BT Noonan talks about his story, "The Tunnel"

My wife and I hunkered down to watch a lot of movies during the summer leg of the Coronavirus pandemic. One oddly agoraphobic Saturday night, we were watching Ken Burns’ Vietnam. The first episode of the documentary begins with an Army vet talking about the fact that he sleeps with a nightlight. He talks about it in a way that says he’s not trying to rationalize it. It’s a fear he brought back from the jungles of the east, and its solidly entrenched in his psyche. The combat, the uncertainty, the tedium and spontaneous chaos of war had culminated in a fear of the dark. His simple solution was a nightlight. An irrationality his kids were forced to outgrow, but one that he now required for his sanity. The episode told the stories of several other combat veterans, all compelling, all told with candor and conviction. I found the story of the “tunnel rats” to be the most compelling. 

Tunnel rats were soldiers who operated within the Iron Triangle, crawling through yards of underground tunnels armed with a .45 and flashlight. Their mission was to descend, drive out enemy soldiers, retrieve information and goods, and come out the other side. I imagined myself crawling through  absolute darkness, what I might encounter, the panic I might experience, the atrocities I might commit.

By the time that hot summer night rolled around, the pandemic had gained such momentum that everything I absorbed was filtered through its lens. That suffocating feeling, mixed with my anxieties of global crisis, generated the feeling I wanted for “The Tunnel.” An amalgamation of large fear and small fear. 

My attention is usually drawn to the psychological aspect of any story, how traumatic events manifest themselves in people. That was certainly the case with “The Tunnel.” During the pandemic, many people who rely on others for their well-being and stability, were alone for the first time in years. For some, it was more than an inconvenience, it was a health risk. Social distancing, especially if someone in the household has contracted the virus,  means isolation. Isolation can lead to  depression, hopelessness and trigger devastating psychological effects.  

“The Tunnel’ is the story of one man’s personal apocalypse, and his “enemy’s” long-awaited revenge. Alternatively, it’s the story of his inability to cope with isolation, and how it gives agency to his fear. Either way, the result is deadly.  

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BT Noonan is a musician, songwriter, and compulsory expressionist living in Madison, WI.  After forty-years of performing and recording as a rock drummer, he put down the drumsticks in 2018 to focus on writing. Brian cites Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oats and Steve Rasnic Tem as authors most impactful on his own work. His fiction has been featured in Dark Elements US, and Ankh Quarterly Magazine.

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