Skizz: poor miner who got left behind after the mine collapsed
Impulse: something that was supposed to stay buried
Skizz knows he's not imagining things anymore when he comes back to the intersection and there are footprints.
Wet ones, barefoot. Like someone's been stomping around in a puddle, only there are no puddles this deep underground.
He looks at them for a long, long moment.
He looks up the dark tunnel they lead into, seeing the distant torch he'd laid.
Every path leads back here. Back to the hole in the middle of this circular room, back to the blocked path with the rotten timber that he'd KNOWN was rotten, damn it, and no one had listened to him.
It's getting closer. Coming up behind him, from the tunnel he'd exited just a little before.
It stops, about ten blocks away.
"You got a name?" Skizz asks the open room he's facing.
"I'm Skizz. You gonna kill me?"
"Okay. Well, I hope you don't take it personal when I try not to die."
Skizz adjusts the grip on his pickaxe. He waits.
When there is a wet shuffling sound he turns and he swings.
It might have been a person once, but as the pickaxe buries in its throat and it keeps coming Skizz knows-
it's not a person anymore.