Page 4 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

She challenges me, I just don’t know how or why. I wipe my face with damp hands. There’s that strange feeling again that I can’t name. Hot and cold. My stomach tightens.

From one second to the next, I feel sick. The air seems too thin to breathe. I have to get out of here. Immediately! Somehow, I manage to put the laptop down next to me and get to my feet but it’s already too late. The logs flicker. Black and white stripes rush by like a scrambled TV program. Everything inside me tightens. I fall, feeling a dull ache in my kneecaps.

No, not now…please, not now… I blink to try and get my bearings, but I’m blind. I feel on the floor with my hands until I eventually encounter resistance. A wall, a lid. Everything collapses onto me. I’m trapped

Panicking, my heart races.

One, two, three, four… I’m not really here anymore. It is so dark…

My ears are buzzing, and somewhere near me, I can hear an agonized whistling like someone squeezing bellows in rapid succession.

Calm down now, breathe! One, two…

But I can no longer breathe. The ground beneath me opens up like a trapdoor and I fall deeper and deeper into a hole with no light and no end. Everything shatters. The environment, time, myself.

The boy knows the basement corridor, every bump on the cold concrete, every stain on the gray walls. Another twenty steps to the door.

“Did I tell you to stop?”

The blow hits him on the back so unprepared that he staggers to the side, scraping his bare shoulder along the rough wall. His skin is torn open, but he hardly feels it.

“No, sir.” With an unbearable degree of effort, he forces one foot in front of the other while keeping his eyes fixed on the lightbulb at the end of the corridor. The smell of mold and mildew burns his lungs.

He knows what to expect. He’s been through it so many times, and yet, his anxiety still grows each time.

Inconspicuously, he rubs his sweaty hands on his torn pants, feels the crusts of dirt on the thinned fabric: fermented milk from last week, a dried varnish stain from the week before last, wood oil. How long has he been wearing these pants for? He’s trying to remember, trying to think of something other than what’s behind the door. He doesn’t want to reach the end of the hallway. Ever.

Again, the fist hits him in the back to propel him forward.

“I’ll teach you what it means to defy me!”

The triangular bump on the concrete floor. Ten more steps.

“Yes, sir.” His voice is shaking and he hates himself for it. He doesn’t even know what he had done wrong.

He stops in front of the wooden door because the man wants it that way. The man, the monster. The boy feels his damp breath on the back of his neck, he can even smell the whiskey in it—the cheap brand from Walmart. Nausea rises in his throat.

“Look, little shit, what I’ve got for you!” Reaching over his shoulder, the door is opened.

A moment later, the boy has forgotten all about the stinking breath. He looks silently at the coffin in the middle of the sparsely lit room. The black wooden box stands on a pedestal, perfectly staged to fuel the horror in him. Today, however, it’s not only the coffin that makes him shudder but also the hole dug up in the floor next to it.

“Handy, isn’t it?” The monster’s hand grabs his neck and drags him like a rag doll toward the pit.

He doesn’t want to look, but he does it anyway. The hole in the ground is deep and dark and just big enough for the box.

“Convenient, right?” the man behind him yells, and the pressure on the boy’s neck is so great that he gets dizzy.

“Yes, sir.” A whisper is all he can utter.

The man releases him abruptly but stays close behind him.

The boy looks up. He spots ropes hanging from the ceiling and a winch. Plastic bags are stacked in the corner with the words “potting soil” written on the sides. Bursting burlap sacks are lined up next to each other, a few brown crumbs lying in front of them. All his muscles spasm at the same time as his bladder tries to give way.

Since when has he been storing dirt down here? And when did he dig the pit?

Suddenly, it seems to the boy that there is nothing left in the world but him, this coffin, and the dark hole in the ground. Everything within him grows numb. He hardly notices how he is grabbed again and pushed in front of the coffin. He doesn’t know what’s happening, this can’t be life.

“Open the lid, you piece of shit. Go ahead! Every second you hesitate, I’ll make you stay longer, I promise you.”

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