two wells

There are two wells on the farm. One which we use, and another which we don’t. The well we use lies low in a slope on the meadow. A circular concrete slab, surrounded by grass and blossoms. 

We do not approach the well we don’t use. 

When we purchased the farm, it was derelict and decayed. Remnants of a life abandoned lay scattered in the disarray of plunder. The well we don’t use was overgrown with grass and moss and could not be detected. It is in the courtyard flush against the stable wall where the sun never reaches; surrounded by buildings. In the corner where it sits there is silence.

There’s a hole in the stable where the roof has caved, poorly patched with mismatched planks and tin plates. The rain has gotten in and rotted the beams, causing parts of the ceiling to collapse. All the boxes are still intact, and the saddle chamber still locks. No light gets in there.

Around the well we don’t use there is a calm. A kind of patient biding. If you approach it no birds are heard, the wind dies, and the leaves don’t rustle. If you stay, the silence grows and becomes a rumble.

The well we do not use incites you.

The water in the well that we use is mostly clean, clear and cold, except after the summer rains when it takes on a yellowish hue and a slight flavour of earth and iron. At such times we fetch water by the church, we do not look in the well we do not use. The lid is cracked and a little sunken in the middle.

The well we do not use speaks without words. You are drawn to it; you wait with it; you sit on the cool lid with your back against the saddle chamber and you let the silence grow. You close your eyes and place your hands against the coarse concrete. Every minuscule motion echoes down into the emptiness below you. A light rain begins to fall.

There’s no sound, but you sense every grain of dirt under your fingers like a whip cracking against the cold surface deep underneath you. The slightest snap multiplies in the narrow shaft, and through the darkness behind your eyelids you can see the soundwaves as rings on the black water far below. The world contracts around you. Your eyes remain closed, but you can still sense the three walls of the courtyard as a protective barrier against the world. The fourth side is open, like a withered dam. Nothing is kept out that way. The faint rumble below keeps growing into a roar, matching the rain that has grown to the point where your clothing sticks to your skin. The sound, the vibrations, rise furiously out of the ground, pushing all light aside.

Something gives, and darkness turns to motion.

Stone walls rush up from the ground around you at neck breaking speed. The din presses into you, forcing the raging blackness into your pores like ink, into the crevices of your face and body. Behind your eyelids the previously serene rings on the water have eloped, abandoned their meditative geometry and embodied a furious stroboscope letting its hard white discharges echo against the cold wet stone walls. You no longer feel the concrete lid under you or the stable wall against your back, only the cold grey stone tunnel rushing up around you and embracing you in its humid darkness.

The water in the well that we use is mostly clean, clear and cold.

Long, do you fall. The roaring fades, the epileptic discharges ebb out and the darkness changes colour. The cold grey stones have gradually left your conscience and been replaced by a wet warm oesophagus. Your fall is no longer free. The shaft narrows and increasingly often you brush against its soft moist surface until there is no room left around you and you are pressed further down by warm rolling muscles and mucus. Occasionally you can still feel rocks from the well embedded like millstones in the warm pulsating tunnel. They break your body, and shards of bone tear your flesh, but you don’t feel pain. The only thing you feel is aching calmness settling like a veil across your conscience, separating your mind from your body.

Sometimes after the summer rains, the water in the well we use takes on a yellowish hue and a slight flavour of earth, iron and sulphur.

The ruthless descent abides and the space you’re in no longer feels like a tunnel, but like a sealed cocoon. Forces from outside knead you, massaging your flesh until it disintegrates. Your skin is dissolved in the sharp liquid surrounding you and your tissue seeps out into the environs. Where the soft layer is thin: on your wrists, your fingers, your cheekbones, the bone is left bare. Every pop from your limbs separating; every shard exiting your body takes you one step closer to weightlessness until you hover freely. Forever estranged from your human body.

There are two wells on the farm. One which we use, and another which we don’t.  We do not approach the well we don’t use.