Untitled: October 2007


I open my eyes, realizing I’ve just regained consciousness, but am convinced that they aren’t really open. Closing them again, I open them a second time and wonder if I’ve gone blind. Running a diagnostic of myself, I realize I am not deaf. I can hear myself breathing, each rasp scraping my ears like a cat clawing on a tree trunk. I close my eyes and open them again, but my world is devoid of light. It isn’t simple darkness like when I was eight and tried to scare myself by closing the door to the basement bathroom and said “Bloody Mary” until my eyes deceived me with a green flash in the mirror. No, this is as if all light has been sucked away. A black hole.

Once I went on a tour through a cave and after taking us nearly a mile underground, they turned out the lights in the lowest cavern. Still this seems darker. I remember with the lights out I imagined swarms of bats surrounding me or the walls caving in. The feeling of claustrophobia closed in around me. Now it strangles me.

I lift my hand a few inches and it touches the top of the box. I slowly bring it up across my body and place my palm against the lid. When I push, I hear a sound which I cannot identify. A waterfall of tapping covers the sound of my own breath. I listen and know that it isn’t a waterfall. It has a harsher click, varied pounding.

At once I realize the pounding is my heart. It has sped up and is shaking my entire body. Each nerve ending tingles, tensing with each thump. I feel raw nerve endings tearing me apart. I close my eyes in an attempt to turn off the darkness, but become acutely aware of how cold I am. Running my hands along the padded silk walls, I swallow hard and goose bumps flash onto my arms and legs. I feel them opening pathways to my nerve endings so that the air itself seems to chafe my skin.

The thought which occurs to me next brings a panicked gasp of breath. That sound, the waterfall, is dirt, pebbles, and tiny rocks. I can feel it falling on me as though getting into my flesh, despite the protection of this box. In a sick instant, I am thankful it is here to protect me, but then I think of air. There can’t be much left. How many minutes, seconds, instances do I have left? What will it feel like when I am breathing my own air over and over again? I can already feel my skull tingling, my bones beginning to sense the fear in the rest of my body.

When I open my mouth, I hear nothing. It is deafening, the sound I don’t hear at first. All at once I realize I am screaming. I am deafening myself with my own screams yet my brain seems to be blocking it out. The dirtfall makes staccato declarations, adding percussion to sound which begins its journey deep in my stomach and scratches all the way up my throat and out of my mouth.

Eventually the sounds outside of me grow quieter, then stop. I continue my cries, but they go unheard. Soon I cannot scream anymore. My breath gets caught in my throat and my head throbs. My fingers and toes have become numb and I taste blood on my tongue. I keep my eyes open and my breath shallow, hoping to hear something, taste something, see something.

The End
2007   ALL poetry fiction fanfiction blog