The Cavern (2024) (Patreon)

Written by the incredible Mysterion1800, The Cavern is the second story in our Father’s Day week.

This is also another collaboration featuring photos from the late Cole Tenor, who was gracious enough to allow their use. This release is shared in his memory.

You can find Mysterion1800 here:X: https://x.com/Mysterion1800?s=20Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mysterion1800/

Corey blinked several times to make sure his eyes were even open. The darkness that enveloped him was so great that there was little difference between keeping them open and shut. However, he could not say the same for his other senses. 

Though the ground that Corey lay upon was as cushioned as his bed, it was extremely damp. He could feel whatever substance the ground was drenched in soaking into the back of his shirt and pants. Although it felt like water, it did not smell the part. It was a sour odor, one that Corey associated with laundry, particularly of his father’s work clothes. Worse still, whatever it was, the air was also humid with it. Corey’s lungs burned as he idly breathed it in. His eyes also began to water, causing his sinuses to start dripping.

Corey then sat up and blinked a few more times, hoping his eyes would finally adjust to his new surroundings. They did a little, but not by much. It vaguely looked as if he was inside a cavern, which could not have been right, given the spongy floor and equally spongy-looking walls. How he ended up waking here instead of in his cozy bedroom, he did not know. However, despite all the butterflies swarming around in his stomach, he knew he had to get out of here and fast. 

Corey looked to his left. There was only darkness. In fact, it looked as if the roof of the strange cave descended until it kissed the floor, creating a dead end. 

Corey then turned to his right. It, too, was a dead end, but not only was it much brighter; there also appeared to be a large hole in the ceiling through which light was shining in.

Since there was no other way out, Corey stood up and began walking towards the hole, somewhat hopeful he would at least get out of wherever he currently was. 

As Corey got closer to the hole, however, he suddenly heard what sounded like distant thunder, though it wasn’t like any thunder he had ever heard. First, it would start off harsh and deep. But then it became softer and shallower. It then went back to harsh and deep once more before returning to the softer and shallower roll. It almost sounded like a conversation was being held by the two different kinds of thunder. They never overlapped; the soft and shallow thunder always waited for the harsh and deep thunder to finish before taking its turn.

When Corey was within a couple of hundred yards of standing beneath the hole, however, he suddenly realized what he was hearing was not similar to a conversation. It was a conversation. One between two very familiar voices.

“HIS BREAKFAST IS GOING TO GET COLD IF HE’S NOT DOWN HERE SOON. HE MIGHT EVEN MISS THE BUS AT THIS RATE.”

“HE’S GOT THIRTY MINUTES STILL. CUT HIM SOME SLACK. HE JUST WON’T BE UP TO SEE ME OFF.”

Corey was utterly bewildered. The thunder he had been hearing had been his parents. But something still was not right. Why on Earth did their voices sound like thunder? More to the point, where was he that he could still hear his parents, yet they were unaware of their son somewhere nearby. 

Corey took a few more steps forward, but before he could look up and see what was beyond the hole in the ceiling, he glanced down at the ground and saw something that made his blood run cold. Etched into the strange, spongy floor was a worn number eleven.

Corey’s heart began to race more as the pieces started falling into place. His head darted upwards. Beyond the hole was yet another ceiling, though much more distant. Corey instantly recognized it as the popcorn ceiling in the mudroom of his house. 

“It can’t fucking be,” Corey whispered aloud, but he knew he could be nowhere else.

Corey had somehow shrunk to the size of an insect, likely no bigger than a gnat, and had awoken inside of a shoe, specifically one belonging to his father.

As Corey’s mind reeled from this revelation, he felt the ground beneath him begin to shake. It was only a little at first, but the tremors gradually increased, almost rhythmically, until they were as intense as earthquakes. 

A loud scraping noise was heard somewhere to Corey’s left, and a brief rush of wind flowed over the opening of his father’s shoe as the air in the room was displaced. Someone had clearly opened the door to the mudroom, and after another body-jolting tremor, Corey suddenly saw who.

His father, Conor, scruffy and slightly overweight, yet handsome for a man fast approaching his early forties, appeared over the opening of the shoe his diminutive son Corey resided in, clearly more preoccupied with getting ready for work than looking at what might have been inside his shoes.

Corey, desperate, began to jump up and down, waving his arms frantically.

“Dad! Down here! I don’t know what happen–”

But Corey was cut off as his godlike father suddenly bent down with tremendous speed and picked up both the shoe Corey was trapped in and the other shoe that completed the pair. Corey was thrown backwards, somersaulting towards the shoebox and away from his father’s tree-sized fingers clasped on the back edge of the shoe’s collar. 

Corey screamed as he rattled around in the shoebox as his father walked a short distance, the shoe swaying with his father’s steps. Corey was then thrown up into the toe vamp as his father lazily dropped his shoes onto the floor before crashing back down onto the insole, which cushioned his fall somewhat. Through his daze, Corey heard the sound of his father’s rather plump jean-clad glutes collapsing onto the wooden bench in the mudroom not long after. He knew what was coming, but knew he could not move quickly enough to prevent it.

The light inside the shoe was suddenly extinguished as his father’s colossal socked foot was stuffed into the shoe and began sliding towards Corey. Corey did not even have a chance to raise a hand in protest before he was engulfed by his father’s socked toes. Worse still, as his father attempted to get more comfortable, he flexed his toes, unknowingly pushing his termite of a son directly beneath the ball of his foot.

The pressure and heat were unlike anything Corey had ever felt in his life, and his father had not even stood up yet. Mercifully, his father was wearing clean socks, so most of the humid air presently smelt like detergent instead of musk, but Corey had spent the better of his life seeing his father come home with stained socks that had previously been as white as snow in addition to watching his father pour sweat from his shoes, particularly on warmer days like today if last night’s weather forecast had been correct. Regardless, Corey knew he was in for a world of hell, and that was assuming he even survived an entire day beneath his father’s unforgiving feet.

The hell began as Corey’s father finally stood up and pressed his full weight down upon both of his feet and his son. Corey felt the air from his lungs being squeezed out of him, as well as his bones creaking from the unrelenting pressure.

That harsh and deep thunder from earlier then cracked through the silence beyond Corey’s confinement. 

“WHEN COREY FINALLY GETS UP, TELL HIM I SAID GOODBYE, LOVE YOU, AND ALL THAT JAZZ FOR ME.”

Corey did not hear his mother’s reply as his father opened the front yard and began heading towards his truck. He was not sure what was worse. His father standing on him, or his father walking on him. Walking, at least, gave Corey the slightest reprieve from being crushed into the ground by the man who raised him, but Corey felt the blood briefly rush out of his head every time his father’s foot arced through the air, further adding to his discomfort. 

Corey had a suspicion he wasn’t going to like being under his father’s foot while he drove either, especially since his father drove a manual pickup, nor did he think he was going to enjoy being pressed into his father’s insole as his father worked eight hours on the concrete floor of his factory job. 

In his current position, Corey could only hope for one of two things. Either he somehow slipped further backwards beneath his father’s sole, ending up under the arch where he might have to endure less pressure, or that eventually his father would take a step in just the right way and end his son’s misery once and for all.

Regardless, all Corey could do was wait and endure.

Ten hours had passed. An hour on the road for his father to get to work, eight hours on the factory floor, and another hour to get home. Corey had survived it all, but at the cost of his pride and, arguably, even his sanity. His bones were not broken from what he could tell, but they did excruciatingly ache. He was also convinced he would never get the taste and smell of his father’s feet out of his mouth and nose, especially since, in the absence of water, his father’s foot sweat had been the only sustenance available to him.

After the engine of his father’s truck finally shut off, Corey knew it was only a matter of time before his father kicked off his shoes, and he would know some kind of relief.

Corey’s relief was delayed, however, as his father, no doubt extremely tired from the workday, had forgotten to take off his shoes in the mudroom and instead walked into the living room, where he promptly sat down on the couch. It was only after another minute of melting into his favorite spot that his father finally kicked off his shoes. However, to Corey’s chagrin, he was not kicked off with his father’s shoe, but instead came out stuck to the sole of his father’s sock-clad and sweat-soaked foot.

As his father crossed his ankles and kicked back further into the couch with a deep sigh, Corey, for the first time since being an unwilling passenger in his father’s shoe, attempted to speak and get his gargantuan father’s attention, but instead found himself cut off by his mother as she entered the living room.

“HAVE YOU HEARD FROM COREY AT ALL TODAY?” Corey’s mother asked, her voice tinged with worry.

Corey felt his father’s sole wrinkle through the sock as his father subconsciously flexed his toes.

“NOT A PEEP. WHY?”

“HIS SCHOOL CALLED THIS AFTERNOON. ASKED ME WHY HE WASN’T THERE.”

Corey’s father flexed his toes again.

“HE NEVER SHOWED?” His father’s voice now laced with concern as well.

“I DIDN’T SEE HIM LEAVE THE HOUSE THIS MORNING. I ALSO CALLED ALL OF HIS FRIENDS’ PARENTS. THEY SAY THEIR KIDS HAVEN’T SEEN HIM EITHER.”

Corey’s father nervously exhaled. “HE’S NOT THE TYPE TO PLAY HOOKY. SOMETHING’S NOT RIGHT HERE.”

Though he had not yet been found, a sense of relief washed over Corey for the first time all day. His parents had finally noticed his absence. That, combined with his father immediately jumping to his defense, made Corey smile a little despite the severity of his situation. His mother, however, spoke again.

“I THINK WE SHOULD GO OUT AND LOOK FOR HIM.”

Corey’s smile was wiped from his face as his father suddenly uncrossed his ankles and planted the soles of his socked feet back onto the floor before lifting himself off the couch, bearing his full weight down on his beloved shrunken son that he not only thought was missing, but also thought was still full-sized.

“NO ARGUMENTS HERE. JUST LET ME GET MY SHOES BACK ON. WE’LL FIND OUR BOY.”

Corey didn’t even have a chance to cry out to his father before he was unceremoniously lifted off the floor and shoved back into the musky darkness, where the hellish pressure would begin all over again.