After the Darkness
I wake in darkness, skin cold, head feeling like it is stuffed in cotton. My shoulders are crammed against something smooth and solid on either side. I try sitting up, and smack my head against the low roof. Hissing in pain, I fall back. Unthinking, I clench my hands and lash out, fists pounding the walls and unleashing clangorous echoes that deafen me.
The darkness is absolute, and a chill grips me in a clammy embrace. My feet kick out, striking a metal wall mere inches beyond them. It dawns on me that I am trapped. Have I been buried alive? No, the confines are hard and cold, not the padded interior of a coffin. A metal box? Why is it so cold?
I remember little of what happened before I fell into the darkness. Images of swirling lights, pulsing music, smiling faces dissolve into shattering screams and a swarming darkness that smashed me down into myself.
I fight to calm myself, to tamp down the kindling rage. Hunger assails me. How long have I been sequestered away from my fellow man? In the reeking confines, soured by sweat and fear and something far worse, my breathing sounds guttural, a loud, stentorian panting that reminds me of a trapped animal. Which is what you are, says a tiny sliver of my rational mind. A caged beast, kept away from the rest of the world. Why?
A sound. Muffled, but unmistakable. Is someone there? Roaring, I batter away with my feet and fists, a noise loud enough to wake the dead. I stop, waiting for the echoes to subside. More sounds. A raised voice, sharp and panicked. Am I saved?
There is the sharp ratchet of metal on metal and then a louder, commanding voice. My body stills and every nerve comes alive, waiting, waiting, waiting. With my hope, hunger also grows and my mouth fills with saliva.
The hatch beyond my feet flies back and a brilliant cone of light dazzles me. Silhouetted in the glare are men, white coated moths with peering, frantic eyes. A darker shape looms from one side, biting a chunk out of the light. It approaches cautiously.
I lift my head into the harsh light and it is then that I glimpse the stitches marching up my belly like a monstrous millipede, branching at my sternum in an upside-down Y shape. My lips peel back and I snap my teeth at those who watch, weak and terrified creatures who are nothing but food. A giant, almost crippling hunger wracks my body. Drool slips from my mouth and I groan, the sound winding into a hideous shriek as my limbs scramble for purchase on the smooth metal walls.
The man in black lifts his gun and fires. Bullets smash into my convulsing body, but I struggle forward, slipping to the floor and rising, arms reaching for my captors until the last bullet shreds my face and my head explodes in glutinous shards.
The fall back into darkness lasts forever.
