it, Genghis. Thanks.
The next week Doug went on 6 dates with fiercely attractive women. To this day he is still a computer programmer, but maintains a strict exercise regime.
No matter what happened in his life from then on, Doug had dug that hole. It did not go all the way to China, but it was still pretty impressive.
