A TRIUMPH

 A TRIUMPH

Silence.

A blanket that smothered any chance of sound.

Cold. Dark. 

Thick, black darkness.

He opened his eyes, then closed them, but nothing.

His mind was as blank as the blanket of darkness he felt was surrounding him.

Despite the cold, he felt peaceful. Relaxed.

He thought he was tired.

He sensed that he was laying on his back.

After a few moments an instinctive reaction came to him. He raised his head, perhaps to discover something of his situation in this cold, dark environment.

Immediately, after only a few slow inches, his forehead struck something hard; something that shouldn't be there when you rose from a peaceful but confused sleep. 

He let his head fall back and raised one hand to seek the cause of his failure to lift his head further than the few inches he had managed.

Puzzled, but not panicked, yet, he had to squeeze his right hand between his chest and whatever it was that his head had struck. He met with the same resistance. It was cold, hard, ridged, like concrete.

He breathed, for a time, then he tried the same movement with his left hand.

The same happened.

So, more by instinct than rational thought, an exploration of where he was had to be next.

Now, back where he started, he continued the search of his surroundings, not knowing how expansive they were to be. He moved one arm sideways, and within a lateral arc of just 5 or 6 inches, it met with the same cold hard surface with which his head and hands had made contact.

It was no different in dimension when he moved his other arm. It felt like concrete. Deep darkness was around him all the time.

He then stretched his feet as far as his confined circumstances would allow. He looked up as if to watch the progress of his feet in the darkness, but his head met yet again with the hard surface inches away. His bare feet - someone, SOMEONE, had removed his shoes and socks! With just inches to spare, he again felt cold, hard concrete.

In what seemed like hours, but it was just minutes crawling by, he wriggled his body away from where his feet had touched to feel what was beyond his head. With deepening concern he felt the same unforgiving resistance his earlier actions had encountered.

He breathed. He felt the first tremors of panic approaching. There was air here. So there must be a vent for him to breathe.

Where was he? Why was he here? Was he lost forever in a motorway support pillar? - There were no sounds of traffic roaring around him. Just awful smothering silence. Was he deep underground in the basement of a high rise building, never to be found until demolition took place in the next century?

Who had put him here? And why? And why had… whoever… allowed air into this prison? this tomb? His memory had not yet come alive. His mind was dealing with more pressing issues. And imminent claustrophobia was one of them.

He hadn’t yet accepted that his life was going to end in this cold, dark space, encased in cold ridged concrete. But it was clear to him that, because of the air allowed him, he was meant to spend a long, long time suffering, with only his disintegrating mind for company.

Some ripples of fear were now lapping at the edges of his sanity.

With some difficulty because of the limited space he had, he spread his hands around his body. He didn’t feel as though he was injured in anyway. Although cramp was slowly starting to invade his body. How long had he been incarcerated in this frightening place?

He discovered that he was wearing a suit. It felt expensive and tailored. Who was he? His painfully moving hands found that he was wearing a button down collar shirt with a tie - silk? - still in place. His pockets though, were empty of keys, credit card wallet, pens, note clip, mobile phone… His identity had been comprehensively removed. WHY?

He tried to fight back the approaching panic; looking for rational thought; searching for reason. But the dark clouds of his prone position in this restrictive concrete tomb? coffin? - the descriptors came to him easily - pushed all cohesive memory to the back of his teetering mind.

The fear and utter despair exhausted him. And he attempted sleep, drifting off with no thoughts - there were non - in his mind in his cold compressive space. Of course, he couldn't turn over, change sides like you do in your own comfortable bed from time to time, tossing and turning. There wasn’t any room for his shoulders to rotate his body. So after trying, he had to settle back down to his prone position on this cold, concrete, flat surface.

He did sleep.

And he awoke, only to relive the struggle, the panic and the despair of the previous hours. It was all still there: the darkness, the cold and the most fearful of all, the intense closeness of the ridged unforgiving concrete only inches away from every part of his body.

After a few hours of crushing self pity and then a mental marathon, he decided - anything was worth a try.

He shouted: HELP! HELP! HELP! But the sound came back at him, futile in its effect, and with a dull, muffled invasion of his prison.

After a few more tries, he gave up. And after a few more hours, he started to sob. He knew now that he was going to live the last few hours of his life surrounded by ridged concrete - a space in which he would never be able to move for more than just a few inches in any direction. And in some god forsaken place, he would never know existed.

With remarkable clarity of thinking, a smile spread slowly across his face.

Whoever had committed him to this hell would never prosper.

Because long before he died - denying them their satisfaction - he would lose his mind.