Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

You ignore your friends’ cheerful jeering. You climb down into the well, past the point where brick turns into mud and rock, realizing that claustrophobia is not the crippling fear of the malevolence inherent in enclosed spaces, but the much more reasonable, more crippling, fear of never ever getting out of them. You wish you had come to that conclusion earlier because now everything itches and you keep seeing sinister faces in the light of your still wristwatch. You can no longer hear your friends’ jeering. Has it been five minutes? The bet was five minutes. Your throat stops working.