Falling

Sixteen (Sequester)

A pile of gray cement clumps dominate a narrow slab of cement that used to allow passage along one side of the street. The pile spews out of the side of a crumbling building, like a mouth spitting out some unwanted taste.

Boarded up shops are scattered between doors slid open for an invitation to buy something, or just to chat. It's no secret an earthquake's been here, entering the conversation with a good shaking.

I walk around the dusty pile. And, put my right foot onto the street. I just need to walk for a while and clear my thinking.

I notice the red car out of the corner of my eye and pull my foot back onto the sidewalk.

"Good day to you, sir," a friendly sounding voice springs out of a cheerful face, poking out of the car's open window.

"Would you know..."

The question is left hanging while a fishy smelling bag slides over my head.

A grasping string gathers at the bottom and pulls tight around my neck. The air is suddenly sucked out of my nose and mixed with the oily fish flavor. Subduing arms wrap around my body like an octopus's tentacles. My arms are roughly jerked behind my back. A rope winds around my wrists.

I'm rudely pushed into a small box-like compartment. I push my feet against unyielding sides. The hollow sound of heavy metal slamming shut tells me I'm now sequestered in the car's trunk.

The rolling joggle comes to a sudden stop. My body rolls with it and slams against the inside, where the trunk lid must meet the car's frame.

Hands grab the inside of my elbows and yank my body out, my feet grapple with the hard, bubbly surface that rises up to meet them.

The rope, holding the bag around my neck, squeezes a coughing fit out of my lungs. A door growls as it's slid open. My legs collapse, knees bending, toes dragging on a granular floor... protesting... resisting my treatment.

My body is being twisted around and forced into a chair. More ropes wrapping around my upper body, anchoring me more forcefully to the back of the chair. The cord around my neck loosens and a grasping circle of heavy fingers pulls the bag up and off my head, painfully taking a few unwilling strands of hair with it.

My eyes open to a white-glaring light bullying its way close to my face. The blazing white heat attacks my eyes with blinding heat. I close my eyelids tight against escaping tears.

The heat backs away. A gloved hand gathers my chin with its fingers and jerks my jaw up. My teeth grind against the pressure.

A nerve reflex causes my eyelids to flip open. A dark face staring into mine, nose to nose...cold breath where hot should be.

"So...you got the eye," the syrupy-sweet voice slithers into my ears.

It wraps around and around in my head. A hint of sulfur follows in puffs of choking air.

Fear is swallowing my body like a gang of ghosts, whooping and hollering, pulling jangling nerve strings up from twitching feet to the top of my head.

"Are we playing your song now?" The hissing voice makes extra effort to slip around each dangling syllable.

What could that possibly mean? The numbly jumble of thoughts stumbles around in my shattered brain.

"My song?" I mumble.

"Well...Yeah. I'm putting the hurt on you...So...hit me with your light...and give my brain a good whipping."

I force my eyes wide open, preparing to strike at the cold, black pupils sliding on the two white surfaces that claim the ball sockets holding force on either side of his brown face.

Panic is playing rackety drum beats in my head!

Where's the light?

Nothing!

His hand drops away from my chin and his head swings back. He slaps his hands onto the table and leans into my face. Sulfur breath does its choking job on my lungs. A watermelon smile swings across his face.

"You lost it! What's happened to you?"

"Let me go!" My words rattle like rocks in a tin can. Where's the light?

My brain is searching for light bombs to throw. There's only the rattling of rocks in a tin can. Gone! It's all gone!

His body moves forward, one arm reaches out and slides the white-hot light into my face—blinding!

A sharp prick pierces one of my eye balls, sending a sharp sting into soft tissue. Another sting follows in the other eye.

The sting grabs my head, sending piercing pain. Arrows!

"Seems you've lost some of your punch, boy! But, I'm not taking any chances. I'm just going to put out any light that might try to escape!"

In a single gasp grinding white light is sucked to the back part of my eye with a stinging point of a needle. A black dot explodes and covers the light from outside, like a can of white paint slowly spilling out and consuming all visible space.

Hands grab at my body and force me to stand. The rope around my wrists unwraps. A tall body on each side forces me forward. I walk like a drunken sailor whose left his equilibrium at the bottom of an empty whisky bottle.

It's a short trip before I'm flung into a space made known by the creaking of an opening door. I land on my hands and knees, grating against an unforgiving, cold cement slab.

I reach out with my hands, the only eyes I have left, getting some sense of where I am. I crawl forward and my hands blunder into something soft. I close my fingers around my new discovery. I recognize something familiar.

I raise my hands up, over and, then down again. I fling my arms wide and out from what seems to be a mattress. I climb into the shallow softness, asking my body to gather warmth from its silent caress.

What have I lost?

The door creaks open again. Some kind of lumpy thing lands with a whoosh under the bed. Preceded by a skidding noise, like something flat is skidding across the floor.

"Here's ya backpack," clanging words force their way into the room's moldy silence.

It's another voice, not the one of the demon who's stolen my sight.

I swing my feet out and down, communicating an intention to stand. The floor swoops up and my wiggly body crumples, knees first.

I wait until the fuzz clears from my head and reach out for the lump that's been flung under the bed. My hands grapple with the sides until I feel a smaller lump. My fingers play with the zipper, making it agree with my intention to open the pocket.

Grappling fingers lay hold on the little book.

This is where I started. Is it my way back?

How will I read?