So much for the light at the end of the tunnel

November 1, 2009 9:47 PM

Help me find this short story that I read in 8th grade 20 years ago. It's about a prisoner who finds the entrance to a tunnel in his jail cell and crawls all the way down...

When the prisoner discovers the entrance after moving some loose bricks, he finds a note from his predecessor congratulating him and wishing him well on his escape. The prisoner anxiously crawls down the steep, dark tunnel and finally starts to see the light...but as he gets to the end, he sees that the exit is blocked by steel bars. He also finds the skeleton of his predecessor.

I'm pretty sure this story was titled "The Escape" but when I google, there are too many results for short stories with that name.

posted by yawper to writing & language (4 comments total)

I googled for "the escape" "short story" prison skeleton and came up with this .doc file. There's also a view as html link.

If neither of those work, it's the 6th link on the google results page for the search string I said above, just be sure to include the quotes.

It's also 4 spots below this post lol
posted by chndrcks at 6:31 AM on November 2, 2009

hm, my "as html" link seems to have been messed up. I also just realized I forgot to include the title and author. If this is your story (and I think it is), it's called "The Escape" by Hereward Carrington
posted by chndrcks at 6:34 AM on November 2, 2009

That's it! Thanks.
posted by yawper at 6:47 AM on November 2, 2009

as HTML
posted by WCityMike at 8:47 PM on November 8, 2009