Trapped

I was dreaming again. This was a strange one, even for my standards. It was dark; almost too dark to see, and everything was a little blurred and distorted. It was white, then it was black again, then it turned grey.

All I could tell was that I was moving. Somewhere. I think I was running, but in the dream it felt more like drifting; floating along on a layer of air through this murky nothingness to an unknown final destination.

And then I wasn’t dreaming anymore.

Or was I? Lazily opening one eye revealed that daylight was drifting in through the window.

No. Not the window. And not daylight either.

I opened both eyes, suddenly fully awake.

Where the hell was I?

I was dreaming...I had to be dreaming. The room was off-white, well, grey really. The walls were grey. The floor was grey. The ceiling was grey. There were no windows, and it seemed that I was lying on the only bit of furniture in here...no, actually when I craned my head a little further, I could see an ugly little desk over by the far wall. I was lying on a concrete slab that I think was meant to be a bed. There was a pillow beneath my head, and a blanket so thin that it was more like a sheet draped over me. I ripped it off, fighting my way out of the tangles, and jumped to my feet.

There were doors. Two doors, in fact. Opening one, I found the tiniest bathroom imaginable. There was enough space for a toilet and a sink, and virtually no more room than that.

Retreating back into the main room, my heart thundering irregularly with fear, I tried the other door.

It was locked.

I pulled at the handle again...this had to be a trick...this was a mistake...something was horribly wrong. I tugged at it again and again, pulling, then pushing, but nothing would budge.

I was trapped.

I was dreaming. It was the only explanation. I was dreaming.

Sinking back onto the bed-like thing, I closed my eyes until my heart rate slowed, and then calmly dug my nails into the palm of my hand.

It hurt. Why was it hurting? Things didn’t hurt in dreams. You thought about pain, but you didn’t physically feel it.

I was damn well feeling it now. And I didn’t wake up either. There had been times in the past when I’d been asleep, and woken myself up accidently through colliding with the wall on the left hand side of my bed or by fidgeting around and accidently scratching or hitting myself. But I always woke up. Pain would bring me back to my senses; back to my conscious mind; no matter how deeply I was asleep.

So did this mean that I wasn’t dreaming?

No. It was wrong. What had happened? If I’d come here whilst conscious, I would have remembered it. I fought back through my memories and found that they all began to disappear as they got closer to this date. How long had I been asleep for? The last thing I could remember was that school trip we’d been on...but that felt like weeks ago. Months, maybe.

I knew things had happened since then; I just couldn’t remember what. After that date; October...5th, was it? After that date, everything just disappeared beneath waters so murky that I couldn’t even see through the surface. But I was here...I was in this room; a room that I had never seen before.

I had to remember. I had to. This could make the difference between whether I made it out of this place or not.

The chances weren’t looking good.