Butterfly Wings

Trouble Ahead

Day 1

I wake from a heavy slumber, I feel strange, opening cautious eyes I find myself in a dark room. There is a strong smell I cannot identify that fills me as I try to breathe normally without gagging. Anxiety rises within me. I attempt to sit up, only to find I am restrained down to a hard-stiff board or table of sorts. Rope constricts my hands and feet; I realize I am sprawled out like a starfish naked and cold.

My movements are cut off by pain, there is a burning sensation in between my legs; lifting my head I find that I cannot sit up enough to see. As I lay there, moving to feel what this pain is, my feet find a tube running along in between my legs, and a sudden realization hits me like a bus... it is a catheter. Completely alert, my forest green eyes zip around the room, looking to a lit ceiling; slits of sunlight shine through the floor above into the morbid room. I find the quietness is as terrifying as the darkness; shouts of fear come from me, muffled through rags tightened around my chattering teeth. Even in the cold winter air of the basement I am in, sweat climbs, breaking through my shivers, and gathering into muddy puddles under my heavy limbs.

As I collect myself from the agony, memories flood me like the ocean gathering underneath my body; memories are the last thing I will be to everyone who knows me. I will die a memory, nothing more and nothing less. I lay for hours on end, staring at walls and crying out for anyone, for answers, even for these monsters to let me go. Paralyzed in anguish, I give up fighting against unbreakable restraints and I give up my throaty screams for freedom. Suddenly, I am distracted by loud voices from above, I am frozen in fear, and I am nothing more than an ice cube in a cup of murky sink water, so out of place, but stuck all at the same time. I listen closely as footsteps walk across the creaking floorboards above, slight shadows of dust fall around me, the shouts sound slurred, like speakers on a radio. Nothing seems clear or understandable, but I can hear tones of anger and rage from the waves of sound.

Never in a million years did I imagine my life turning into some horror movie, I think back to the last time I saw my family, and picture their beautiful smiling faces waving goodbye from the front door. For the first time in my life, I can truly say that I am glad that is the last memory they will have of me, getting into my car... my car. I suddenly realize the dreadful truth, that would not be their last memory of me; they witnessed my very struggle that night, they heard my cries, saw my battle for survival and witnessed the castle fall from grace.

I look around horribly, aware that any sound I make alerts the wild eyed enemy of my waking, I study the room for an exit, the room is an old and rusted basement, with cement and wooden boards surrounding the interior. It reminds me of the fallout shelter I have seen in movies. There is a huge shelf of canned foods, a rack of clothes and shoes, a TV, and a radio, as well as a recliner chair. There are four doors, one door on each wall.

What feels like hours later silence consumes me, fear sits inside my troubled mind; I concentrate on the floor above trying to find the culprit at hand for the crimes committed, but again silence consumes me. I feel as though I am fading back into oblivion, still lightheaded and dazed from the drugs, the scene around me fades from view, and that is when I hear it; footsteps approaching me. My head lulls from side to side trying to find an escape, one part of me searching for an escape while the other fights to stay awake.

The door in front of my feet opens and I feel the shock waves of dread overwhelm my imprisoned body; I am quick to realize the man standing above me smirking is the same man that I saw laying on the ground. I study every feature of his face. I can see more clearly than ever, how his eyes are each a different color. They are almost a mixture of many colors, specks of brown in the left eye consumed by a bright ocean blue, and his right eye is forest green with a faded color of brown and bright specks of blue. Just looking in his eyes I can see earth, every ocean, every piece of land and mountain of insanity. I watch as his gaze scans my body from head to toe, I feel his eyes reach the inside of my legs and I struggle to close the open gap. I feel his hands before I see them, gently they rub my pelvic bone down to my thighs, he sighs out.