Night in the Trench

The indicator dial stayed set at one, steady inside the brass housing. With night settling across the structure, I moved further along the concrete footing to where the foundation formed a dry, recessed niche. I retrieved my tools one by one, laying them across a flat ledge of clean stone: the straightened wire probe, the chalk fragment, and the matchbook. Every piece remained dry and accounted for. Sitting back against the cold lime wall, I stretched my boots out into the still air of the trench. The muffled thrum of distant street traffic faded above the heavy concrete slab. The channel remains undisturbed.