Free write challenge 10 minutes (because this is what I do when I'm bored at home and should be doing more productive things). Writing prompt: "You’ve been outside digging a large hole for several hours when you realize that you can’t recall why you are digging it. Retrace your steps to try to discover your motivation."


     Damn! A blister the size of a peach pit splits open on my palm. I drop the shovel and stare down at the ripped flesh. It's kind of oozy. I look up, out of the hole at the night sky. The moon glows orange against the black sky. Wait, what? Out of a hole? Zander, what the hell are you doing in a hole? I ask myself.
     Yep, the shovel, the dirt, the digging. Digging a hole. Why am I digging a hole? 
     Dirt covers my Timberland boots and dust streaks my jeans and flannel shirt, which is ripped across the front like a werewolf clawed my chest. Blood. My chest is bleeding too. How am I going to get out of this hole? The sides are just taller than my head. Where is all of the dirt I got out of this bad boy? What if it caves in on me? 
     My chest tightens. Breathing hard. Eyes bouncing to the ground, underground all around me, up, up and out, only able to see sky, where is the ground? 
     I'm in the ground. 
     I grab a root and try to hoist myself up. Pulling, scrambling out, grasping for grass, lugging body out of hole. Out, out of the ground! 
     I lie on my stomach, feet dangling over the mouth of the hole, left cheek resting on the grass. Breathing, sweating, blister oozing. When I look up, holes. All I see are holes. 
     I can't see far. The tangerine moon is the only light, but I know in the blackness are more holes. Holes like the one I just crawled from. Six feet wide, six feet deep. If I reach to the right, I can stick my arm in a hole. If I reach to the left, same thing. A cloud drifts over the moon, leaving me in complete darkness.