The Box

The Box - Part 1

When Olivia opened her eyes, her first thought was that she had gone blind. She blinked once, twice, but still all she saw was total darkness. A sharp intake of breath had her heart skip a beat and then gradually increase the tempo.

Do not panic, Liv.

She closed her eyes and drew in air through her nose as she counted to five. As she released the breath from her nose, she pointed her toes. Her bare feet met with a smooth, warm wall of...of what, she couldn't quite tell. Wood? Her body felt numb, her senses dull, as if she was waking from decades of sleep. She gently coaxed each limb, each extremity to move, wiggle or even tingle. Aside from fatigue, her body felt as it should be - her brain reported no crises or injuries.

"Okay," she said aloud as she opened her eyes once more. From the depth of the echo she ascertained she was in a box not much bigger than herself.

As she breathed in this time, she tried to determine the smells around her. Definitely wood. And earth; dark, damp, cool soil surrounded her beyond the confines of the crate.

Olivia kept her eyes shut tightly as she came to grips with her situation. Now she knew where she was and what she needed to do, the remaining questions of how and why danced around her mind. She forced her muscles to rest, allowing her mind to dig deeper, scratching at some distant memories only for them to float away at the touch of a fingertip.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Olivia Donna Fairchild was no stranger to high-pressure situations. The survivor of an abusive husband, she had learned the hard way how to silently plot, plan and escape. As a flight attendant for a world-renowned airline, she had survived the company's only crash in thirty years; she had learned that panic was the enemy of survival and had witnessed many lose their lives to the ignorance of rules, to escape attempts before fate had even opened the window.

As the plane had sunk further and further into the ocean, she'd screamed at those passengers who prematurely activated their life vests. She had watched them rise with the water level as she pushed men, women, children and the elderly through the doors to relative safety. She had seen the fear and disbelief in their eyes, their cries for help as they were pushed into the ceiling of the aircraft, effectively sealing their fate; the very things that should have saved their lives were now responsible for taking them. As the water level had quickly risen, she had reached out to them, holding onto the door frame as she begged them to come to her, stretching her arm as far as she could only to briefly feel a shoulder or hand before it drifted away. She had waited for as long as she could before whispering a 'sorry' and diving under the water to escape the deadly fuselage. She had watched, along with other passengers and crew bobbing around the cool waters, as the aircraft sank beneath the surface, plummeting to its watery grave. Sometimes, in the midst of a nightmare, she could still hear the screams of the families left behind.

Olivia knew that these experiences had changed her irrevocably. Mostly, for the better. Following some intense therapy and a couple of stints at a rehab centre, she had emerged as a force to be reckoned with, the strength within her surprising no-one more than Olivia herself. She had never flown again, the memories too disturbing to re-live. But she had gone back to college and eventually started her own online design and t-shirt shop. In the past six months, she had met an amazing man named James and her business had taken off beyond anything she had ever dreamed of. She should have known it was too good to be true; Lady Luck was not exactly her bosom buddy.

As her breathing shallowed and her heart slowed to a patter, Olivia tried to think logically. She knew that if she was buried in soil that oxygen was her first concern. She had no idea how deep she was buried, or for how long she had been unconscious, but one thing was certain; she had to try to escape. She recalled all the useless information she had learned on social media over the years, pushing it aside to search for something useful. She felt like she was trudging through her thoughts and memories, looking for survivors in the wreckage. Becoming impatient with her foggy mind, she began using her fingers and toes to feel around the box.