Pitch-black smoke billowed out from the opening of the shaft. Faint echoing screams cascaded throughout the collapsed caverns. Jack awoke panting heavily, struggling to catch his breath as a scorching pain seared along his throat. He couldn’t see anything, there was just darkness around him, suffocating all signs of life. The air was hot and thick, his lungs felt constricted and heavy. Jack could smell the harsh stone around him mixed with salt and blood. He hesitantly pushed a large rock from his shoulder groaning in pain as it slid off him and tumbled away. His shoulder felt wet, no doubt from blood. Jack tried to lift himself up but there was nowhere to go, there was no escape from this. Heavy rocks surrounded him, encasing him in a stone like tomb.

Jack lay there completely still for the longest time listening to the sounds of death around him. Men, he once had the pleasure of calling his friends, like old man Grever and Bob Haskins, the shift supervisor. They had looked out for him when he first started at the mine six months ago claiming that his youth and zeal for life offered them some joy in the gloomy catacombs of the mine. He grieved for them now, imagining the strapping Bob Haskins buried underneath giant stones, no longer able to smoke his pack of Marlboros or order his men around. And of old, big mouth Grever finally quiet, his silver hair stained with blood as he struggled to take his last breath. Good, hardworking men would die together in the bleak mines today, their families left with the daunting task of identifying their wrangled, soot filled bodies. He turned his head to the side, fighting back tears that threatened to spill from his dust filled eyes. He thought of happier things, about Margaret and her new dress, the white one with tiny, pink roses dancing on its trim. The dress she promised to wear on their next date: a special picnic to the ravine, the place where he would have proposed. He imagined the two of them eating crusty old ham sandwiches that his ma would have hurriedly made the night before. At sunset, he would have pulled out his grandmother’s bronze and dusky pink wedding ring right when Margaret was digging into her slice of apple pie. The pie she had stayed up half the night before to make for him because she knew it was his favorite. She would have flashed him a huge, cheeky grin and thrown herself in his arms, laughing at his proposal. After a few months, she would have worn a long white gown embellished with fine lace made by her mother and become his wife in that rickety old Baptist church in town. Nine months later, with the help of a midwife, she would bear him a rosy-cheeked black haired child, a son named Jack Jr. A year later, another small miracle: a little girl with a head of curly brown mane just like her mother’s, that they would name Gracie.

Jack wondered how long she would grieve till some other nervous man approached her, intimidated by her beauty at first, but after just a short time, promising her the world and sweeping her off her feet like he had once done. Jack’s heart ached for the lifetime of possibilities he would miss out on. The places he promised himself that he would see, no longer within reach. He cried for his ma and the sadness he knew it would bring her to learn of his death. He cried for his pretty Margaret and the life they would have shared. And even for his grumpy old pa who hardly ever spoke to him anymore, not since he joined the mine instead of becoming a farmer like he was supposed to. Jack let out a stifled cough, his chest heaving and his breath becoming shorter and raspier. He started to panic, the full effect of what was happening dawning on him, and his arms flailed around helpless for a few moments. Then finally his eyes closed for the last time. He thought no more, felt nothing, and just faded away as the mine became hopelessly still and silent.