Day ?
It’s been a few days. How many? It’s hard to say from my cell. I can explain, sort of, how I got here, but why is beyond my comprehension. It’s all very confusing, and more than a little worrisome.
Let me begin where I last ended.
I had fallen asleep behind the counter of a picture booth at a Wal-Mart, when I was suddenly awakened by a jarring presence overwhelming me. From the nothingness of dreamless sleep, I snapped into the hazy reality of unseen hands or vices gripping me just beneath the shoulder on my arms.
Like a magician’s assistant, minus the beauty, I was lifted perpendicular to the ground with my legs still folded beneath me. Confused and shaking off the remnants of sleep, I moved as a lifeless puppet suspended from a conveyer belt, from behind the counter and along the rows of small shops that line the front wall of nearly all Wal-Mart stores. My feet slid uselessly beneath and behind me as I glided to and through the front doors.
Panic began to settle in as the realization that this wasn’t a dream took hold. Frantically I got to my feet, twisted and pulled with all my strength to free my arms from whatever held them, while kicking at the ground in a failing attempt to run.
I screamed and tried to spin away. For a single moment, my right arm came free, and fight or flight swung purely into flight. I pushed off hard, but found only another large weight slammed against my back causing me to lose my balance and fall to the ground. Suddenly it was on top of me, like a roller pressing down over still balled dough in the act of creating a tortilla. Sadly, I was the tortilla.
A moment later sharp pains pulsed through my body and somewhere between my brain and limbs the connection was lost. I lay unwillingly motionless and panting, still making a sound that weakly resembled a mixture of screaming and crying, like prey pinned for consumption by an unknown predator.
At that time, I must have passed out for a few moments, because the next thing I remember I was laying sideways suspended on a bed of nothing a couple of feet above the pavement of a road quickly slipping by beneath me. It was the closest thing to flying I have every experienced, and if not for the fear of what was happening to me, I may have actually enjoyed it.
My fingers and feet twitched at the buzz of swarming nerves reaching to reconnect beneath my skin. Gradually, I could feel my power over them begin to return, but the speed of the road beneath me and the fear of what may occur should I move, kept me still, though not calm.
My thoughts were like fish in a sealed glass beneath the ocean. They darted in every direction only to hit invisible walls and grow more chaotic with every failed attempt at direction.
How do you escape the shadows of the night when there is no light to be found?
I could feel the fear climbing over every space of my muddled mind, conquer it, and move on. Soon, there was nothing to my being to reign over it, and I was no longer anything more than a gasoline drenched twig in a raging forest fire. Terror lapped at me and devoured me whole. In its belly I found nothing but more fire to scrape away any reasonable sense of sanity. Without the cognition to gain control of my surroundings, I let out a deep howl of pain and horror.
And as soon as this nightmare had come to claim my waking mind, thought was lost and the serenity of ignorant darkness reclaimed the ground beneath me. I passed out.
When consciousness came back for me, I found myself here, in what must be a cell. There are three windowless, stone walls, with the fourth being left open, or at least from appearance, left open. The truth of this fourth wall is still imprinted on my cheek and forehead, as I’d walked face first into it hours ago. There is a steel toilet opposite the wall that hides from my eyes, and a worn striped, cot mounted on the wall to my left when facing the toilet. I’ve all the amenities any king could demand.
Is this where I’m meant to die? Am I dead already, moved from purgatory to hell’s waiting room?
From there, the oddities only continue, but my mind is sore and tired from trying to remember, and make sense of, these days passed. I’ve no way to decipher day from night, and no idea how much time has passed, but the need to rest is strong.
Like a mockingbird stationed at, and tethered to, the South Pole, struggling with weary wings to break its chain while waiting for the cold to steal its life away, I fly in the cage that is my life awaiting impending death, and for the cold to bury me.
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