by Milton Johanides

Created on: August 03, 2010   Last Updated: August 04, 2010

Speed hit the street. He enjoyed walking. Specially in the moonlight. Felt the power of the quadriceps in his thighs powering his legs, felt the pounding of the pavement against the soles of his feet. Tonight he could walk forever. He breathed in the familiar air of his street, a mix of carbon exhaust fumes and home cooking Puerto Rican style wafting out of open windows. He couldn´t figure out if he was walking away from something, or walking fast towards something else. Was he trying to escape an uncomfortable memory, or just plunging into an exciting new future?

Either way, he would never be given time to decide. He was distracted from this thought by a sharp, pain-inducing blow to the back of his skull. An inescapable blackness descended on him. He became vaguely aware of hands grabbing him, lifting him, all six foot six of him, and carrying him. Then nothing.

Consciousness returned suddenly, a jolt from nowhere. Was it a scream that woke him? He couldn´t be sure, but trying to focus on his surroundings he gradually lost hope. He had hoped it had all been a bad accident and that he would wake in a comfortable hospital bed, or better, his own low-grade apartment bedroom. Neither seemed true.

The head still throbbed. The legs, which seemingly only seconds before had felt like powerhouses of motion, now lay limp in front of him, pulsing with an unfamiliar pain. He was sitting on a blood-stained stone floor.  His own blood. That explained both the pain, which emanated from numerous sources, and also the dizzying effect of trying to move his eyes round the room.

“Room” was an optimistic noun in the circumstances. Cell, or dungeon, were better suited, a small, confined, windowless space. His natural instincts forced him to look for an exit, any means of escape. There appeared to be none. The only door, a flat iron panel a couple of feet away from him, seemed securely shut without any handle on the inside. There was a gap of a couple of millimeters between one side of it and the frame, large enough to insert a stone wedge and perhaps, by applying some force, to persuade it to give a little. No other option presented itself, yet there was no stone wedge lying around and his hands were tightly bound behind him, making the prospect of manufacturing one pretty slim.

He was effectively in a rather large coffin. The only light that gave him the information he needed to come to that conclusion seeped

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