Vampiric

Im jolted awake by ringing in my ears. The loud octaves sounds like an alarm going off in my head. My eardrums feeling like the static from a television. The pitches of the ringing growing louder and then subsiding. Laying face up, I’m struggling to bring myself back to life from the deep, almost deathly slumber I was in. As I regain my consciousness, my body shivers and cringes in sync. I feel a taut, aching in my joints, like that immobilized feeling you get when you first wake up after sleeping way too long. My senses feel stunted. I’m fighting for my sight but my eyes won’t open. I try again but they feel stuck together. My face muscles squeeze tight and release quickly, attempting to separate my eyelids. Instead, my skin slowly peels, making a sound like velcro peeling apart. My arms trying to animate, but my skin is cracking and peeling with every twitch. I cringe at the cracking of my bones and sounds of tearing skin. I’m beginning to get nervous, a rush of tingles and butterflies fluttering around my sternum. Determined to move, I begin peeling each of my limbs up from my sleeping position but with each success, I slam into something hard in front of me, creating a thud sound. I try to wiggle downwards, but reach a hard surface. I try to bend my legs but they hit another surface. The thuds are starting to make me panic, refusing to allow me to move freely. My mind races as I reach to touch my chest. I need to confirm with myself that I’m alive, conscious or even real! My hand brushes against the surface directly in front of me. It’s a hard and grainy feeling. I need to know what it is, I stare, but all I see is darkness. My eyes adjusting, staring hard, fighting to focus. With my eyesight clearing and seeing better than I ever have, I confirm something like a table surface is in front of me.. My brain pieces together the puzzle, realizing my worst nightmare come true. The confinement, the thuds, the immobilized feeling, I understand now that I am trapped in a box.  My heart sinks as absolute horror sets in. The fluttering feeling of anxiety and panic start in my chest and start flowing through my veins like electric hot adrenaline. I can’t move, I can’t see, I can’t think. Everything turns blurry as I start to mentally crash. I want to hyperventilate just to feel something else besides panic. Just to feel something.. I yearn for the comfort of my chest inflating and deflating, the crisp oxygen entering my body, ensuring that I am still holding on to life.. Just so I can focus on something to gather myself. My panic interrupted as I find, I can’t breathe. I’m not gasping for air but I’m missing the oxygen. Like my lungs aren’t functioning. There is no movement within my chest cavity. The hyperventilation I want so dearly refuses to happen no matter how hard I try to force my muscles to move them, my lungs are inactive. I’m scared, thoughts flood me as I feel myself welling up to cry, but something registers. My heart, I don’t feel it; it should be pounding out of my chest, but don’t hear it either. My humanity seems to slip away as I’m coming to the point that my major organs, my bodily functions have been taken away and rendered useless.  Searching within myself, frantically, I’m wanting to feel the stinging sensation you get before you cry. No tears form. Browsing my mind for answers, I don’t remember anything of how I got here. The last memory in my foggy mind is being out partying with friends. Everything after is a complete blur, just darkness in my mind, like a barrier that I cannot seem to penetrate. Unable to remember anything else of my life between the party and my prison.  My mind is the only thing I seem to have left, which only causes me to panic. I feel my nails dig hard into the wood keeping me in place, hoping to dig myself out. Hard tugs of pressure from my nails, but I’m feeling no pain. I look down to see a few of my nails ripped off. Wincing at the sight in disgust. ‘No blood..’ thinking to myself. I see my dirty skin, I’m curious to inspect the rest of my body.  But I’m kind of nervous to.. I sigh and bravely feel my eyes look further down, preparing myself for the worst. I see wrinkles and cracks in the skin of my arms, like I’m made of paper machete. My once pale, milky skinned, curvy body has been reduced to piles of dry, dirty, dusty flakes of skin comparable to brown packing paper.. Watching and feeling more skin flaking and falling from me, like weightless feathers from the sky. Sounds of the skin crackling like paint chips echo through my box as the skin flakes fall at my feet. So weightless but so crunchy and dry, reminding me of walking through fall leaves.  Gathering courage, I need to look at myself again. I’m naked and deflated, looking like a flat tire, where I was kind of chubby before. Deep gashes all over me apart from the obvious cracks of aging. Before my box, I must have been attacked by something.. Attempting to gasp in horror at the sight but it feels like I tried to swallow a tumbleweed. I try to scream in frustration but it’s muffled, the sound barely cracks the deafening silence of my box. Tears try to form again, I try to force the expulsion of self pity, but my freeze dried, decaying body denies giving up any water, not even a drop.  Defeated, I lay motionless for a while, feeling nothing. Time doesn’t exists in my box.. I have no concept of being. I feel absolutely nothing, not even numb. The files of my memories spill in my brain. Before my box, I was a happy, young woman. I grew up underprivileged but I had a caring family until mother passed away when I was 10. My father became an alcoholic succeeding her death. Must have been where I picked up the habit of excessive indulgence. My father passed away when I was twenty two. He lived just long enough for me to be his beer b***h for the rest of his life. After he died, I was awarded the life insurance policy. Enough to pay off my childhood home, debt and the funeral expenses. My father grew angry and nasty over the years. Verbally and physically abusive. I hate to admit that I was happy to see him go. Laying in this box, I guess I can’t lie to myself anymore. I was f*****g miserable out there! I was a good person with good intentions but got nothing in return! Working a shitty job for an even shittier boss, getting s**t pay. Then blowing all my money on booze to suppress my emotions. The only thing I had going for me is that my hymen was still intact. I was saving myself for my husband. Who knows, I could have been r***d and buried alive! Then I’d be a total f*****g loss! My life was in f*****g shambles. My friends were all fake, I didn’t have any siblings, I was f*****g alone! Who the f**k was I kidding?! Pfft, happy, that’s a laugh. s**t, maybe this is a good thing!  My self loathing rant is interrupted as I feel a dull sensation in my stomach. I focus on it, feeling it grow strong. Finally it’s like something sharp pierces me. Almost like I’ve been impaled through my stomach, which at this point would have probably felt better. The pain is unbearable, letting out a muffled scream I try to crunch over to comfort myself in a fetal position, only to slam my face into the wooden box prison I had momentarily forgotten about. With the impact of my face against the wood, more skin falls. I shakily reach up to my head to find the smooth, hard surface. I knock on it only to find that my skull exposed. The pain is what I imagine child birth being like. Constant and excruciating, throbbing and burning. After I suffer in silence a while, the pain subsides but my tortured memories are still fresh in my thoughts. I get angry.  ‘Is this hell?! Am I dead?? Is this a bad f*****g dream? Why the f**k am I here?’ I ask myself.  No answers, the only thing I’m given is the feeling of extreme pain coming back in waves. Taunting my questions.. I try to scream again, but my voice cracks as I strain to let out the anguish. My throat burning and expelling puffs of dust as I feel my vocal cords crumble.  Nothing to alleviate this pain, nothing to ease the absolute terror, nothing to help, no hope, just me in this f*****g box! I wish I was drowning instead. Or on fire, or falling to my death. Anything would be better than this! The cold water, the hot fire, the rushing of air as I break the boundaries of gravity as I plummet to my death. Instead I’m left with dead air, not even able to breathe. I have no sense of being anymore. Who am I? What am I? Where am I, besides the obvious box? Why was I put here? Who did this to me? Am I being reborn? Is this what reincarnation feels like? Is there a God? Did I meet him? Am I being punished? Did I wake up too soon? I overwhelm myself, and I’m feeling exhausted. I beg for eternal sleep but it doesn’t come. I am alone, as usual. Just me in my box..