Darkness had already fallen last evening as Addie was playing in the driveway with Beauty, throwing a ball and trying to get her to retrieve it (as normal retrievers are supposed to do but ours doesn’t).  Suddenly she called to tell me that she had lost the ball.  It had rolled out into the road and disappeared, presumably down the sewer.

Not having a flashlight readily available, I took the camera outside with me thinking that I could flash some pictures down there to see if it was right at the opening and reachable.

Now, the sewers on our street are home to lots of things. Stray cats live there, as well as emaciated stray dogs.  Bugs and spiders too, call this place home, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find snakes as well.  Its amazing that anything survives down there, as the sewers seemed to be lined with all the utility wires for the community…huge bundles of them run throughout the length of the road, with wooden access ports here and there, completely unsecured, of course.  The power DOES go out each and every time it rains, and the fact that all the electric wires are being submerged in a deluge of runoff may have something to do with it, but I’m just guessing.  Still, if the whole place was electrified, I imagine that those those stray dogs and cats would have been well roasted a long time back, so I just don’t know.

Anyway, I was faced with putting my hand down there to retrieve the ball, and I decided against it.  I wasn’t going to go feeling around in there in the dark.  Thoughts of rabid dogs, poisionous spiders and snakes and possible electrocution were more than enough to keep my away.

But I must admit, there was one final thought that kept me from retrieving the lost ball.  The whispers of “We all float down here” were going round and round in my head.  From the darkness I could almost see the shining eyes of that killer clown looking up at me, beckoning me to enter his world.  If you don’t read Stephen King, you’ll not understand this.  But if you do….  you’ll know.  You’ll just know.