I don’t want to be a prisoner anymore… Someone help me… please… Let me out… make all this go away…

“Look at me,” he whispers and suddenly I’m somewhere else. Not with the man or the screams. I’m safe. “Stop listening to the screams, stop feeling it, and look at me.”

I tilt my head and see a figure sitting beside me. I can’t see their face, but I have this feeling they’re smiling at me and it almost makes me smile. They seem so content, even with the screaming, as if it gives them some strange sense of peace instead of pain, like it is to me.

“Do you want to play our game?” he asks. “It’ll help you not think about him.”

“I’m not sure it’ll help,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut as I start to fade away back to the man. I wish I could disappear from this place. I miss the outside world so badly. It’s been too long since I’ve seen the grass and trees, the flowers just outside, breathed the fresh air, looked at something other than these same four walls.

“We can try and see if it works,” the voice pulls me back to the room and the person in the corner gets to their feet and walks over to the boy, gently stroking their fingers through the boy’s hair. The boy cringes, but remains focused on me. “You at least have to try and focus on something else besides what he’s doing.. focus on something else but the pain.”

“Do you think she’ll be okay,” I say softly, reaching my hand toward the boy, almost able to grab him, but not quite.

“Of course,” he says, trying to disregard the person standing next to him, patting his head as if he were a pet. “She’s stronger than that—you know that.”

It makes me smile because he’s probably right—she is stronger and deals with it better. I’m sure she’s alright—she has to be. That’s why she’s here, isn’t it? To protect me from the bad. To allow me to stay good, unlike the person in the corner who seems pleased by all this.

“Don’t listen to him,” they whisper, strolling around the boy. “You’re not stronger. Not yet.”

“But I am.” I sit up, ignoring the person and the screams as I reach for my box of buttons, trying not to think about what they really represent, where they came from, who they belong to. The figure in the corner laughs at me, but I block the laughing out as I count them all one by one, over and over again until the screaming stops.

I jerk out of the nightmare, gasping for air. My head is pulsating. The taste of stale tequila, blood, and something sour burns inside my throat. My muscles ache. I feel cold but at the same time I’m sweating... it almost reminds me of when I was laying in the street, after the car hit me, only I know who I am this time. Maddie. And full Maddie too, at the moment, since Lily is being strangely quiet, as if she’s in some sort of deep slumber.

My cheek is pressed against something icy cold, my hair matted to my forehead, and my hands feel crusty and dry. For a moment I feel like I’m back in my nightmare. A prisoner again.

It’s quiet and I feel so silent inside, so still, so lost, which doesn’t make sense. I should be embracing the silence, but I can’t. If I couldn’t feel my lungs and heart beating erratically inside my chest, I’d think I was dead and in my grave, buried underneath the ground. Where the hell am I? I can hear the soft hum of something mechanical and I try to open my eyes, but it feels like they’ve been sewn shut. They won’t lift and my throat is as dry as sand. I need water. Need to wake up. Need to move. But my limbs are rubbery. Useless. I feel dead and for a moment I contemplate welcoming it.

“Lily, open your eyes and get up. Now.”

The voice triggers a spark of recollection and my eyes shoot open, jerking me out of my daze. I immediately scan the darkness for the person the voice belongs to, but it’s so dark I can’t even make out the outlines of anything. I push up from the ground, blink my eyes several times, hoping my vision will adjust, but it doesn’t. I worry I’ve gone blind or something, my eyeballs on fire.

“Hello!” I call out and my voice echoes back to me. There’s a bang from somewhere but no one responds. I try again. “Who’s in here?” Again, recollection sparks in my brain. Déjà vu. But it’s like there’s a wall, blocking me from connecting all the dots. “Lily, are you doing this?” I whisper under my breath.

The only response I get is maddening silence. And the humming. I know I heard a voice. Someone has to be watching me in the darkness. But who? And where am I? I can barely remember a single thing about last night. The ceiling lights of the bar flashing… they hurt my eyes... watching people dance... I drank way too much, which is probably why my throat’s still dry and my head feels like it’s in a fishbowl. I also wasn’t alone. I saw Bella I think… yeah, I can picture her laughing, her drunken laugh too. There was also someone else… a guy. River? I can’t quite see his face in my memories. A shadow. Like everything else.

Feeling my way across the floor, I scoot forward on my ass, my limbs and muscles aching in protest. The floor feels like chilled metal and stings at my palms so badly my skin feels like it’s tearing open. I keep going until the tips of my fingers brush against the edge of a frosted surface. I pause, listening for the person whose voice woke me up, but all I can hear is humming. But the feeling is there inside me, the haunting sensation that I’m being watched. Like when I’m in my room and the photos of my past feel like they’re watching my every move.

“I know you’re in here, so you might as well say something you fucking weirdo,” I call out. Again, no one replies.

What I need to do is get to my feet. Tucking my legs under me, I slide my fingers up the surface, slivers of frost falling off. I manage to stand up, my knees weak beneath my weight, unsteady, just like the rest of my body and my mind. Thoughts of where I could be race through my mind. Claustrophobia sets in. I’ve never experienced it in the last six years, but the thickness of the darkness suddenly feels like it’s smothering me… I’ve felt this way before… a long time ago… I can almost feel…

Let me out! Let me out! God, please let me out! I don’t want to be in the dark anymore.

Only if you do what I say.

A door slams shut in my head, locking out the memory and causing me to jerk back. I need to get out of here. Now. There’s got to be a way out of here and a light switch somewhere. Trying to stay calm, I feel my way across the wall, gradually inching sideways. It’s strange how hyperaware I am of everything, how it feels like I know exactly what to do to find my way out of the darkness and this frosted, cold as ice, room. My instincts take over and with calculated steps, I move my way around the dark carefully. Whenever my foot or hand brushes against something, I instantly stop and slowly maneuver around it without getting hurt. My eyes stop hurting. I feel more comfortable with each step.

A few steps more and my fingers graze against a metal handle. “Yes,” I whisper as I pull the handle down and shove the door open. Breathing in the light and warm air, I stumble out and spin around to see where I was. Shelves with frozen food fill the small area and a light mist from the cold swirls around in the light. A freezer. I was in the freezer at the bar, but that’s not the most startling thing about the situation. There’s no one else in there. It doesn’t make sense. I heard a voice. It’s what woke me up.

Are you sure it wasn’t just another voice inside your head? Lily’s voice is so clear, so loud and unannounced that I jolt back in surprise and bump my elbow into the wall.

I shut my eyes and try to force my mind to remember what happened. The sequence of events that led me to this moment. But the harder I try, the more distorted everything becomes. Lights... Blinding lights… music… drinks… blood on my hands…suddenly the doors in my mind are slamming shut with so much force I fall down on the floor. Pain soars through my body and my eyes shoot open as I sit up. That’s when I notice the blood. Dried on my skin, it covers the back of my arms, cracked and peeling, like grimy sand.