Walls creaking, warning me of the danger I have placed myself in. Rats squeaking as if to say, “You won’t make it out.” Water “drip, dripping”, telling me how much time I have left. The sounds around me are hurting me ears, telling me something I have already come to find out. I know that I’m trapped, I know that this is not exactly ideal and, yes, I know how much time I have left…very little. I wiggle in the knots that are tied around my feet and hands and let out a small cry from the pain of the rope rubbing against my raw skin. Eight hours. Eight hours in this damp, low lit, moldy water smelling “box”. Well, it’s not technically a box; I’m in some sort of room that is probably 3’ by 2’, so yes, a box could suffice. How I got in this room, how these ropes got around me, why I’m in this room and most importantly, how I’m going to get out is all a mystery to me. Peering over my shoulder on the wooden chair I’m perched upon, I stare at the door. Locked, bolted and secured in every form you could think of. How many times I’ve stared at this door is too many to count but how many plans I have to get out is quite the opposite.
I slowly start to rock my chair back in forth, making the front legs come off the ground a little. Gradually, I gain momentum, hurdling by body back and forth, the chair following my every move. And then, I’m falling and I close my eyes, preparing myself for the crash ahead. Opening my eyes a second later, I find I’m still in the air but yet, I’m motionless. My chair is at an angle, backwards and however, it’s staying that way. Looking up, there’s someone holding the chair in place. Their eyes are all I see and that is all it takes to instantly despise him. I start screaming, wriggling like crazy in my fixed position until he can’t take it anymore. Suddenly, he lets go, the wooden chair beneath me landing on the ground, shattering to pieces. Splinters shot through my back making me arch it in pain. Quickly I unlatch the ropes around me and grab a broken part of the chair, grasping it like it’s the last thing I do. With the person struggling to stand up in front of me, I swing the piece of wood over my head and down on his, making him stumble to the ground with a whole new rage of fear inside of him. Without any more time to lose, I make my way to the door. Right as I grab the handle though, I hear a click. I turn the handle. Nothing. I turn around, my hands still placed on the door and I freeze. What now? Struggling to come up with my plan b, the masked person in front of me is starting to stand up with my only weapon in his hands. But he doesn’t come after me. Instead, he takes of his mask revealing a face I knew…a face that I always dreamed about. My brother. “K..Ky..Kyle? Is that you?”
He inches toward me, one finger pressed to his lips. “Shhh,” he doesn’t say anything else.
“But…but you’re supposed to be dead?” I whisper, despite his gesture.
“Be quiet Annalise,” anger rising in his eyes.
“No. I will not be quiet! Why are you here! They will get you too. Leave. Keep yourself safe before they realize you are here. Kyle, I can’t lose you again!” I scream in his face. Regardless of what volume my voice is at though, he remains quiet, motionless as if I never said anything at all. He just inches a little more towards me his finger still pressed lightly on his lips. I continue to scream at him and he continues to seem oblivious to all of it. And then, he’s gone, disappearing right before my eyes, vanishing into the walls. I run in the direction he went and bang on the walls until my knuckles start to bleed, screaming the whole time. Falling towards the ground defeated, I cry into my knees and slowly my world returns back to the way it was….suddenly I’m sitting on the wooden chair, the ropes tied around me. No wood pieces are lying on the ground and the locks and bolts are still secured on the door.
I yearn to pinch myself to see if I’m still dreaming or rub my eyes to make sure they aren’t playing tricks on me. This was a dream I had a thousand times in the past day but it never failed to surprise me with its realistic setting.
So, I still remain confined in this room, unable to move an inch, unable to escape. I can feel myself slowly rotting away, my true self gradually being revealed as the skin on my bones is shriveling up. All by myself is this rotten box, I cry. For me, for my family and most of all for Kyle. Now I know how he felt: trapped, with nowhere to go. For it was this exact way he had died, slowly rotting to the core with no one beside him to ever comfort him in the process. He was trapped in a box, just like I am, and now, I’m following in his footsteps.