ELENA
Pain. Darkness. Metallic smell and taste of blood.
Those are the three prominent things I can make out. My head thumps wildly even with my eyes shut, my entire frame rattled and aching as if I have been wrung and hung out to dry. It hurts to move, even my lungs beg me to stop breathing.
The pain that radiates through my every fibre is sharp, like a thousand needles placed over the open flame and shoved into your body, dragged slowly across so you can feel every twist and turn there is to feel.
My eyelids feel pregnant, as if anchors have been attached to each of them and flung overboard into the depths of the sea. I cough, my ribs rattle as a response. My throat burns intensely with each ragged breath I drag from the stale air.
My eyes finally part, swollen already, but wide eno
