Unexpected

Waking Up Locked Up

My head hurt. There was a pounding on the side of my face, almost like a severe headache. I just wanted to bury my face into my pillow and go back to sleep, even if I had had such an awful nightmare. I turned my face downwards to snuggle into my pillow, but my nose hit something hard and rather smelly instead. My eyes fluttered open and I saw that I was anywhere besides my bed. Sitting up, I groaned as the rest of my body vibrated with the same feeling as my head. It hadn't been a dream. I'd been kidnapped! My heart rate picked up and my eyes shifted over my surroundings, trying to make sense of this all. I was sitting in the middle of a small cell with uneven brick floors and two cement walls making the back and right hand of my cell, the other two walls were metal bars. Through the bars I could see a small hallway with four other cells lined up beside mine on my left. A single door was at the end of the hall, a metallic gray against the whitish gray of the cement walls. The hallway and cells were lit up by three, plain light bulbs hanging from the hall ceiling, casting shadowy lines across my form. In the cell farthest from me I saw what looked like a lump of fabrics.

Intrigued, because in this situation I was either going to be curious and figure things out or break down and start crying, I edged closer to the bars of my cell, but gasped as my body complained at me. Looking down at my arms I saw angry bruises mimicking the finger prints of the goons I had fought with along with other scratches and bumps from the tousle. My left ankle was stiff and was adamant about not being used and as I touched my head because of the pounding of my temple where I'd been hit, I was greeted with a sharp pain from my hair roots where it had been trampled and pulled.

Upon further inspection, though it was obvious, I found that I was absolutely filthy. My purple summer reading program t-shirt I'd gotten for volunteering at the library this summer, my jeans, and my unprotected arms were stained with the grim from the alleyway and this cell. The shoulder of my t-shirt was ripped and my jean's right knee had split open during the fight, showing a red scrape I had earned. My hair, which I'd worn down while in the park, was a rat's nest from what I could see, its blondness hidden by grease. Not to mention that I had apparently lost a shoe at some point, so I only had one purple conver on now and my other foot was completely bare for it had also lost its sock.

A thought occurred to me as I looked down at my filthy form, spurring on a wave of hope. Checking my pockets, which had carried a dollar, a stick of gum, and, most importantly, my cellphone, I found them to be empty. My phone was gone, either lost in the alley or stolen by my captors, and my hope of calling the police was down the drain. Groaning I looked around my tiny cell again, then over at the lump in the farthest cell.

Avoiding using my sore ankle, I pushed myself over to the bars of my cell and peeked through them, trying to figure out what that pile of fabric was about. It probably didn't matter what it was, but I had to distract myself from my predicament or I might break down, and I would not allow myself to break down. It looked like a big coat at first, but then I noticed something. It was breathing. The lump in the farthest cell wasn't just old, ragged clothes like I had thought at first glance, it was a person. Shifting farther back in my cell to try to angle myself better, I finally could see a bit of the person's face.

That's when my heart dropped even further, if that's even possible. The other prisoner was none other than the poor homeless man I'd told to run. Apparently he hadn't run fast enough. I'd seen him standing there during the fight, still hunkered under his canvas home between two dumpsters, and no doubt the group of criminals I'd fought with had seen him too, though yelling to him might not have been the best thing to do. I'd tried to help, but maybe I had just made it worse for him. Had he been captured because of my call for him to flee? Was he here because of me? Guilt washed over me and I let out a shaky sigh, fighting back tears as my emotions caught up with me. The guilt, the fear, the pain, it was all too much and I could feel the salty streams make their way down my face.