Despair

This is not my bed.

I’m suspended in the moment between being asleep and being awake. My eyes are still shut and I move my head to nuzzle further into my pillow in protest against waking. My scalp grinds against something hard and uneven, instead.

Strange. This is not my bed. Not only that, but I am not even laying down - I’m sitting up. The ground below is hard and the wall behind me is solid.

My eyes open.

I am propped up in the corner of a square room with stone walls. It is dimly lit by a wavering, eccentric orange glow. The shadows of uneven stones shiver in the candlelight. That is it, isn’t it? The light being cast from the wall I am sitting against moves like a candle.

I am not supposed to be here.

The thought is electrifying. Terror swarms down through my muscles and poolis like ice water in my chest. This place is unknown to me and I should be waking in my bed, yet, this is where I am.

While standing, I’ve become desperate for the answer to my first question. Where am I? And then the second question, how did I get here? But there are no familiar markings on these walls. There are no signs, figurative and literal, to provide any reassurance. There is no pain anywhere on my body to tell me that I have been harmed, otherwise.

Should I scream? If I have been abducted, is there a point? If the only person around to hear me is the person who took me, what will they do to me? As if, somehow, their intent would be to do no harm unless I make noise. But what if there is a passerby who would get help?

Which chance do I take?

I scream, “Hello! Can anyone hear me?”

My own voice reverberates through the room in a short echo. I wait for an answer. In the act of waiting, it is suddenly apparent to me that I cannot hear anything. There is no noise outside or inside the room, except for my breathing.

“Hello?!” I try again, “Please! Is anyone there?!”

Silence again and again I scream. I look for a door or a window, something to knock on that will make my alarm louder. There is no door… or a real window. That can’t be right. It must be the candlelight hiding the door in its dimness. My eyes strain to make out a door carved into the stone but they can’t find it. The only variance in the walls is the arched recess laid into the wall that holds the candle. Behind it is more stone with no visible openings to the world outside. In front is a pane of glass. It is a window to nothing but a candle.

But... how did I get here?

“Hello! Please, hello!” I lean into the scream until the last notes feel like they are dragging claws down my throat. My body becomes heavy with the realization that no one can hear me. I am alone in the near-dark, in a stone room with no door, and no one can hear me.

The tension from the fear in my chest wells up and into my eyes. Tears fall and plat, plat against the stone floor. It is the only noise I have heard aside from my ragged breathing and screaming voice. Everything is echoing against the walls. Looking up, I can see they connect to a high, rounded ceiling, nearly hidden in the darkness of the edge of the candlelight. Looking to the floor, I can see that it is smooth and other than my feet, there is nothing on it.

The candle is the only thing keeping me company. It is tapered, tall, and thin, and yellow. The wax is dropping down the sides and pooling at the base. Behind the glass, the flame sways on the wick so slowly and fluidly, yet the delicate movements create so much chaos in the shadows on the walls.

It is too quiet here. Too quiet and too dark, even with the candle. I am not sure how long I am meant to be here. There must be a way in, and out, if I am here – I must have gotten inside somehow. It stands to reason, then, that the person who put me here intends to come back. How long do I have until then?

I look at the candle. It has a few inches left before it burns out. There are no other candles around for me to light with its flame. My source of light is finite. I have nothing, no answers, no food or water, no answer to my screaming. Once the candle is out, I will be in complete darkness.

The door must be hidden. I reach towards a wall. My fingertips press into the crevices of the concrete joining the stones, into the stones themselves, searching for a crack. Having searched all four walls, I start again, certain that I must have missed it altogether. Somewhere in this grey room is a door and I have to find it. Four passes around the room before I step back towards the middle of the floor. I crane my neck to see the ceiling in better detail. Nothing in the stones gives away a door.

They have to come back. The person who put me here has to come back. They must have brought me here for some insidious reason. Once they come back for me, I can look for a way to escape. The candle is getting shorter but they can’t leave me here for long. Can they?

Can they? Terror, again. What if no one ever comes? And I have been left here to starve and rot away into insanity before I die?

I begin screaming again. This time, it is uncontrolled and I am not exactly sure what words I am using. These are desperate, hopeless noises erupting from my chest. They move like sandpaper on their way through me, scratching my throat. My despair is so consuming - intoxicating me beyond reason - that I am convinced that the very power of the feeling will draw an answer out of the darkness. But when I am done, there is only the terrible quiet again.

My throat aches. My sense of time has stumbled over my mania and has become distorted. The candle has hardly an inch left. How long have I been screaming? How long did it take to search for a door? The door that isn’t here. This is a tomb and I have been buried alive.

Madness itches my brain. My breath is heaving with the struggle for calm. But this lonely place with its dark stones and dying candle is impossible. I cannot get out. I could be anywhere. Anywhere. Once it is all black in here, there will be nothing to anchor me to humanity.

I imagine that only horror waits for me in the blackness. Maybe I have not been stolen from my bed by a person, but by something much more monstrous? And when the candlelight leaves me here alone, some unnamed demon will creep into the void of this room and ravage me. A presence lives in that candle and it is waiting to kill me. I will know hell and there will be no salvation.

The candle behind the glass is wavering at the base of the wick. Please. I am whimpering the word. There is no answer. Just the flame performing its death dance to the tune of fearful weeping. It shrinks into the melted wax around it.

In this last moment, I pause just long enough to hear… nothing. No distant movement or traffic, or mechanical humming, or any other reassuring ambient sound. There is no voice, of creature or wind, to tell me to have hope. It is so, so dark here already and I am utterly alone.

I am going to die here.

The candle goes out.