# 17 - Dangers of Sound Sleeping - Another Soul-II

‘What do you say?’ asked Rick looking at the city below.

‘Can you jump?’

As soon as Hammer heard this he quickly stepped back.

‘Alright, I am going to jump. I can’t die twice.’

Hammer preferred not to say anything. He was sure this guy was the limit of insanity. Anyways he was still intently staring at Rick just to see if he was crazy enough to actually jump.

Just as Rick was about to prove him right, Hammer howled out loud.

‘Now what?’ Rick looked at Jupiter as if he was really disappointed that he had interrupted at the last moment.

Hammer just remembered that he had seen small openings at regular intervals all along the way to the cliff. He wondered if any of those openings was the way to the city.

Hammer pointed towards from where they had come and started walking in the opposite direction.

‘I am not going back’ declared Rick.

Hammer turned around and bared its teeth at him.

‘Alright I am coming’

They didn’t have to walk for long before they came to one such opening on the ground. Rick had also seen these openings before but he hadn’t been able to figure out anything. Once he tried to look for some logic but then when he couldn’t he chose to ignore these openings altogether.

‘What do you want me to do now?’ Rick was still clueless. Moreover he wasn’t even interested in finding out. He had a rule; he never thought about the same problem twice.

Hammer inched closer to the opening. He looked at Rick and then pointed into the opening.

‘Have you lost it? You mean you want me to go down this hole?’ asked Rick thoroughly puzzled.

Hammer nodded his head in agreement.

‘Are you out of your mind?’

Hammer nodded his head in disagreement.

Rick thought about something for a minute and then spoke up.

‘Alright here’s a deal.’

‘At the cliff I offered to jump first. So here you will go down first. As it is it doesn’t look as difficult as it was to jump from the cliff’ said Rick matter of factly.

‘Once you reach the end wherever it happens to be, you will give two loud barks to indicate everything is fine and three loud barks to indicate the opposite. In case you are dead you don’t need to bark’ added Rick in a professional tone.

Hammer just couldn’t believe what he had just heard. This was no deal to him. He had never asked Rick to jump; it was his own idiotic decision. As a matter of fact it was Hammer who had saved his life, and now this lunatic was asking him to go down first. How absurd this was?

Hammer was still lost in his thoughts when Rick quietly stood behind him and gently pushed him into the opening… poor dog it didn’t get time to even react.

Rick waited for sometime and then shouted into the hole.

‘Jupiter, are you alright?’

No answer.

Hammer was not alright. Just twenty meters down the hole there was a bend and he got stuck there. This chute was designed for Ulterlokians to comfortably reach the city. These people had never seen a dog and so quite naturally hadn’t even anticipated for any such possibility that a dog would be using it.

It was already evening, and Rick didn’t want to spend the night on this godforsaken place. He wanted to get to the city as soon as possible.

‘Jupiter, can you hear me?’

Hammer could hear him very well. He was not going to be stuck in a dingy hole all his lifetime and that too all alone. It was time to take his revenge. He gave two loud barks.

Rick heard two distinct barks and was relieved that everything was fine.

He decided to go down the hole. He gently slipped himself into the opening with his legs first.


© 2007 Ankur Shanker
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