He Found Himself Alone... Chapter 1

This is the first chapter of a work that is yet to be completed but may one day produce a full novel. Maybe? In any case I do not have a super long speech to make right now because the first chapter is rather long. The story is rather dark, or at least this first chapter is, but to make up for the darkness of this story my next few posts will be of the slightly more cheerful variety. Have fun reading, comment away at the end if you want to. Oh, and don't forget to tell your friends.

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He found himself alone again. It was a feeling that he was fairly familiar with. Loneliness, some would claim it’s the human condition. Even surrounded by people a man can find himself alone, that is the human mind. Yet now he was in a situation where he was truly alone, entirely and completely alone. He was a tall man, thin, a little sickly looking, yet he had an air of authority, a presence of being able to command and lead people. Some would claim it lied in his face, which was attractive and striking, a face that stood out, that turned faces, crowned with a generous mane of jet-black hair. But I’ve always felt that it lay in his eyes. They conveyed strength, determination, leadership, I’d always had seen these things in his eyes. Yet his demeanor and his appearance currently meant nothing, because as I’ve previously mentioned he was alone, in the true sense of the word.
He was surrounded by complete and absolute darkness. He couldn’t see anything. He felt terrified that he might have lost his sight; he feared he had gone blind. But no, something within him told him he had not gone blind. He felt like he could see and he didn’t feel any of his other senses had increased. He also knew his eyes weren’t closed. Therefore, he figured, that he was in a place completely devoid of any light.
He was scared. It didn’t suit him; fear was not something that was often seen on a face such as his. But his fear was not without reason for he had but just woken up in this room. Or what he assumed was a room. He stood up, his body ached and he grunted in obvious discomfort. He was clearly in an enclosed space, the ceiling was only 6 feet high, and he was forced to bend down. He began moving around, and it was not long till he was fairly certain that he had properly mapped the room.
It was a room like no other he had been in, it had six walls, to create a shape reminiscent of a hexagon, though none of the walls seemed to have an equal length. The walls, floor, and ceiling were solid concrete, very rough solid concrete. He also had felt a door. It was cold and made of steel, it felt like it was thick and his knocking made not a noise. He was convinced that no matter how hard he would yell no one would hear him yelling it.
His other senses were finally beginning to wake up, and the first thing that hit him was the putrid smell. It was the smell of a sewer and bleach, it was disgusting; it was this smell that made him finally realize the severity of the situation he was in.
Wherever he was he was sure it wasn’t somewhere he’d want to be. He had just woke up in terrible pain, feeling not only that he had recently been beaten but also felt like he was out for days. He was in a pitch-black room that stank of rotten things. He was for the very first time in his life truly afraid, he didn’t know where he was or what was going on or if he would die here.
He sat back down, shaking quite heavily, he had begun thinking of reasons why he has here, what would lead people to beat, kidnap, and lock him in a dark room. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why he was here, what was special about him. Nothing, absolutely nothing made him worthy of this. Was there something he didn’t know about, he wondered, or maybe it was how truly unspecial he was that was behind his current situation. He didn’t know. Slowly he went over every aspect of his life in his mind.
He was a man in his late twenties, attractive, but nothing special. Like I’ve said he had a face of a man with great ambition, but his physical features never equaled to what he achieved. He never stood up in class when in school; he never spoke up till he was asked to. He was intelligent but never shone, he performed all his tasked well and properly, but he never took these cues to do something great. He loved books and he spent all of his earliest years reading, always reading. He never really had friends, but was never picked on, he just spent all his free time reading, and thus books became his first love. He went to university with the same love, majoring in English. Of course by this time he had made friends. By the time he graduated he had decided he had found all h needed in life. He entered the work force and lived a very simple life imersing himself in his first love. I don’t know if your expecting me to say that he worked as something fantastic like a novelist or a editor or something, but no he was a simple proof-reader, like I’ve said he never really showed ambition. But it was something he loved; his workdays and his free time were completely shaped around the written word. Having no ambition to go any further he settled into this life and loved it.
He had gathered himself a small group of friends. These friends made up his family. He’d moved away to study when he was younger and never left the city he now called home. It had in fact supplanted his real hometown ad the friends he created here had supplanted his family. His friends ranged from his college roommate to his current coworkers. They had all grown incredibly close, and even some relationships had bloomed in the group. But he was still alone. He lived alone in a loft downtown. He owned frivolous electronics, and his walls were lined with thousands of books. His loneliness however permeated all walks of his life. Here however he could only regard his friends as something he had lost, he was starting to realize that he had never truly been alone. Not like this.
The life he lived suited him well, but he often found himself drifting away from this life and into the worlds that other writers had created. He found himself often at work or during leisure reading entering into these stories he read, they made him feel alive, much more than he ever did in his real life. It was these daydreams, this futile escapism, which made him feel sometimes that he was meant for something greater, an adventure of his own. But ever since waking up he realized how wrong he was, his life was all the excitement he needed.
Dying wasn’t the adventure he needed, but that seemed to be the only thing he was now destined to do. It now dawned on him that he had been seating here, thinking, examining his life for what seemed like hours. He had become hungry and thirsty, and was wondering if anyone would come to feed him. But time continued to wither away. After what seemed like a few more hours he began to doze off, slowly he sunk into sleep. His last thoughts were that he remembered reading something once that said a man could last 3 days without water and two weeks without food. He also passed into sleep wondering whether or not he would indeed wake up the next morning, if it was really morning.
He woke up feeling like he was asleep for less than five minutes, and with not being able to tell the time he wasn’t entirely sure that he hadn’t only slept that long. No matter what he seemed to have not been dreaming, indeed he had awoken in the same dark room, with the same rough concrete. It was a bitter realization, his last vestige of hope was that he had just been dreaming but now it became clear that this was indeed real. He got up, remembering his hunger and thirst, and felt around the room to see if anyone had left him some sort of food or rink. After five minutes of feeling around in the dark he was fairly certain that there was no food anywhere within the room. He slumped down in one of the corners and sighed heavily.
The silence and darkness of the room were beginning to become oppressive. He deluded himself into sometimes believing that the sound of himself breathing or the sounds of his movement were the sounds of someone else in the room. But he refused to all these fantasies to become real for himself and he quickly shifted the focus of his mind.
His mind shifted to the dreams he had had during the sleep he had so recently had. He was having difficulty deciding whether they were some of his best dreams or some of his worst. The dreams of the previous “night” seemed to push the boundaries of nightmares and dreams.
He had dreamed what he had always considered to be his greatest and most cherished dreams. He dreamed of all the greatest times in his life, every moment that ever brought him joy in his life. They were such uplifting memories that even now he was beginning to smile. But unfortunately these were not the memories exactly as he remembered them. They were his memories of reading his first book, or of falling in love with reading, or other such great memories. But they all occurred in complete and utter darkness. All these wonderful memories experienced in black, terrifying, horrifying blackness. It was the worst dreams, the worst nightmares he ever had had. His greatest moments put in the context of the situation he was now in. It was the worst feeling he ever had in his life, the nightmares of the previous night had taken all shreds of hope and joy out of him.
These realizations were wrecking havoc on his mind. He had begun yelling, anything as loud as possible. He only stopped when his throat was incredibly raw. Hunger and thirst were overpowering him. He was feeling weak; he didn’t feel like he could even stand. In fact he was falling in and out of consciousness.
The next time he opened his eyes it was to a sight he had not seen for what felt like a very long time. It was light. His retinas were burning, but he felt its warmth, it gave him strength. He had closed his eyes but the light shone through his eyelids. The he felt a hand, someone had touched him, he hurriedly opened his eyes, but his eyes still could see nothing but bright white everywhere he looked. He reached at the hand, but he was grabbed by several other hands. They began to drag him, something seemed wrong, and for the first time in what seemed like ages he raised his voice. It was coarse and low, but it was his voice. “Who are you? Where are we going? Where am I? What’s going on? Help me! Help me, please!” All these questions flowed out of his mouth, like a torrent. Everything he had been contemplating for the long time he had been locked out began to pour out of him. What seemed like minutes later he finally stopped. It went silent; there was no noise but the heavy steps of the men dragging him, and the sounds of himself being dragged. No one answered his question, no one made a sound. Somehow this brought him to an even lower level of despair.
He was terrified now beyond comprehension. He was being dragged to a place unknown, by unknown people. They refused to answer his questions, he was too weak to fight back and he was unable to see anything. He tried to calm himself but was only successful in allowing himself to realize that he was being badly scarred as his back was being dragged on rough concrete. The burning pain brought all his concerns back to his mind. He felt like he was being dragged to his death. He just hoped he would get some answers before that happened.
The pain from the dragging was slowly becoming more and more bearable. After just a bit longer he was able to open his eyes. The blinding white was slowly becoming shapes and things, but it was still hard to distinguish things. He was sure he saw three figures that could be people, but he couldn’t be sure.
And then it all stopped. He was dropped and the room went completely silent. He was about to open his mouth again to voice his concerns. But his mouth met the full force of a kick before he was able to open it. He was kicked hard in the midsection and in the head. A third assailant was striking him in the back. He was having trouble gasping for breath. He was too weak to fight back; too weak to even protect himself. Someone was now stepping on his groin. He spat blood, just as someone brought another foot to his mouth. Someone was scratching at the cuts on his back. His hair was being pulled; his foot was being stamped on. His tears were mixing with his blood. He grasped for the leg kicking him in the face, but just as he got hold someone stepped on his arm. A foot made contact with his head, and then there was nothing. It was over, or at least he hoped so. He was gasping for air, spitting blood, crawling on the floor. He was muttering the word please. Yet nothing was happening. He was sure that many of his bones were fractured; he knew he had a broken rib, a broken nose, many of his cuts were deep. He wondered through the cries of pain going through his head whether or not they would bring him to a doctor. He crawled along for several more minutes and then he was grabbed once again and dragged just as roughly as before back to his cell.
He was unceremoniously thrown back in, and drifted off into a world of unconsciousness.
Once again he found himself alone in the dark. A noise roused him back into consciousness, he was sure he heard the door open, but the darkness of the room showed him that it was indeed closed. His body began to ache, pain he had never felt before, it was unbearable. He took his remaining strength and crawled towards the door. His hand struck something a foot away from the door. He felt it, and for the first time in days he saw some hope. What he had touched was a tray, a tray that held both food and water. It was a simple meal of bread and water, but it was one of the greatest meals he had ever had.
He wolfed it down, within seconds it was gone, and he felt some strength return to him. He sat down in a corner and tried to regain some of his strength. As he sat there his mind started to move towards the events of the previous day, or again what he assumed had been the previous day. His body ached from the beating but his mind wasn’t on the pain but rather on the question of why. Why was he beaten? Why wouldn’t the answer him? What was going on? But his mind could not think of a single plausible theory. All his theories were ridiculous, alien abduction, voter intimidation, torture for information. Nothing seemed plausible. His mind dwelled on the idea of torture for the sake of torture; maybe they were doing this just so that they could do it. It sounded barbaric and terrible, yet surprisingly likely.
This thought was all that was in his mind over the next few “days”. The pattern seemed to repeat itself, he would be starved for days, then beaten, then fed, and then it would start all over again. The second time they took him he realized that if there was a reason for these beatings they would not be revealed verbally. He also realized as his arm was broken that he was not going to be brought to a doctor, that they much rather have the damage compound itself. During his third beating he realized that no matter what they wouldn’t let hi die. This fact alone almost destroyed his spirit, he had previously reasoned that it wouldn’t be too bad because soon he would die, but he had been wrong, he would not die here. Thus it was with great difficulty that the fourth time he was taken for a beating he went without complaint or struggle. He took the beating stoically, he refused to let them get the better of him and for the first time he was able to open his eyes and take in the scene. He assumed that he was able to see because he had become used to the light, but he liked to think that an excess of courage had given back his sight. For the first time he was able to catch a glimpse of his assailant, there were three of them, all of whom seemed to be men. They didn’t seem worried about protecting their identities; they wore no masks or gloves. Two of the men were quite tall, and built quite well, they looked like brothers, square faces, hazel eyes, dirty blond hair. But he recognized neither face. The third man was a squat fat and balding man, he was shaped like a poorly made rather short snowman. He looked similar to what the Penguin looked like from Batman, but uglier. It was clear that this man gave the orders, it seemed he did not get his hands dirty. On all three of there faces were smile. These smiles were the last thing their poor victim saw before a kick to the face met his eyes, causing him to close his eyes shut. As always the beating ended a few minutes later.
He was returned to his room and ate his food as if it was a state dinner. He was getting used to it here, he hated it, it was torture but he was beginning to be able to take it. The more the days passed the more his mind was filled with ideas of revenge and hatred. He swore that he would kill the people doing this too him. But he didn’t think he’d ever get the opportunity. With these thoughts of revenge he fell into what he knew from the beginning would be a deep long sleep.