THE AFTERHOUR

II.The Arrival:

....!! (Help!!)

........!!! (Please help me!!!)

He screamed at the top of his lungs, to no avail. Not a single sound escaped his wide-opened jaws. The desperate man wasn't even sure if "Help" was the word he was trying to conjure, since there was no sound to work as evidence. He could feel his windpipe vibrating and straining with the strength he was putting in, but there was no output. After a few minutes of useless attempts, his throat was now patchy and dried. This situation had become even more unbearable than it was before. His heart was racing, he was hyperventilating, mouth hung wide open. But the only thing audible was that deafening silence. He was flooded with a fear that had been slowly built up, then struck him like a wrecking ball. "This is a nightmare", he told himself as he slapped his cheek with enough strength to leave a mark, then again, and once again. The pain was numb and distant, almost not even there. He had never been angry at not being able to feel pain before. Frustrated, he let out another soundless scream.

He opened his eyes again, after having closed them for the umpteenth time, as tightly as he could. His logic was that if his eyelids were shut with sufficient force, they'd open and he would be back to the real world. A world he had no recollection of, but it would be a damn sight better than this, he reckoned. Feeling miserable, the man had decided to just lie down on his back and stare defeatedly at the unforgiving dark ceiling, wondering how far up it went since his depth perception would be wide of the mark right now. He tried to imagine an open night sky above, so he could feel less suffocated by this empty darkness. He held up his hands next to his face, just so he could see something. The faint white light did help a little with his ever-increasing anxiety. The man snapped his hand, longing for something to change, but this horror was nothing but not consistent. The soundless snaps were accompanied by his equally soundless sigh. "Or maybe I've gone deaf?" He wondered. Wouldn't have been the strangest thing about this and to his dismay, wasn't even his biggest concern right now.

Lying in the emptiness, naturally, the common thoughts of a man without memory found him. The man wondered if he had a family at all. Surely, he thought, normal people usually do. A father, a mother, maybe even a partner that could be trying their very hardest to look for him, tracking down whatever this unearthly place is. He certainly hoped so.

Where was he anyway? Underground maybe? Was this some sort of supermax that they kept the worst of the worst, the most dangerous and villainous scum in? Dosed up and thrown in a dark cell? Or was he insane and all this was just in his head? And that he was physically sitting somewhere in an asylum, drooling on his shirt while waiting for his pills?

Thoughts raced through his head, impossible to hold onto as one would quickly drift off and get replaced by another. He was not conscious enough to keep track of them. At one point he probably would have had the same question twice, having forgotten the first time it visited him.

He probably would have gotten up a couple of times and started wandering around aimlessly. It was impossible to tell, as he could only remember fractions of the events, but whenever he happened to at least gain a conscious awareness, it was the same: Lying on the ground in a fetal position, with only enough awareness to exist.

"How long has it been?"

All concepts of time had been lost, emphasized by all of his five senses having been taken from him. He was grateful for this actually, because if any sense of time at all was present, he would have felt it to have been a long time. The man was almost certain he'd been lying on this supposed floor for hours, or maybe even longer? He probably would have fallen asleep a few times, if he could even tell at all. In his hazy stage, it could have been days. As empty as this darkness was, it was somehow too much for his human consciousness to handle.