Awakenings

Chapter 4

Awakenings

Book 1 of the Grave Misgivings series

by C. E. Sundstrom.

Copyright C. E. Sundstrom 2014.

'Scared'

Lost,

Dark,

Confused,

Scared.

Awake,

Bright,

Confused,

Scared.

Chapter 4

Wednesday, February 15th, 2006.

I guess???????

Location unknown.

Where am I? Oh God, where am I?

I feel a cold sweat dripping down my brow. Liquid fear somehow begins to replace the blood racing through my veins. Something is not right here; that is obvious. My surroundings are just so different. My body is not working as it should. Everything is dark, far too dark. I try to concentrate, to move my eye muscles. However nothing happens. My eyes remain firmly shut and obsolete. I find myself trapped, trapped in my prison of darkness; surrounded by a foreign world with unknown dangers. I am an eyelid width away from visual freedom yet that feels like a world away. My brain begins to spin. I am terrified. 'Terrified' is too weak a word to describe how I feel at this point in time. However, I am at a loss as to what word would be apt in this situation.

What the hell is going on? Am I safe here? Why can't I see? Why can't I move? Is this it? Is this all I have left? Will I be trapped in this darkness forever?

My breathing increases sharply as I lie wide awake, though reluctantly immobile. Frantically I try to move every muscle, one by one, in a very systematic manner. My efforts fail to provoke a response. My body appears to be, in layman's terms, paralyzed, though I know these medical problems are never that simplistic. Maybe it is a result of the trauma I have suffered during the accident. I guess that's at least plausible at this stage with the limited information I have at hand.

To my left a sound emanates. At first I pay it no heed, though now it intrigues me greatly. Maybe it holds a clue as to where I am. It is a quiet, artificial sound, a regular pattern of beeping, soft though insistent. It appears to remain at the same pitch, at a fairly steady, repetitive rate. I know that I can use my curious mind to work this out.

What is that machine? Am I hooked up to it? What on earth is it for?

I can sense little points of pressure on my skin. They feel like circular stickers. Maybe they fasten, strategically, some type of sensor to my body in all the relevant spots. I can discern the machine's rhythm changing tempo as my breathing and heart rate increases along with my level of anxiety. Maybe these stickers connect me to some sort of heart rate monitor. It's possible, though I can't be certain in this damn infuriating darkness.

I prick up my ears, concentrating hard, searching for any other sounds that might provide some clues in this void. After all, my ears and mind appear to be the only survival mechanisms at my disposal at present. In the distance I can hear a mixture of incoherent sounds, mixed chaotically together. I concentrate, struggling to decipher what they are. At a basic level, the faint sounds appear to be fragments of numerous conversations, occurring all at once. I quickly find that trying to comprehend their tangled messages is a fruitless task, a foolish exercise which provides me with no new useful information. I am left with a frustrating sensation that these incomprehensible conversations could be important.