CELL

INTRODUCTION

Our senses tell us where we are. In a way, they can tell us who we are. How we see, taste and smell. How things feel. Cold isn't cold to everyone. Pain is agony to some and an ache to others. Our senses open up the world to us.

Without them, we are lost. Helpless. Alone.

"Wh... What?"

His eyes were open but, for a moment, he wasn't sure if they were still closed. The darkness was absolute. A complete absence of... everything.

At first, he felt as if his senses had died, or if the air had vanished, apart from that within his lungs. Was this what a sensory deprivation tank might feel like? Suspended in water that quickly became nothing? It was disorienting. He was floating in the vastness of space and was waiting for the vacuum to consume him. But...

He realised he could feel something beneath him and wondered if it had always been there. It was hard. Cold. Metal.

The floor, for gravity insisted it was such, brought him back to reason. He was not floating and his senses, though they'd fled for a moment, were returning. He was laying down. The flooring, being uncomfortable, gave emotional comfort if not physical. It was something to touch. He pushed himself up to sitting from his prone position. His head throbbed from sudden vertigo as the world righted itself and his up and down settled into their correct places, the darkness making them unsure if correct was actually correct.

Looking around was pointless, but he did so anyway. Perhaps there'd be a light or a glow. A difference to the darkness that would indicate the world still existed around him. Grey, or at least less black, against the black. There was none. Bending down, close enough for his nose to be in contact with the floor, he hoped to see a change in the night. A glint of the metal. The colour trying to push through the nothing to celebrate its existence. It was pointless.

Perhaps he was blind?

His hearing still worked, because he could hear his breathing. He tapped his fingertip against the floor, and was rewarded by the sound of its impact, though it felt odd. He ran his left index finger over the end of his right, then over each finger in turn. He always kept his fingernails, along with nasal and brow hair, trimmed. He was fastidious about his personal hygiene, so the fact his finger nails were now a good quarter of an inch longer than they should be was...

Concerning.

Frightening?

No. He wasn't afraid, not really. Confused, yes. The light touch of trepidation stroked his brow, but its touch was just warm. He had yet to feel its heat slip into his body and wrap around his nerves, setting them afire.

"Hello?"

Here's the first part of Cell, book one of The Cure Collection (a series title that is subject to change, as it's the first one I could think of!

A man wakes in a cage in a huge room containing hundreds of other small cells. In each is a person similar to himself. They don't know who they are. They have no recollection of how they got there. or, in fact, who they are They are in complete darkness.

He's subjected to strange experiments and visited by ghosts, and he's repeatedly being killed!

Can he escape? Who is causing all of this and why?

And... zombies...?

Book One - Cell:

Book Two - Cult:

Book Three - Captive:

Cover design by scarynotscary