The October Music: Second Verse - Day 26

Every Breath You Take
Tara awoke with a start. She wasn’t sure when she had fallen asleep, but clearly she must have been tired. She tried to sit up and her forehead impacted something hard and painful. She yelped as she lay back down and tried to touch her head, but she could not move her arms or hands. That was curious. As she came to real consciousness, lightning hit her in the stomach as she realized that she could not see anything. She could not move. All she could do was hear the sound of her own increasing breathing.

All around her was wood, scratchy, full of splinters. She could not stretch her arms out to feel much of it, but her hands scraped against roughness everywhere they could. She tried to shift her body as much as possible, but there was little room to be found. She was trapped. Fervently, she hoped it was at least above ground, but the oppressive quiet around her put paid to that idea.

It wasn’t worth thinking about who or how or why or anything like that right now. Her focus needed to be on two things: staying alive and getting out. Neither seemed especially likely, given the dearth of room she had inside her makeshift coffin, but she had to keep her mind locked on those two goals or she was going to panic more than she already was. That wouldn’t help her and would reduce her oxygen.

Oxygen. That needed to be the first order of business. How much did she have? How much had she used? She didn’t feel a mask over her face, so they – whoever they were – hadn’t buried her with a tank. That was either good news or very bad. It would be good if they intended to only have her down there for a certain amount of time to scare her or get a ransom. It was very bad if they had no intent to retrieve her.

She needed to conserve her oxygen, which was hard enough given the stuffy, hot air that was around her. She could already feel her lungs straining a bit with the pressure in the container. More and more carbon dioxide was filling the space and, when it became too much, that was going to be game over for her. Think, think, think. What to do? How to get out?

Get out. Get out of where? Where was she? Oxygen, right. Time to think. Think hard. Think fast. Hot. It was hot. She was sweating. Her head was getting fuzzy. Her vision was swimming a bit. She needed to…do something. What was it? She couldn’t quite remember. She couldn’t get her brain to register thoughts.

She was tired. She was getting tired. Her muscles ached. She must have been running. Better to take a nap. Right? A nice nap would make things all better. It always had before. She would just close her eyes and nap and she’d wake up refreshed.
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She’d wake up.