I've been in here for three days. I've been conserving water but the bottles of urine are piling up. I've balled up every article of clothing and stacked them according to type. The room looks cleaner than it ever did when I went outside, but it still feels like it's getting smaller. Sometimes I hear the room mate, and I wonder if he knows I'm here.

I propped the mattress up against the window and the box spring against the door. I don't need a queen size anymore - I prefer the floor anyway. With all the clothes stacked on top of the dresser and the mattress pushed to the side, all the sudden extra space almost makes me feel agoraphobic. Still, I feel like the room is getting smaller. Or maybe that's not the right feeling - I feel like the door is getting closer to me.

I can hear the mail. It scrapes through the mail slot in a short stream and plops into a growing pile of junk and bills. We used to joke that the door poops mail.

I found the crawlspace. This could be my lucky ticket. I'm running out of water and since I turned to depend on the absorbency of my least favorite clothes, the smell has been getting unbearable. I'd retreated to the closet, and in the process of making it more comfortable, I found the crawlspace. Tomorrow I'll go exploring.

I found some wires poking out from my neighbor's apartment and decided to splice my lamp into it, since it's as dark as you'd imagine the underground could be and I only have so many batteries. In some area's there's even enough room for me to stand a little. And thank god I have some bare earth to handle my waste disposal problem. There's also a substantial amount of moisture, which is both a pro and a problem. There should be some way I can pull the moisture out of the air and get a supply of water, but the amount of moisture in the air seems to be an ideal environment for mold. I've already gotten used to the loudest sound in my new world being the sound of pages turning, so my coughing feels deafening.

The east side of the space runs up against a cement wall, and also boasts the most head room, a head shorter than I need. I think it belongs to the house next to the apartment complex. The wall is warmer than anything else down here and is covered in a green slime. It may end up becoming my sole source of "food" unless I can magically learn how to grow mushrooms from nothing. The West side just gets increasingly narrow until it just ends, about where the sidewalk would be. Under the southwest corner, some dryer exhaust leaks out, a source of heat I'll probably appreciate when winter comes. The western half of the north side is boarded, and the eastern half has cinder blocks emerging from the dirt. There's a 4 foot gap of dirt between them that I might decide to try and pick through if I feel industrious enough. Conveniently, south side ends in a wall of scrap wood, probably the crap left over from construction.

Happy days! While moving some things I might want while I'm in the crawl space, I found a backpack I used when we went camping a few years ago and found chocolate and a can of beans. This will be my first food in almost a week, since my supplies first ran out and I started exploring the crawl space. Luckily it also had a hatchet, which means I can work toward my dream of digging more headroom and maybe some gutters to drain off the rain water that I fear might drown me when the really heavy rains come. Also, if I dig in the gap between foundations on the north side, I could find something. Who knows?

Well, the upstairs is off limits now. I could hear them forcing the room open. I knew it would happen eventually. Too bad they can't evict me any more. I wanted to laugh out loud but had to settle for a giggle. I felt a little bad about ditching my room mate like that, and wished I could have told him I stopped paying the rent, but I guess the missing person's report filed on me convinced her not to take it out on my old roomy. Whether the joke's on me or someone else depends on the definition of a joke.

Had my first meal of slime. I tried to "cook" it on the flat part of the hatchet black held against the lamp light for an hour, but I have no idea if that's anywhere near enough to "pasteurize" something like this. I also don't know if I got enough nutrients to stay alive. Still beats eating spiders. My cough has been getting worse, slowly, especially from the dust I kick up from digging. I've taken to wearing a shirt over my mouth at all times because preventative health care is all I'll get, even in an emergency. I've passed the time by drawing on the roof, but the only thing that wards off crippling claustrophobia is the terror of the alternative. I'd rather stay down here, buried alive, until I'm considered dead.

Digging in the gap has brought some good reward. I'm risking tunnel collapse which might result in my being discovered, but I'm also finding food in what I guess is someone's garden. I cut small pieces of raw potato, carrot, and onion in order to make my slime more palatable. I still have the beans and chocolate, but I'm saving them for later. I could be in denial, but I think the slime hasn't been bad for me and has given me some sustenance. Water is now my big problem. I can only collect about a cup a day from areas that drip very slowly. I know I'll probably have more water than I know what to do with when it rains, and I'm sure it will soon, but my bottles haven't been full of any liquid at all in a long time. Either way, I don't think I'll be able to survive down here for another entire month. I'll definitely get scurvy or something, and my cough is getting worse.

I probably am crazy. I know I thought I probably was crazy when I just wouldn't leave my room and then again when I started squirming around in this giant crawl space, but now I really think I'm seeing things in this constant low-light. I was digging and coughing, worse than usual, when I came to another garden. I'm pretty sure I'm 6 feet underground, since the ground above is packed too tight. Anyway, instead of a bunch of roots and the tips of some edible bulbs, it's like... hold on, I need to look again.
Yeah. I don't know, I must be really bad off. It looks like everything is growing upside down. Earthworms dropping from tall grasses, blooming flowers, and herbs. When I saw it I turned around to see if I'd created a new beautiful reality, but the rest of the space still looked cold, damp, and barren. When I turned back to see if my vision had vanished, it was still there. I never took a psychology class, but I think persistent hallucinations like this are either rare or a bad sign. I'm going to eat a little bit of chocolate, take a nap (at this point I can only guess if I sleep for 3, 6, or 9 hours) and see if it's still there.

When I came in here I was about 210, and now I look thinner than when I was in the military, when I weighed 150. Is it possible I lost that much in a month on a bug, root, and slime diet? Or have I been here for longer than a month? Certainly an accomplishment to be proud of. It hasn't been too hard, though I've survived on luck. In fact it's just easy enough I'm surprised I haven't found anyone else. My cough has been getting better, but I've been getting a lot weaker, despite all the work I do digging, crawling commando style through my tunnel, cutting support beams from the wood pile, and dragging them back. I've also been getting more water, though who knows what crazy chemicals I'm ingesting. I think I'm happy here, I'm finally living for myself and I don't have to really be afraid anymore. There's nothing to worry about. This dirt is mine and the only thing that can take it from me is a darkness I already know. I am a little afraid of the garden I thought was sure I saw yesterday. Tomorrow I'll try digging toward the marsh next to the grocery store. At the rate I've been going, I think I'll make it in a week. I'll sneak out at night and dumpster-dive some real food, hopefully some salt and citrus and fill my bottles with good clean water. It'll feel good to walk.

Maybe I should find another crawlspace access and risk getting caught by a terrified apartment renter. I saw the upside-down garden again. I think it was the same as when I first saw it. I saw another earthworm drop from a patch of grass, and when I reached for one of the blades, my lamp went out. I knew it would happen eventually, but the timing was unnerving. I was a little more frantic than usual. I felt really claustrophobic for the first time since I'd been underground, surrounded by endless pure darkness that would randomly hit me with a support beam to my head or a knocked over bottle of precious water. When I finally found the lamp, I felt around for the box with the bulb but slipped and crushed it. I must of passed out from hyperventilation. When I woke up, the lamp was back on, and of course the garden was gone.
If it's a waking dream, what do I think it represents? I can't really remember my actual dreams, so I don't have much to compare it with. Regardless, it did remind me of the possibility of the light going out, so I did some practice-crawls with my eyes closed and did a little "redecorating" so it will be easier to find the box with the spare bulbs. The really crazy thing is that I lost my hatchet.

No digging today. My cough is almost totally gone, but my entire body aches now and a headache I've been ignoring has gotten really bad. I don't know how it's possible I could have misplaced the hatchet. I try not to think about it. I spent most of the day looking for the other crawlspace access panels. Every apartment has one. It's just that most of the occupied apartments have lots of crap piled on them since no one's really excited to have easy access to a spider metropolis. The only one that opens easily was mine. I poked my head up and was kind of sad to see that all the stuff has been moved out. Looking at my emptied apartment was pretty creepy. I got out to put my ear against the wall I shared with the room mate and when I was sure he wasn't home, I tried doing some jumping jacks a jumping jack and almost dislocated my hip. I took the opportunity to drink some clean water and raid the fridge, which had a good supply of old limes and a probably-forgotten leftover burrito. Walking around up there made me feel like a ghost. Then I decided I probably had enough time to sit on the toilet, and I was really struck by the comfort of it. I was a couple neurons away from deciding to just stay there until I was found and just let the consequences come. Parabolically increasing shame. Eternal debt. Constant consuming fear. I sat on that throne of comfort and maybe would have given up my chosen life despite all that if I hadn't heard the mail. It reminded me of when we used to joke about how it was like the door was pooping mail, which reminded me of why I needed to stay buried.