Chapter 1
My vision blurs as I attempt to lift my eyelids. I can barely see the concrete floor I’m lying on. Where am I?
There’s a dark brown wood table to my left that I use to help me stand on my feet. There’s no doubt I was drugged, I’m just now beginning to regain feeling in my legs and arms and usually we find victims in the same state that I’m in now. Except they have the post-traumatic stress that comes with whatever the hell is gonna happen to me in here.
The door in front of me seems extraordinarily tempting, but in almost every scenario similar to this, both in movies and real life, not only has the door been locked, but maybe even booby-trapped. What is this, Jigsaw? I sure hope it isn’t, but checking the door should be my first option.
I approach the gray-colored door, or is it grey? I never quite understood that.
I’m losing my focus, but why wouldn’t I? This isn’t exactly the easiest situation to keep calm in.
The door has a peephole in it with a golden door knob, the knob looking n worse for wear, scratches all around the circumference, some small and others too big to not notice, almost as if others have tried to claw their way through it with varying degrees of failure. I place my hand on the lock and turn. Nothing. Figures, but at least my head wasn’t torn off by a shotgun through the peephole.
The question still stands, where am I? More importantly, how do I get out of here? There has to be some way out of here outside of that door. I notice the chair inside the table and pull it out. It’s just some chair, but maybe I can use it to break the knob open. It can’t be that secure, can it?
I placed the chair under the doorknob tightly so it doesn’t slip off and began kicking it.
No budge. Damn.
I would continue kicking it but the more I do, the more likely the chair itself will break, so it’s best if I figure something else out.
While thinking of a possible exit strategy, I try to remember how I ended up here, wherever here is, and who brought me here.
It was Friday night last I remember, I was at the station filing some reports while everyone else was out celebrating… a victory? Some of it’s a blur, but I also remember getting in my car to go home.
“Okay.” Maybe speaking out loud will help me keep whatever sanity that’s slowly slipping away from my conscience. “I was taken when I got in my car, I had to be.”
But for what? Why? Who? These questions are piling up and I’m not even out of the room yet, but can you blame me for asking them? Maybe I got caught up in an investigation I wasn’t supposed to be in. Maybe I uncovered a department-wide scandal that my fellow officers weren’t so fond of and they decided to put me here to keep my mouth shut. Maybe I’m wasting time and still need to get out of here.
But there’s no feasible way out. These never-ending walls almost seem like they’re closing in on me, making it more difficult to breathe with each passing second. But they’re
not
, that’s the trick to battling situational anxiety in my experience, sometimes you just have to think of the reality, if these walls were closing in, I’d be dead already. Now that I think about it, if whoever put me here really wanted me dead, I would’ve been dead long ago. I’m not here to suffer and die. I’m here because they, whoever
they
might be, need me.
