Awake!
My head knocking against something hard at my side forces me up out of the dark inside to this dark all around me.
Then it happens again. Because I’m moving. I’m in a car, or maybe a van, stretched out flat and I can hear the road rumbling along underneath me. I can’t see, no matter how I strain my eyes in the blackness and the sound of my breath is loud in my ears.
Am I saved? Have I been rescued? Is someone beside me?
I try to speak but I can’t open my mouth. All that happens is my cheeks feel tight and my eyelids drag downwards. What’s happening? I try to lift a hand to feel my face but they’re . . . stuck.
What’s happening? I feel my breath pick up pace and suddenly I’m struggling, as if there’s something over my face.
I twist my head and feel snagging and a rough touch on my nose and forehead and oh no, no, no.
There’s a cover over my head, filling with damp air as I breathe, panicked and fast, and I can’t open my mouth because it’s taped and I can’t move my hands because they’re tied and I’m going to suffocate in the hot, wet, cloying closeness of this hood on my head and I didn’t think it could get any worse but what if they’re taking me somewhere that is worse?
I need to calm myself down.
I refuse to die whimpering into a gag and struggling alone in the dark.
I shift my head so it won’t hit that hard thing again. Then I roll to my side to get my weight off my wrists and I stretch my fingers and clasp my hands together. I scrape my head backwards and make a tiny gap in front of my face. The damp wool is an inch or two from my nose now.
There. See? Better. Now I must slow my breathing and my heart until I am quiet, then I can begin to work out anything I can glean about what’s happening.
But the van is slowing and stopping and two doors slam, one side and then the other, making me rock onto my back again, crushing my wrists and my knuckles.
I moan in my throat at the pain. A door near my feet opens and someone grabs them and drags me.
My arms buckle at the elbow and I thrash and kick as hard as I can, scared my bones will snap.
“Shit!” A harsh, hissing voice and I’m shoved over onto my side. My arms jerk free of the singing pain and someone is clambering in beside me to shuffle me towards the open door.
Rough and quick, I’m bundled down the length of the van and then my body swings out into the open air, just hands at my ankles and hands under my armpits holding me up. I feel air on my bare skin where whatever I’m wearing has ridden up. I hear gravel under shifting feet and a voice says, “Wait.”
That’s—
Then a sharp sting in my leg and a feeling of cold spreading inside my calf.
But that voice was—
I’m soft now. And warm too. I’m losing . . .
That voice was—
I’m leaving . . .
Peace.