My eyes open. I look around the room, not taking one blink, and notice I’m flat on my back on what seems to be a gurney. Strapped in, and unable to move, I struggle for a minute then notice the knife on the table next to me. I lie still for awhile and think. Then I thrust myself up and try to move the gurney. After awhile I notice that that isn’t working. So I stop and take a look around the room once more. This time I notice I’m not the only person in here.

The room we are in is about 40ft. long and about 20ft. wide. The ceiling is white tile with rust in every corner. The walls seem to be old and rusted, with strange orange ooze that looks like mold, coming through the wallpaper. The floor is the same tile, but colored with age, and cracked & broken. It seems like an old factory or warehouse, but it is a tomb…our tomb.

As I look to see if anyone else is awake, one person across the room whispers to me.
“How long have you been up?”
“I don’t really know.” “There isn’t really any way to tell time in here.”
“Well do you know anything?”
“All I know is that I’m stuck on this gurney, that I am surrounded by people that I don’t know, and that I don’t know how to get out.”
He lays his head back down, and starts to mumble to himself.

After that question…”Do you know anything?”…all I can think about is what my life was like before I woke up here. I can’t remember anything.

I lay my head back, thinking in deep thought, when I hear a door open. I look up, down, and around, but see no door. It must have come from above us, or in some hidden hallway, because I saw no light, no openings, nothing, other than the gurneys covered with people.

As I turn back to ask the man I was talking to if he knows anything about a door… he was gone.

Just as I start to look around his bed for him, a door closes, but this time my eye catches something by the far wall, about 10ft. from his bed. It’s a hatch on the floor that I didn’t notice before. This tiny little hole, just sucked up what seemed to be, for the time being, my only source of information.

Hours go by like minutes. When you have so many questions with so many answers to each one, it tends to pass time rather quickly. The main question though would have to be…”What took that man down that hole?”

I know, whatever it is, has some kind of intellect. It has us strapped in at every major joint, we are in perfect lines on each side on the main walls, and it has set times for its “attacks”, or drop offs.

Every six hours this thing brings one new person in, and every four hours it takes one out. The only problem with that is I don’t know where it is taking them, and I don’t know where he is getting them from. All I know is I never see it. Somehow it sneaks by me, through the shadows, into and under things. See I can hear it, but I have never seen a speck of it. No one has. That is, until now.

All I hear is a shriek. Then I see exactly where it is coming from, and exactly what it is for.

A woman, in her late twenties, is looking directly at what I fear the most in this whole place.

This “thing” is drooping over her. It looks like a person, but has some really strange qualities. Its hair is in really thin, dark, strands in random spots on its head, really sharp teeth that look like shark teeth, and red eyes that look like they are on fire. It is bad enough to look at them when they aren’t looking back, but when those devilish eyes lock with yours; your stomach looses itself and falls for what seems like a mile.

The only thing that I can think of, for the longest time, is that dark ominous figure stepping out of the shadows next to my bed and putting me on his shoulder to take me down to hell through hells gate.

I find myself starting to stare at that hatch every minute of the day. I hallucinate, seeing him coming out just to smile and stare at me. I can hear him saying, “I Try to find out what makes you tick as I lie, down sore and sick, do you like that?.”I can’t remember the last time I shut my eyes because of the fear of that hatch.

As I start to drift off to sleep for the first time in a couple of days, I hear a faint whistle.

I look down to the elderly woman whistling to nothing. No tone, no song, nothing. So I try to make conversation with her, but she says nothing, just whistles.

The man lying in the bed next to me coughs to get my attention.

“She doesn’t talk.”

“Yeah I’ve noticed. Anyone know why?”

“Nope, none of us know anything in here. Heck I can’t even remember my own name.”

“Wow, you know, you’re right, I can’t remember mine either.”

“Yeah, I can’t really remember anything about my life before I woke up here.”

All I can do is stare at him, trying to figure out if he is real or just another one of my hallucinations.

“Why are you staring at me like that?”

“I’m just…I’ve been hallucinating lately and I was trying to figure out if you were actually here talking to me right now, or if you are just a part of my imagination.”

“Well, trust me, I’m real.” He says with a very uninviting smile.

“Okay. Well you wouldn’t happen to have a plan for all this would you?”

“Not yet, but trust me, when I get thinking, it just takes off.”

“Well, do you think you could slip me into the picture somehow?”

“You know, I would probably make a plan to get all of us out of here, not just me.”

“That sounds good.”

He lies back down and I can tell from the look in his eye that he is going crazy thinking of ideas on how to get out of here. I know that look; because I have a feeling it was the same one that dwelled on me as I started to come together and realize the situation.

So tonight, the first in a couple nights, I fall asleep. The dream that comes to me though, is definatly not the one I was hoping for.

I open my eyes, and notice immediately where I am.

The oozing walls, the crack and broken floor, the rusted ceiling, it’s the dreaded room from which I am so long fully trapped.

I sit up, look around, and notice that everyone is gone. I look at that hatch, and notice it is gone. Not completely gone, but hidden behind about twenty pairs of feet. The faces that I first saw when I woke up, are all standing over that hatch waiting for it to open, and when it does, they all start piling, in one by one. Everyone, except me, was down that hole, everyone except me. The man that was lying next to me was the last to go. He stood there for a moment, and then looked back at me.

The sight is horrendous. Fiery red eyes, shark-like teeth, it was him, the ominous figure from the night before. He was never actually another trapped person in this hellhole; he was the one single person that put all of us here. He wasn’t lying when he said he would get everyone out, the only problem is, he left me behind.