Why hello there...

The darkness felt like oil, suddenly sticking to every bit of me. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t get it off, it felt almost heavy, this burden of blackness weighing me down. “What could I have possibly have done to deserve a punishment like this? Just forgetting my homework? I mean, yes, I forgot more than once, but this was unnecessary.” I tried to find some humour to stop myself from panicking.

I squinted my eyes, trying hard to adjust to the black. With my hands outstretched in front of me, I slowly padded my way forward, hoping to find a way out but also terrified at what my hands could find. My mind started playing tricks on me, a kind of sick torture, coming up with every type of horror movie demon creature I could remember. The slime-oozing one from Alien, the knife-wielding mask-wearing one from … I gasp and look at my watch. “Friday the 13th. That’s today!”

All the fear I have inside me breaks loose and I set off on a panic run in the dark, my elbows locked and hands flailing. “Bang!” My arms crumple as my head collides with the wall and I slide down it into an unconscious pile on the floor. Floating in and out of lucidity, I feel myself also physically floating. “I’m being carried.” My brain is screaming at me to wake up, but my heavy eyelids refuse. My head lolls and flops around without any control.

A splash of water pulls me out of my daze. I shake the droplets off, cold and piercing. My eyes adjust to the light. Blink. Blink. “Why hello there,” he says, wringing his bony, gnarled hands just in front of my face. The stench of his breath so bad that my eyes water and I cough, gagging for fresh air. “Glad you could join the party. We’ve all been waiting patiently for you to find us.”