Bones crunch under Arielle’s hands and knees, but she doesn’t flinch. They’re probably not human. They’re most likely rat skeletons, brittle and yellow from years of waiting to be disturbed. This tunnel’s so low and narrow the stones scrape her back — she doubts anyone’s been here for years. Her neck aches and sweat slicks her skin, but a mix of adrenaline, excitement and fear riots through her, like it does every time she goes below — Arielle never knows what she’ll find in the endless darkness.
*
“There are over one hundred kilometres of subterranean galleries, tunnels and chambers,” she says every day, three times a day, in English of course. “You only have to look at all the limestone buildings in Paris to understand just how expansive this underground world is. Their stones were mined from these quarries and catacombs” – she always pauses for a split second, for effect – “so you can imagine the sheer immensity of what we’re standing in.”
Her tour group always gawks at the safe, public tunnels, fitted with fluorescent bulbs and roped-off walkways. Even as Arielle speaks, their eyes slide past her; she’s not what they want to see. All tourists want to pretend they’re here alone in the dark, discovering lost crypts and hidden treasure. They want the romance of Paris, both above and below, and Arielle doesn’t fit into that. She’s barely twenty: short and ungracefully thin, with a shock of springy hair. Dressed in second hand boots and a crisp polo shirt emblazoned with the logo of Historic Catacombs Walk, she’s no Jeanne d’Arc, no Édith Piaf, no Colette.
Some people don’t even believe her when she says she’s French.
“Where are your parents from?” they ask. “Nigeria? No, wait — I swear you have some Indian features too.”
“My parents are dentists from Sceaux,” Arielle tells them. “I grew up half an hour from Paris.”
*
But she knows what they mean, what they don’t dare say. You don’t belong in my view of Paris. You’re not there when bullshit American films make me imagine the winding cobble-stoned streets, the moonlit Seine, the sweeping height of the Eiffel tower. Parisians are tall and fair and radiate style; they smoke thin cigarettes and speak with beautiful, rounded words.
You don’t. You aren’t. You shouldn’t be here.
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She refrains from lashing out at them, mostly, even though she’s sick to death of her job. Tourists might be whiny but they’re also cashed up—and Arielle can’t get by without their tips.
*
Now her head torch sweeps the narrow passage, a harsh glow on the limestone. Just ahead, the shaft turns upwards in an L-shape and handholds are cut into the vertical rock. With boots crunching on rubble and ribcages, she unfolds herself in the tight space and pulls herself up.
She slides out into a wide, round tunnel edged in polished stone. Rats scuttle away as the beam of her torch swings around. By the looks of the crushed skeletons and kicked-aside stones, this passage sees more traffic than the one she just came from.
A faint vibration shudders through the floor. She slaps her hand against the damp wall — and a deep, distant thud pulses through her palm. She grins. Music like that only means one thing down here.
She pops the collar of her mud-splattered leather jacket and strides towards the beat, her muscles thankful for the stretch. Her hands and face are also smeared with beige mud like tribal decoration, and she likes the insinuation: the tunnels have marked her as one of their own.
*
Decades ago, most of the underworld was closed off to the public and elite police enforced the ban, but no one could stamp out the cataphiles.
Arielle’s first girlfriend was one, back when she’d just dropped out of high school and took the train to the city every day, working a temp job her dad set her up with — “if you’re not studying,” he’d said, “you’re working.” Soon, though, the days didn’t matter so much. Arielle lived for the night, because she met a girl with a feral soul from Paris’s suburban ghettoes, a girl called Chanté who disappeared into the bowels of the earth to escape the city lights. She took Arielle below and introduced her to the silent subterranean halls of art and bone, to the thudding beats and crushing crowds sour with sweat, to the suspended state where everything’s raw and vast, like an anarchic dream.
They first kissed ankle-deep in a flooded, disused subway tunnel with the Metro roaring overhead.
“Turn off your torch,” Chanté whispered, and when they plunged into darkness, Arielle felt Chanté’s lips press against hers — soft at first and then more desperate, because down here you’re allowed to be desperate, allowed to lust, allowed to succumb to your grittiest thoughts.
Eventually, Chanté disappeared, like they all seem to in this endless labyrinth—old faces fade, new ones come to light, people move on. Arielle has no one right now, but she’s always looking, always willing to trade numbers by torchlight.
*
Solo, she’s found three new entrances. She calls them vanishing points — you slip down into the underground and vanish from life. She’s also found an abandoned cinema, a poetry-reading group, three separate raves, and an enormous wine cellar. The racks were broken up for bonfire fuel and the grimy walls were transformed into an art gallery: intricate colours and patterns and words, and hundreds of spray-painted tags, saying I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.
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*
Tonight, the catacombs give her music. It’s a booming, bone-jarring noise, and Arielle follows it through a twisting maze, then ducks through a gap in a wall and plunges into an otherworldly cavern.
A hundred silhouetted bodies are packed into a soaring chamber under pulses of blue and purple and gold light, seething in jagged harmony. The walls are covered in vast mirrors, cracked but shiny and clean. They make the chamber seem huge—in all directions, the crowd is endless.
They’re not just dancing to generic dubstep, not just electronic mixes dominated by synthesised sound. The music is something more than that: softer folk tunes are madly interwoven with broken techno voices and throbbing drums; lutes and harps and medieval carols are stitched seamlessly into a beat that just makes her want to move.
Arielle yanks off her torch and surges into the crowd. Her arms fling up of their own accord; her body swings and thrashes with chaotic euphoria like the noise is pure adrenaline. Down here, she’s allowed to be angled. She’s allowed to have skinny elbows and jutting hips and knockabout knees. Up above, she’s expected to be rounded and unobtrusive. Down here, she’s barbed, she’s raw.
*
The whole crowd’s moshing as though the beat is a war chant and the energy pulsing through them is bloodlust. Arielle is caught in the crush and yet the violence is painless—she bounces rather than collides. The chamber isn’t grimy like the rest of tunnels, and there’s no sour smell of sweat or damp. Everything’s slick and intoxicating.
The lights flash—dark, bright, dark, bright. Every other second, the crowd winks out of existence. Every other second, Arielle finds herself pushed to a new place, disorientated and exhilarated.
*
Soon she’s on the opposite side of the room, where a stage is cut out of rock. It’s bordered by pillars etched with a thousand foreign symbols, and half the platform is overflowing with colourful, agile dancers, but her eyes are drawn to the DJ’s booth, to the sleek, shimmering equipment.
The DJ himself is just like the tracks: dark and intense and ecstatic, his fingers rioting over the mixer and turntable. He’s wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, with silver headphones clamped over his ears. He’s spinning tracks in real time, Arielle realises appreciatively—not just choosing playlists but cutting and mixing and making the music his own.
As the chamber thuds with the warped bass, the DJ glances up and catches Arielle staring. For a split second, Arielle sees his eyes widen—but when the chamber throbs dark then bright again, his expression is smooth. He smiles, and beckons.
No hesitation—Arielle slips free of the crowd and hauls herself up onto the stage, smoothing back her untameable hair.
Sweat glistening on her skin, she leans against the booth and grins. The DJ slings his headphones around his neck, his hands still moving so fast they’re blurred.
“You’re new around here,” the DJ says. Despite the roar of sound, Arielle can hear his glossy voice perfectly. “We don’t get a lot of fresh people. You with anyone?”
Arielle casts her gaze out across the crowd. ‘Don’t know a soul. Why? What is this place?’
“It’s called Métamorphe,” the DJ says, savouring the word on his tongue. “Listen — do you wanna go somewhere we can talk?”
The beat is making Arielle buzz with vivacity and confidence, so she doesn’t care that this guy’s out of her league. Her eyes linger on that tight-fitting t-shirt, those bright eyes, and she says, “Sure”.
Lauren Fuge is a third-year Bachelor of Creative Arts student with a passionate interest in writing YA speculative fiction, and especially in exploring the hybridisation of fantasy and sci-fi. In addition to writing fiction, she is also a non-fiction science blogger and an amateur astronomer. She can be found on Twitter at @lmfuge.
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