Page 10 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

As if standing next to me, uninvolved, I watch myself stagger around the forest disoriented. The color of the fire and the stars fades and forest and darkness rush toward me, swallowing me alive. I fall…

Light! Bright and dazzling like a thousand suns. The boy squeezes his eyes shut so tight it hurts. Hands grab his collar and pull him into a sitting position.

“There, you little shit. Drink up, and get a move on!”

He feels the cup the monster puts in his fingers and attempts to bring it to his mouth like usual, but his hands won’t obey. The vessel slips away from him and an icy liquid spills over his thin shirt. Before he can flinch from the cold, a hard blow hits his neck. His torso is thrown forward, pain exploding in scarlet sparks behind his closed lids.

“You damn bastard, too stupid to even drink!”

Hands push him back into the confinement. He blinks, wanting to take a fragment of the light with him into the darkness.

One, two, three, four… I’m not really here anymore. The lid closes for the umpteenth time. He thinks he can’t bear it any longer. The narrowness, the cold, the darkness. The feeling of disintegrating, of being dead.

“Are you crying, you little piece of filth?” Through the narrow gap, he glimpses the stony face and gray eyes. Lifeless but dangerous like a blood-sniffing shark.

“No, sir.” His voice trembles. He tenses every muscle and breathes shallowly, trying not to make any suspicious noise. Not a peep. Nothing.

The light grows brighter. The fist slams into his face without warning, accompanied by harsh curses. One, two, three, four… He stops counting, feeling the pain everywhere. His jaw, his nose, his back that bangs against the wood bottom from the force of the blows. Something wet runs down his lips and cheeks. He prays it’s not tears.

“You’re not crying?”

“No…sir.” Words. He doesn’t know who’s saying them. Everything hurts.

“Capital of Afghanistan?”

“Ka-Kabul.” The wetness on his cheeks keeps running.

“Ethiopia?”

Out of a dense fog he hears a soft moan. “Addis Ababa.”

“Bulgaria?”

“Sofia.”

“Brunei?”

“Bandar Seri Begawan.” He feels dizzy.

“United States in alphabetical order?”

He lists them, functioning like a clock that has been wound up. He falters after Pennsylvania and remembers why the man is punishing him this time. He has stalled in the same spot before. But even now he can’t remember what comes after Pennsylvania.

The next punch to his face takes his breath away.

“Don’t think you’ll get off that easily. You think I enjoy homeschooling a stinky bastard like you? Don’t you think I have better things to do?”

The boy tries to suck in air but gets none. He swallows convulsively against his narrow throat, trying to hold back the tears and the begging. Neither of which helps. Nothing helps. Only, maybe dying.

When I come to after the flashback, I’m curled up on the ground. Something crawls across my face and I mechanically wipe the spot on my chin where I feel the tingling. This time, I know immediately why I freaked out.

Lou left me!

Instantly, the anger is back, yet underneath I sense something far worse. An infinite void. Just like out on Quiet Lake as if I were looking into a nothingness that has neither a beginning nor an end.

Groaning, I try to hoist myself to my feet but my limbs seem frozen stiff from the cold. I fall forward and land on all fours. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the burnt logs from the campfire.

Disoriented, I peer up at the sky. The few clouds glow a pale red, but it can’t possibly be morning already. This would mean that my flash had lasted over seven hours.

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