Darkness engulfed you. Completely shrouded in a blackness that almost seemed other worldly. For it overtook your senses in a way that differed from the nighttime darkness you were used to in the city, when the world seemed still and put on hold once the sun disappeared from the sky. But there were still faint flickers of light dancing in the distance, reminding you that the world wasn't that far away in the dark of night.
This darkness, however, was suffocating. As though you were somehow trapped in the darkest depths of the ocean. Falling faster than you could keep yourself afloat, and yet you could feel it pulling you down at an excruciating slow pace. One that forced you to feel the way the shadows wrapped it's arms around you tightly, causing your breaths to quicken and grow shallower by the passing seconds. The air almost seeming to escape through a small hole that must've been located somewhere in your lungs. The unnerving blackness took away your capability of sight, leaving you to feel blind to the world. Your surroundings bleak and full of nothingness as though you were simply staring at the inside of your eyelids as you slept. But you were fully awake, for you could feel your limbs thrashing around you, and yet they could barely move. Confined to the surroundings that kept you incased, pining them towards your sides. You knew you were awake... for you knew your imagination could never come up with a nightmare as frightening as this single waking moment.
The air was thick, humid, and tainted with a strong musty scent like old rainwater stuck rotting away in a gutter. You could feel your hot breath fan against your tear stained face, for it seemed to bounce back off of a surface that hovered inches above you. The same surface that stopped your arms when they flew out on either side of you, banging your skin against something hard, slightly scratchy and faintly damp. Wood. It kept your feet at a bent position, for you tried to extend your legs, but they couldn't push past the board that seemed to keep them tilted as your right hip lay more to the side, still trying your best to keep your back flat. You were trapped, in not only the suffocating darkness, but in a distinctively designed structure that encased your terror filled body.
Your skin felt hot, sticky with sweat as the droplets coated your neck and slid down your temples from your damp hairline, like teardrops running down a window pane. The skin beneath and around your eyes, however, was stiff. For the salt of your tears and the pain of your cries trailed down your face like acid yet dried like paper mache. Tightening your flesh to were it felt like you were ripping paper from freshly dried glue, with every blink of your burning and watering eyes. But the worst sensation to plague your skin, was the itching. The unbearable urge to run your fingernails over every inch of your troubled body. For dirt, was sifted all over your body like a light dusting of snow. But unlike the beautiful flakes you loved in the dead of winter, the soil that coated you was heavy and itchy and made you feel as though you were just aching to crawl out of your own skin.
It was everywhere, staining your clothing that you luckily could still feel adorning your shaken body, and everywhere underneath. Lost in the crevices beneath the ripped and soiled fabrics, sticking to your sweat coated skin like sand on your bare ocean damp feet at the beach. It made your eyes burn as it was dusted across your face, in your quickly fluttering eyelashes, past your quivering lips that had been screaming when it fell upon you. You felt with each shallow breath you tried to take, the feeling of the scratching soil in your throat. If it wasn't bad enough to feel as though you were choking on the dense and dark air around you, the dirt in your windpipe would surely do it.
Your legs burned as they began to tingle from the prolonged uncomfortable and cramped position, but there was something protruding against your right hip, that was making the bone hurt worse than the cramps in your legs. Moving your right hand away from the solid wood that it rested upon, feeling it scratch as you pulled it away, you reached down towards your back pocket. It wasn't an easy feat, as your hand only had mere inches to move and you couldn't tilt your legs for easier access. But after struggling in the darkness to find the opening of your pocket, and slipping your fingers tentatively into it, they brushed against the smooth surface of your cellphone. The heavy thumping in your chest grew deeper, as a rush erupted throughout your entire body, relief perhaps, at the astonishing discovery of the phone you were sure your abductor must've taken. But here it was, hidden and pressing into your side. A saving grace tucked away.
