Chapter 1: Awakening
How did I get here?
At first, up was down and down was up. He squinted his eyes, but the dizziness would not subside. It was dark, so very dark. Just a tiny sliver of light penetrated the boards of the structure he was in.
Pain radiated from his left foot up towards the knee. He looked down but couldn’t see any obvious swelling. When he wiggled it, the pain increased but not by much. Probably not fractured, most likely sprained.
The next pain point was his forehead, a pulsating sensation from a single spot somewhere on the hairline. In fact, his whole head ached. He was sitting down on the wooden floor, legs stretched out in front of him, torso upright and supported by his arms behind his back. When he touched his forehead, he felt a small gash. A stream blood had traveled down his temple, but had coagulated.
He must have been here a while.
Something tickled his other hand. He looked down and saw a spider run across the back of it.
As his eyes gradually adapted to the dim light, he could make out more of the place he was in. It looked like a barn or a shed. Rudimentary, with worn wooden boards for walls and a corrugated tin roof. It was a large space, that much he could tell. He looked around and found more cracks with light coming through them. Then he realized that all the windows, even though there weren’t many, were blacked out.
Looked like they had been covered with black paint. Or tar even. Maybe that was the smell he had sensed since waking up — warm tar. Then he saw the door, it was on the other side of the large interior of the shed. He figured he was in the far corner of the building.
The man in the shed now started to regain his senses, but he struggled desperately to understand how he had ended up here. He remembered nothing, only that he was driving on the country road in his Jeep Cherokee when he saw something by the roadside. Then everything went black.
He made a mental action plan. First, get up and get out of here. Then, find the road and locate the Jeep.
Let’s start there, he thought to himself and stood up.
As he began to walk towards the door, he heard a rattling sound. Before his brain had time to compute, it was as if someone pulled him backwards. Something tightened around his waist, yanked him hard. As he fell to the ground, he understood where the sound had come from.
Around his waist, he wore a weightlifter’s belt secured with a padlock. Attached to the belt was a chain that was anchored to a metal loop in the floor.
Several seconds passed. Then panic set in. It surged over him like a tidal wave.
He was being held captive here.
Why? By whom?
As if paralyzed by despair, he could do nothing but lie there. Seconds became minutes. Once again, he regained control of his thoughts. He started examining his restraints.
The chain was strong, not the cheap kind you find on the Chinese webshops. Sweat ran down his back. The loop was bolted to a concrete slab, that was protruding up through the wooden floorboards. That too, was genuinely crafted. He yanked the chain. Once, twice … the third time, he put all his weight behind it. Nothing happened. It didn’t even budge.
The man then turned to the weightlifter’s belt around his waist. It was tightened so hard, that slipping it over the hipbones was impossible. Getting it up over his head wouldn’t work, since a piece of chain was attached in the front and the back of the belt. Passing between his legs.
When he was standing there, pulling and tearing, he heard a sound. It came from outside. He stopped and listened; someone was approaching the shed. He tried to get to the wall closest to him, but the chain held him back. If he stretched out his leg as far as he could and leaned forward, he could press his cheek against the wall. Now he could hear the footsteps clearly. He also heard voices.
There were two different voices, a man and a woman. They were speaking English, but the words were mixed with another language that he neither understood nor recognized.
Suddenly, he was seized by fear when he realized that these were the people who were holding him captive. Were they coming to him now? What were they going to do with him? As quickly as he could, he returned to the spot where he had woken up. He followed the sound of the footsteps; they were approaching the door. A key was inserted into the lock.
He closed his eyes.