Catching his breath, the tiny, black bird scanned the next room with his glassy midnight eyes. In color it was identical: blue metallic walls formed a box with no visible entrance or exit for humans, at least none immediately visible to the bird. To the left, right, bottom, and top the walls were just metal sheets with their cyan sea broken by gross brown rust. Directly in front of him was a series of holes that seemed to lead somewhere, each hole labeled with a number, one to twenty-five.

Once he was able, the crow flew to the top left hole, labeled one. It was a short tube that hit a wall. Suddenly, a nagging sensation had nailed the bird like a sack of bricks, yet he couldn’t place what it was, so he ignored and proceeded into the next hole, which proved to be a slightly longer hole.

Hole three had generously provided a seed, answering a need for food the crow had all but forgotten since he had woken up. Hole four and five led into one another. The nagging sensation was now becoming hard to ignore, as it tugged at his mind constantly, it’s grip relentlessly warning him to avoid a hole, yet frustratingly not able to warn him which hole it was.

Flying straight down to hole ten, he had hoped he would find the exit before the thing he had to avoid. Hole ten was aggravating the crow, it’s shape not the tubular one that he was now accustomed to, but a square shape that was even more cramped than the circular design. All of the holes on the second row were equally as obnoxious, all owning peculiar shapes.

Hole eleven and his mind was now yelling, but he was now actively trying to ignore, a truly difficult fight. The hole’s content was a rock. The next a stick, then a weight, then a wheel, and then a feather. Figuring hole sixteen might be the hole of terror his mind was alerting him to, he went to the hole below, number twenty.

Looking down the tubular hall, the crow could see it bent right, with a dim light in the twisting direction. This seemed as sure a sign as any, the crow making his way down, wondering what awaited him next. And then he stopped wondering.

As the bird reached the end of the straight path, he froze, all anger and aggravation washing away. Stomach queasy, knee weak, and heart racing, the corvid’s mind couldn’t immediately comprehend what it was seeing. Tucked into the pocket of the path was the corpse of a fellow crow, its body having begun to decay.

Finally gathering his nerves, the bird whisked himself out, landing on the blue floor and stretching his wings while eyeing the other holes. That was what his mind warned him of, why it was wound up, why it tortured him constantly. Or was it? Did these other holes hold darker and more twisted secrets?

It had only now occurred to him that didn’t have to be a way out. His heart beginning to race faster than before, he tried to calm himself, tell himself that this crow was merely a failure who messed around and let itself starve. Just then, his stomach roared, and thoughts of food flooded his brain.

Putting his mind onto the image of his fallen comrade, the bird looked into the remaining holes before returning to his searched. Upon entering the eighteenth hole, the crow found himself wandering into an oblivion of darkness. Every so many steps, the bird would spread his wings to remind himself he was still trapped.

Further and further, deeper and deeper, downward and downward; there was no end to the plunge, to the march, to the endless hall of blind faith the bird was forced to endure. After what felt like years of searching for guidance, some hope that he was even still alive, a dim light shyly crawled into the dark, letting the bird know he was reaching a destination.