Kingdom Come

The Wake

The silence woke her.

"I can't see anything," she thought as she tried to untangle herself from the thorns surrounding her. "What the hell am I doing here? And where is here?" She tried to jerk away from the sharp thorns pulling harshly at her hair and flesh, but found they only embedded themselves into her even deeper. She gritted her teeth against the pain surrounding her and the awful feeling rising from her gut. "Hello?" She called softly at first and then desperately, "HELLO!?" She was answered with silence. The same silence that screamed so loudly in her head. The same silence that woke her.

The more she struggled, the tighter the thorn bush wrapped around her. She became still, and her eyes began to adjust to the dark. She tried to calm her self and take in the situation. Her calm state did not last long, however, when she realized she was not laying in a thorn bush as she had originally thought. She was entangled in a net fashioned from Euphorbia milli; the Crown of Thorns. A net. This wasn't an accident. "Where am I? What kind of beast would do this?" The urge to escape grew stronger. If her captor would be so cruel in her capture, what kind of treatment would she receive from him when he came for her... Him? Her? It?

She could smell the stench of her own blood mixing with her sweat and the murky water she was lying in. Tears began to flow freely from her eyes. "At least... whoever... left my face out of the thorns. I suppose there is that," she thought. "I have to get out of here." She tried again to move, but the thorns pierced her like needles. Her body was going numb but not numb enough to provide absence from pain. "Hello," she called through her tears, "Somebody. Please. Help me." She wasn't really expecting anyone to answer, and she was right. The silence that surrounded her was as thick as the thorns.

She reached as far behind her as she could, doing her best to ignore the deep cuts her movement left on her arms. Her fingers spread through the thorns in hope for some relief. They landed on a damp rock, and she let her fingers linger there. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and relished the cold against her sore, bloody finger tips. She memorized the feel of the rock. If she were to suffer in this place forever, she wanted one last memory of relief, even if it was only for the fingertips of her right hand. Her exhale was deep but quickly followed by a sharp intake of breath when a thorn pushed into the side of her neck. "Oh good, maybe I'll accidentally slit my throat on these thorns so it won't take as long to bleed to death!" She wasn't the type of girl to wallow in self pity but considering she was currently wallowing in her own pools of blood, she decided now might be a great time to start. She searched her memories of the last couple of days for any reason she might have ended up here. She racked her brain: Who did she meet? What had she done? Where did she go? What on earth lead her here?

There was no answer. The silence began creeping into her brain as much as it surrounded her. Even her thoughts had abandoned her; she was truly alone.

Darkness crawled from the slats in the boards covering the well, it seeped through the gaps in the rocks, and it pulsed through the shallow bloody water. If the water didn't drown her or she failed to choke on her own blood, the darkness would consume her like a fire.

*****

"LET ME OUT OF HERE!!!" She screamed, but it came out as a whisper. The silence was deafening. The darkness was blinding. The stench of blood and urine flooded her nostrils as she lay in the shallow pool of water. She never felt so disgusting in her life.

She was tired. So tired. Weak. Weak from blood loss. Weak from hunger. And thirsty. Three days, thats what she heard, thats how long a person could live without water. She guessed by the change of the shadows on the walls that she had already been stuck in this well for two days; she had one day to go. Oh, sure, she was lying in the bottom of a well with a little water left in it, but that water was already dirty when she first found herself in it. She knew she would have to be truly desperate to drink that water, especially now that she had both bled and relieved herself in this water. "Truly desperate, indeed," she thought to herself.

She had managed to painfully turn her body so that she was laying mostly on her back now. She could see through the slats in the boards just enough to see the shine of a single star if she positioned her head just right. She had turned her head to the heavens searching for hope between the boards, but she found that looking towards the unreachable sky seemed to only make her sink lower.

"I don't want this. I don't want to die. I don't want to live. No. Not like this. I can't. I can't. I ca-" her thoughts were cut of by the shifting of the boards above her. "H-help me, p-please." Her voice was cracked and weak from her screams, but still she tried. "P-please. Hello?" The boards continued to move slowly. Finally, one broke away and the moon shined down upon her like a mother looking over her fallen child. The light was painful to her eyes, but she could not bare to look away for fear that if she closed her eyes or looked away, she may never see anything so beautiful again. A rope was thrown down and splashed in the water by her head. As if on command, her thorny prison opened around her like an eagle's talon reluctantly releasing its prey. She inhaled deeply as if for the first time in her life. She slowly stood to her feet relying greatly on the support of the walls around her as her legs shook violently beneath her.

She waited for some one to look into the well after her, but no one did. She called out again, and her voice echoed up the stoney pit; still, no body appeared. She pushed herself onto the rope and clung tightly with all of her strength. Whoever stood at the top of the well must have felt her tug the rope because they began to pull her upward. She looked up and the top of the well seemed worlds away; she wasn't sure if she could hold on. She was weak from hunger and pain and her hands burned from the merciless rope. She closed her eyes tightly and pressed out a few tears she did not know she held there. Fear rippled through her. Her grip was failing, hand sliding in spite of the pain. She was falling, again. Suddenly, a hand grabbed her wrist harshly. She cried out in pain as the strong fingers dug into the cuts that covered her delicate wrist and hand. It felt as though her arm was being torn from her body and she was pulled from the well in on steady swoop. This person obviously was someone of great strength.

She knew it was a man by the feel of his hand and by the strength he exhibited, but she never got to see his face. The moment she touched the ground, she was struck on the back of the head. The moon disappeared. Again, she was alone in total darkness. Silence.