The well

I remember when I was a child, maybe 8 or 10 years old. During the early winter, there was a time when people in my village usually made a powerful beverage called "augardente", meaning literally "flaming water". At the time, it was quite an adventure when my parents let me go to the place where the person in charge of the distillation was doing the "magic", I mean, turning the waste generated in grape's harvesting into that drink for tough people. There was a fire, and around it several people telling stories and tasting that transparent liquid, almost like water for the untrained eye. So similar to it, and at the same time so different. I particularly remember a story about a well that still exists today near where we were sit enjoying the warmth of the fire during the cold winter nights. I guess that they only told us that story to make fun of us, and because they knew we would believe it. The thing was that the well was so deep that you could not see the bottom of it, and if you got too close it would swallow you. After telling us how dangerous it was, and after catching our complete attention, they started to enumerate the things that had already fallen in it, and never came back. The list included a cow, several cats an dogs, a goat, and my neighbor's grandmother. Thinking about it, it was like a black hole in the Earth instead of in the middle of the universe. It is just a funny story now, however, at that time it was really frightening and scary, it was like a horror movie's script. And I have never been close enough to that well in order to see or not to see the bottom of it. Later, when I was a bit older, someone told me once that the well was actually quite deep (about 70ft), and several animals had fallen into it because there were no protections at all in that place. Nowadays, it doesn't sound really scary , but dangerous.