-It Goes like This-

The well has been a place of reverence in our city for as long as its streets have tangled between themselves, sharing secrets and destination. It was never a place of great remark to me, simple as daylight and a foggy presence in the mundanity of my childhood. I noticed it about when the government did. What was benign, suddenly became noxious. The drawling voice of the news dubbed it a Sinkhole, the official reports my mother griped about over dinner, an Exclusion Zone. I had begun to think it might be an infected laceration. A wicked, silver pin, thrust through the quivering wing of a butterfly to steak it against a corkboard.

The streets seemed drawn into it still, but they became more unbearable to walk the more one tried, and the starlings had begun to skirt its boundary, their pulsing, knife sharp murmurations no longer soothing, and no longer willing to cross over the wells' edge. It was a leaking, leperous thing, and it was of little surprise that I was completely enamored with it.

I slipped between festering streets in a trance and each time I pulled myself away I found I was closer this time than the last. They were moments that came occasionally and without order, and I was not afraid —when I was face to face with that wicked wellspring— that it would do anything other than consume me whole. This was not a mistake. This was not a choice, but a terrible freefall that I could never be content without. This was my own pandora’s box, apple, wicked truth to swallow. Eat, said the well. Eat, and be-never full again.

I dove.

fell.

Surfaced.