{i miss paper letters}

Upon waking he is unable to discern just exactly where he is; it is very dark, and there isn’t much room to move, in fact, he can barely move at all.  His muscles are stiff and cramp the instant he tries to draw his knees to his chest.  But the cramping isn’t the issue; the issue is that his knees knock against something flat and hard about five inches above them before they ever come close to bending like a chicken’s wing.  What the hell is going on?

He lays still for a bit, trying to regulate his breathing, which has become short and shallow since trying to bend his knees.  Who knows how long it’s been since then?  His throat is dry and his eyeballs feel like two pumice stones beneath their lids.  He must be dehydrated, he thinks, but why?  He can’t seem to remember anything before the previous waking moments.  Hell, he can’t even remember his name or where he lives or what he does for work.

This is so odd, he keeps saying aloud, although almost certain that nobody can hear him.  Then he thinks he hears someone laughing.  He tries again to bend his knees, and when that doesn’t work he tries to sit up—big mistake.  Whatever his knees had banged against before has now cracked his frontal tuberosity.  The fact that he can remember this random anatomical term gives him a slight feeling, something akin to hope perhaps, though he isn’t generally what people would describe as “hopeful”.  The pain in both his kneecaps and his forehead, however, quickly displaces this temporary optimism.  It’s so dark, he thinks, why is it so goddamned dark?

With what little strength he has left he makes two fists and begins pounding on the ceiling of whatever it is that he’s been enclosed within.  He can’t make out the material of the container in the dark; it feels smooth, but like nothing he can immediately identify.  He pounds and pounds, yells and screams; finally he utters what must be the “password”—“please”—and suddenly a light comes on overhead.