Taken (Breaking the Darkness)

by Starr, Felicia

  I kept having a recurring dream that I was watching myself sitting on the bed in the dark—distinguished as a dream only because the darkness was slightly lifted. The walls and ceiling seem to be painted a deep purplish-brown. The toilet was black. Even the concrete floor was painted a dark muddy green. Although the walls and the room were void of any décor, the space was crafted with precision and didn’t look slopped together.

  If I stared at the walls long enough, they appeared to be thinning out and moving away from me. Just as I reached out to push against the wall, my body felt like it was thrown across the room. I woke out of breath and my chest had a hot tingly sensation, as if I ran into someone’s fist.

  I kept hoping that if I spent enough time thinking about Gram, I would be able to have a dream about her. I missed her so much. When I was young and would wake from a nightmare, she would make me a cup of her special sleepy tea. Sometimes she would grant me a little snack, one of her homemade ginger snaps, and if I was really lucky, a game of dominos. She always had me tell her my dream and she would write them down in a dream journal. She told me they’d be locked in there so I could get back to sleep.

  If only I could have one of her cookies at that moment. It had been some time since I’d eaten anything. I was starting to think my stomach’s growls were actually trying to say something. I guess it had been too long since I had a real conversation with someone that my digestive sounds were starting to sound like spoken words. If I actually started having a conversation with my own stomach, I wouldn’t stand a chance.

  I decided I should try to do some sort of exercise. That decision hadn’t come quite to the point of action, maybe because running in place in the dark would have messed with my vertigo. I managed to do a few push-ups and part of my old abdominal routine I learned from a workout video. I didn’t want to waste too much of my energy, but I also didn’t want my body to atrophy lying around doing nothing. I performed a few of the yoga poses I remembered from class and tried to meditate when I wasn’t sleeping.

  Trying to quiet the incessant rambling going on in my mind was very hard. My thoughts jumped from one topic to another and back to the first. Sometimes I thought about the same thing over and over again. In the darkness I seemed to be my own worst enemy. If I could have found some mental quiet and stopped thinking about those darn ginger snaps over and over again, maybe my stomach might stop growling.

  So I decided I would sit there in a meditation pose with the backs of my hands resting upon my knees and my palms to the sky. My thumb and pointer finger were touching to create gentle little ovals. For a minute before I began to chant, I put them together and pictured they would make the infinity symbol. I tried not to think about the fact that I felt like I’d been there for an eternity. To avoid where that train of thought was about to go, I started to om.

  I began with three long and deep oms out loud. The vibrations echoed off the walls. I felt it bounce back at me and embraced the vibration coursing through me. In the surrounding blackness, everything seemed to be intensified. I decided it might be best to om in my head. I was afraid someone might hear me and decide to threaten my brief moment of peace.

  I sat there and omed for what could have been minutes or hours. That little bit of tranquility was fairly short lived. Between the forced sounds of my inner voice repeating the harmonizing sound truly meant to be vocalized aloud, my mind was bombarded by all the thoughts and images I tried to escape. With each om, I tried to push them to the back of my mind with little success.

  Images of my mother, with her long golden-blond hair, filled my mind. My heart seemed to empty out at the sheer thought of her. Om, breathe in and out, I silently repeated to myself. Of course, though, my thoughts wandered off to what might be rotting in my refrigerator. Back to a few more oms. It was difficult not to notice my lack of personal hygiene. I tried to focus on my breath. What about the empty walls in the room? Were they always that way or was everything removed when it became my prison?

  I couldn’t seem to draw my focus away from my surroundings. Amazingly, my breathing remained steady and had a nice even rhythm. My tongue was pressed firmly to the roof of my mouth as my breath slowly forced its way out through my nose, creating a sound reminiscent of the ocean. I found myself very aware of the position of my body and where it was located within the four walls of gloom. I kept thinking about my dream, in which I saw my prison more clearly, as if it were slightly lit. Trying to stay focused on my breath, I again repeated a few more oms. I wondered if what I saw in my dream was the reality of my surroundings.

  When all I could do was feel my way around the small confines, how could I possibly know the colors of the walls or the esthetic details of the room?

  I don’t know how long I’d been attempting to meditate, but my body was starting to lose sensation, surprisingly, not in a way that was painful. My legs and feet weren’t asleep with pins and needles; there was just calmness. My muscles sank into themselves. I may not have ultimately been able to clear my mind, but I did interfere with my connection to my body. If I were lying down, I might have thought I was asleep but aware of my surroundings. What’s going on? That was kind of a funny thought, since the only thing going on was my sitting in the dark, unmoving.

  In my mind’s eye I could picture myself sitting in the room of my dream. It was surreal how clearly I could do so. It seemed like I could reach out and touch myself. I felt like I looked into a mirror image of myself. If I were to raise my hand, would my mirror image raise a hand too? Before I realized what I was doing, I reached out to touch myself, a self as still as a statue. Just as my hand touched the arm in front of me, I felt a jolt of gentle energy zap my skin. I felt as if someone just knocked the wind out of me, and I jumped and opened my eyes to find myself still sitting in my meditation pose.

  “Wow, what the heck was that?” I quietly asked myself. A chill shot up my spine and goose bumps covered my arms and legs. My heart hit my chest so hard it almost burst. I could feel the little hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. That was some really freaky shit. I seriously did not reach out and touch myself, did I? That wasn’t even possible. I was losing my cool. I really needed to escape my growing madness.

  DAY AND NIGHT had truly become one, with no way to discern how much time had passed. My stomach told me it had been at least a day or two since I’d eaten. Perhaps they’d forgotten about me, which would have been a great thing if only I could figure out a way to escape.

  I needed to do another feel around the room. I got on all fours to search the perimeter. Maybe I could detect some kind of breeze to indicate a weakness worth exploiting. Crawling around the floor was doing a real number on my knees, though. The concrete wasn’t being kind.

  My hands scoured every inch of the floor and where the moldings would have been. Although slightly disgusted by the idea of my hands gliding over a questionable toilet bowl, I knew the plumbing must go somewhere; the waste needed to flow out. The pipes potentially could be directed down, or if I was underground they might be constructed upward. Oh, how I prayed I wasn’t underground. With no sensations of a prospective exit, I kept going back to the plumbing thing.

  How could I use the plumbing to get out? What if I clogged the toilet? I could stuff it with my clothes or bedding. If it backed up and started flooding, maybe someone would notice and come fix the problem. Hopefully it would be someone I could manage to get away from. On the flip side, if no one came and the water flooded the room, there were a number of negative implications, some of which would involve disgusting sanitary issues.

  I considered breaking away the wall around the plumbing and hoped it would lead to an exit. For that plan to be executed, I would have to rip out whatever plumbing was accessible or crack the toilet to make myself some sort of tool or weapon.

  I was going to have to mull it over a number of times. I had no way of knowing the extent of my imprisonment, and any extended time without a toilet could be disastrous and utterly gross.

 
All that crawling and thinking wore me out. My lack of nutrition was affecting my stamina. I was so desperate for some real deep, relaxing sleep and a cheeseburger. A yummy delicious double-double and some animal fries with a Neapolitan shake. A girl could dream. Drifting off to sleep to reserve what little energy I had would also stop my thinking about food, which was only making my stomach angrier.

  I so badly wished I could just sink into the bed and drift off to the best night of sleep. Of course, ideally, I wished I would wake up in my own bed surrounded by moving boxes to find this was the longest nightmare in existence. Wouldn’t that be a mind-blowing dream about sleeping and wishing I was sleeping? I’m sure life wasn’t quite that ironic.

  With that thought I felt my arm hair standing on end. The silence around me seemed to have a secret I couldn’t quite decipher. Even though there was no new sound, I got the creepy feeling someone was there in the room with me. I knew this was next to impossible since the door hadn’t opened and I didn’t hear anything. The sensation was almost like being able to hear or feel a dark cloud moving through the room.

  Fear was starting to make its way through my veins to an empty pit in my stomach. I tried to will my body to swivel around and attempt to see if there was someone or something hiding in the blackness of the room. If I turned and there was someone there, what would I do? Freeze? Scream? Attack? My approach remained freezing and pretending I didn’t notice. Was there even anything to notice or was it more of my mind games?

  OH GOD! I gasped a short breath. I felt the slightest drift of air move across my face. Even though there wasn’t much of anything to see in the dark, I slammed my eyes shut. There is nothing here, no one here, I kept mentally repeating to myself, along with some protection prayers I saw in a movie once. In the name of Jesus Christ, may all the bad and evil spirits leave this place. I then proceeded to repeat the Saint Michael’s prayer over and over in my mind. Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and the snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the divine power, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl throughout the world, seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

  I didn’t know what I was saying or what was happening. I still wasn’t sure I heard a thing. No one made their presence known to me. But there was nowhere for a breeze to have come from. If someone was in the room, I would assume they were there to do me harm. Even so, how would they have gotten in?

  I needed to open my eyes, get out of this bed, and stand on my feet in case I must defend myself. If only I hadn’t scared myself silly. I couldn’t move; my body was as frozen as an ice cube. How long could I keep it up? Fall asleep, fall asleep. None of this is real, I kept telling myself.

  I think I told myself to fall asleep enough times that my body finally responded to the command. After I woke, I no longer felt that weird sensation of someone behind me. My body was more relaxed. I decided it was time to make a move and assess the situation to be sure I was, in fact, still alone. Before I kicked my feet off the bed, I got one last chill that sent shivers up and down my spine.

  As I moved about the space, I didn’t find anything new getting in my way. Part of me had hoped, if nothing else, someone was there to deposit some food. Unfortunately, that was a false sense of hope. The cruelty of it sent waves of pain across my abdomen. Nothing in the room changed and no one caused me any harm. I just couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that I wasn’t alone.

  Sitting with my back pressed against the wall with my legs crossed in a half lotus position, again unsure if my eyes were open or closed, I started to feel consumed by the darkness and the invisible black shadows haunting me in my cell. Thinking back to what may have happened last night almost set my hair on end again. And then something did happen.

  MY EYELIDS SEEMED to be glowing from the outside, kind of like someone waved a flashlight across my face. My eyes were, in fact, closed; I touched them to be sure. There was a shadow at the center of the light.

  The pendant on my neck heated as a wave of warmth washed over me. Not like a fever or stepping outside on a hot day, more like the sensation of sliding into a nice hot bath or drinking some of Gram’s tea on a cold day.

  A tingling sensation started at the top of my crown. I could feel every hair follicle dancing on my head and this continued to surge down to every part of my body. The overwhelming awareness of my physical entity created numbness. The numbness wasn’t emptiness, more of a weightless sensation. It reminded me of a hot air balloon.

  The shadow behind my eyelids began to move into the light and the light into the shadow. My breath was slow and steady, but my pulse quickened as the light started to transform more into the figure of a woman. Before I could make out the details of the figure, I heard her voice.

  “Kasha, Kasha.” A quick whisper came at me from out of nowhere in the distinct sound of Gram’s voice. “Kasha, if you can hear me, do nothing, say nothing, and don’t move. I don’t have time to explain the details, and for that I am sorry, but you must listen to me.”

  I was in awe, so much so that I couldn’t have moved if I tried. All I could think was if I stirred, I would wake from this dream of my Gram, and I wanted nothing more than to hear her soothing voice.

  “They are watching you and waiting for a sign you have transitioned and come into your powers. There are many who seek you for the power you will be able to harness. You must be very careful whom you chose to trust. I am so sorry I didn’t have the time to tell you all I know. I wasn’t sure if you would possess any of the abilities attached to our bloodline over the centuries. It wasn’t until I passed that I was able to see the true spirit residing within you. My abilities were limited, unlike others in our family.

  “It isn’t safe for me to stay here now. I know you have many questions and there are many answers to be found. I will return when I can. There will be those who will guide you and others who will try to confuse you. Heed my warnings. Trust no one. I am trying to find a way to get you out of there. In the meantime, your amulet will constrict your emotions and help you stay calm and connected. Don’t take it off! My love is always in your heart.”

  And with that the silhouette of my Gram faded away. I held on so tight to her every last word and sound of her voice I forgot for a split second where I was—until I became aware of the wave of warmth flushing through my system.

  I wasn’t sure if my heart rate just sped up or finally slowed down. I suddenly felt it pulsating in my ears. A steady flow of deep breaths helped clear my lungs and I realized I may not have taken a breath at all while I listened to Gram’s warning.

  I didn’t want to draw any unwanted attention so I forced myself not to make any sudden movements. My mind was spinning around so fast; I needed my body to catch up. Nausea and exhaustion were setting in. If my stomach wasn’t so empty, I might have let my body attempt to purge itself from all this chaos. A talk with myself was what I needed.

  To start with… What the heck is going on? Am I sleeping or awake? Did my Gram just speak to me? Did I just see a ghost? Am I imagining she was just here speaking to me about this nightmare I’m living? I think I’ll just pretend for a moment that none of that matters. I really just need to sort out what she said instead of how, for now.

  I could only assume I was in some way being watched. No one had come to see me, tell me, or show me why I was being retained, so they must have been watching. Although, I wasn’t sure where in that sparse room there could be a camera. Then again, it was so dark in there and I couldn’t see the walls or ceilings. Maybe they were covered with night vision cameras.

  Better yet, what the hell was I supposed to be transitioning into? I certainly didn’t feel very powerful. I sure hoped if I did get any powers, they would help me escape this hellhole. I couldn’t see myself, but I thought I looked the same. I couldn’t really say whether I felt the same, as I was locked in a room full of blackness and dark shadows. Perhaps I was hav
ing hallucinations or, at best, lucid dreams of my dead grandmother.

  This couldn’t be for real. If people in my family had some kind of “abilities,” why wouldn’t my Gram have told me? Gram and I were very close, or so I thought. Who else could have had abilities in our family? Gram said her abilities were limited. Limited to what?

  This just made no sense. Maybe I hit my head and I was actually in some kind of coma. This was all some crazy fabricated situation that my brain had made up to deal with the trauma of what happened to me. Quite frankly, I wasn’t even sure what happened to me last, that is, before I woke up to a room full of nothingness. I had no idea how I got there. I suppose the alternative was that I was drugged, which would maybe explain all the hallucinations.

  It certainly didn’t help that the only person I had to talk to about any of this was myself. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure who I was anymore. Could any of what my Gram told me be true? Was I something more than I seemed? I thought not! Maybe Kasha was just a bit crazier than I realized.

  Now was as good a time as any to try and retrace what I could remember from before I woke up here. Still, it was hard to judge how much time had passed, not that it really had any bearing on what I was doing before being abducted. I think the fact that I had black spots in my memory was more unnerving than the fact that I was abducted and I still didn’t know why.

  Clearly, I remembered signing the lease for my little Southwest cottage. I started to move some of my things in from the storage unit. The walls were waiting for paint. I recently went to The Flea and not only picked up a bunch of little odds and ends, but I bought that amazing bookshelf from Axel and Patience.

  The bookshelf hadn’t been delivered yet. I’m not sure I even set it up to be delivered. I did remember having the intention of going to my storage unit to dig up some of the boxes of Gram’s old books in anticipation of its arrival. Come to think of it, I was getting ready to head out to the unit but decided to walk down for a stiff cup of coffee and a sweet snack first. This seemed to be where things got a bit hazy. I hoped a few deep breaths and a gentle eye close might help me get back to that day. Recalling the images of my surroundings could help jog the memory.