Consciousness returned slowly, seeping back into my senses as the effects of the drug began to wear off. For a long time I lay there in the darkness, half-aware, marshalling my forces, as yet ignorant of my situation. I was alive, and sensation reminded me cruelly of this as I became more and more aware of my physical envelope. Returning consciousness was reborn in me on a rising tide of pain. Lying there unmoving I could feel occasional sharp stabbing pains in my anus; a lingering dull ache in my cunt; acute tenderness in my breasts and nipples; a general sensitising of the flesh over my entire body, as if it had been sandpapered… I tried to come to terms with these sensations, wondering why I should feel these things. Many long minutes passed before I opened my eyes. When I did, panic rose immediately to choke and destroy me. I opened my eyes on total blackness. I closed them again, thinking my body was betraying me. I sucked a deep breath into my lungs. The air was close and warm - it felt stale and used up, as if there was little virtue in it. Then, tentatively, I opened my eyes again. Utter blackness prevailed. My heart thudded wildly in my chest - it felt as though it was trying to break out of my body. Adrenalin surged through my veins and all at once I was fully alert. Immediately it became clear that my situation was much worse than a simple matter of total darkness. Although I still felt an extreme lassitude throughout my body, my panic had sent me thrashing in denial against the darkness I perceived and to my horror I found walls where I had expected empty air. Sweat broke out through every pore in my skin and I felt a queasy coil of sickness in my stomach and bile rising within my throat. Somehow I was immured not just in total blackness but within a small space, how small I could not yet determine, but it felt horribly like a coffin… With a supreme effort I attempted to still the panic within me, to quieten my wildly thudding heart, to lessen the gulps of air my lungs were attempting to suck inside of themselves. Not only had I become aware of the fact that I was confined in a coffin-shaped box but I now realised that my feet were bound at the ankles and my wrists too were secured in front of me. In some ways this realisation came as a relief. It had been my nightmare from earliest times, not helped by my reading Poe’s ‘Premature Burial’ at an impressionable age, that some terrible mistake might one day be made and I would be buried alive. But even through my panic, the voice of reason told me that no-one binds the wrists and ankles of someone they believe to be a corpse. This did not mean that I was not, in fact, buried alive; but at least it meant I was not believed to be dead… Small comfort, perhaps, but the possibility remained that those who had confined me here would eventually let me go - so there was hope, at least. Gradually I became calmer, willing myself to breathe shallowly and softly. I wanted to find out as much as I could about the conditions of my confinement. I had only to point my toes to find the end of the box. Slight turning and wriggling of my body made me aware of the walls to right and left of me. I inched myself upwards on my back and felt the other end of the box press against my head. Raising my bound wrists, I felt the lid of the box a mere six inches or so above my face. Summoning up all my strength, even while I knew the effort would be useless, I pushed with every ounce of force I could muster against the lid of the box. Using my knees as well as my arms I heaved and pushed and strove against my prison but of course all my efforts were in vain. Defeated, and newly exhausted, feeling weak as a baby, I relaxed again and once more set about examining my new home. The surfaces were covered with rough fabric, not the quilted satin favoured by undertakers. This was more in the nature of hessian, itchy against my sore skin. My sensitised fingers felt the open weave of the fabric, the fibres seeming huge against the soft pads of my flesh. Unable to see, my senses concentrated themselves in those areas in which I was still aware - touch being the main one. All the time I had been awake I had been aware only of sensory data emanating from my own self. Now I strained to hear, listening for the slightest sound which could tell me whether I was simply locked in a box or whether I was indeed buried… Channelling all my energies into listening, I could hear nothing that gave any indication of a living world outside my prison. The harder I listened, the more I could hear, but all that I heard was the quickened double thud of my heart in my chest, the breaths entering and leaving my lungs. I listened and listened until I could swear I heard the passage of the blood through my veins but of sounds from without the box there were none. Once more I relaxed. Now I tried to remember… How had I come here and what had happened to me, what had been done to me and why? Look back all I could and there was nothing but a foggy blur, a missing episode, elusive, unknowable. What was the last thing that I could remember… leaving the bar at the hotel I was staying at for the conference because I wasn’t feeling very well. I’m not a drinker, but two gin and tonics don’t usually have much of an effect on me. And that’s all I’d had, I knew, yet I had started to feel unsteady on my feet as if already drunk. I’d headed out from the bar towards the lift… and try as I might I couldn’t remember if I’d ever even got into the lift, let alone made it back to my room. Perhaps someone had taken advantage of my state - but more and more likely, it seemed to me, was that in fact I had been the victim of a deliberate drugging - someone must have got to my drinks before I did. I’d been in a group of other delegates, none of whom had made much of an impression on me as yet - it was the first evening meet-and-greet before the conference proper was due to get underway the next day - today? yesterday? I had no way of knowing… How long had I been kept drugged and what use had been made of my body while I was unconscious? What, if anything, had the organisers and other delegates made of my failure to turn up at the first session… As to use, with returning consciousness that was becoming increasingly clear. I gently moved my bound hands over my breasts and abdomen. I could feel raised welts criss-crossing my flesh - possibly not as terrible to look at as they felt, but to the touch alone my body felt as though it was covered in a methodically-raised gridwork of whiplashes, a pattern that became more detailed and complex over my breasts and thighs. My nipples were excruciatingly tender to the touch and I realised now the full significance of the pain in my anus and cunt. Clearly my body had been well and truly used and abused, whether by one man or by many I had no way of telling. Throughout the experience I had either been unconscious or so deeply under the influence of whatever drug had been fed me that I retained no memory of the actual events. The hope I had felt earlier began to ebb away again. How could the perpetrators of these acts ever let me go? Perhaps the box in which they’d locked me was coffin-shaped with intent. I’d regained consciousness but I could not escape. I doubted that there was any point in trying to attract attention to myself but it would be stupid beyond belief not to try. I moistened my dry lips and tried to find my voice. Quaveringly at first, but then increasingly strongly, I began to call for help. My voice grew in volume and I began once more to struggle within my confines, thumping my body against the walls of the box. I shouted and screamed and kicked and hit, over and over, until sweating with effort and shaky with weakness, I once again gave up the struggle. Lying there panting in the foetid darkness, once again I listened, desperate for a response, any sort of response, any liberation from the hell of the box, even if it meant pain and renewed assault. But nothing and no-one responded. Silence reigned supreme. I was alone in the dark, utterly abandoned, forgotten or ignored, and there was nothing whatsoever I could do about it. I gave in to despair. Worse things happened to innocent people every day all over the world. Why should I expect my life to be better than theirs… Into my well-ordered life Chaos had come and destroyed me indifferently. My sufferings were real and enormous to me but they amounted to nothing in the sum of human misery. I was merely one more creature, a thing of flesh and blood, whose life could be snuffed out like a candle and the world would not stop turning for a single second. Tears of self-pity leaked from the corners of my eyes, dripping down into my ears, unheeded, unnoticed, unseen. I didn’t even realise that I was moaning aloud, I shut down my senses and my mind and retreated into nothingness. I would not think, I would not feel, I would cease to strive against the futility of my lot. Perhaps I slept again… I don’t know. There was no way of measuring time apart from by my increasing thirst and the pangs of hunger. There was a taste of salt in my mouth and after recovering from my episode of abject self-pity my over-riding need was for water. My mind tortured me with visions of waterfalls, fountains sparkling in the sun, blue glass bottles full of mineral water, ropes of water twisting out of taps, lakes of the stuff lying placidly under summer skies… Thirst was now my major enemy - I knew thirst would kill me long before starvation did. How long had I been in here and how long ago had I last had something to drink? The sweat had dried on my body or I would have scooped it off and sucked it from my fingers. My throat was parched, I felt that deep dryness one sometimes feels after sleeping open-mouthed, a dryness that seems to reach right inside you. Nothing but water could save me now. They must come and release me soon, either that or they intended me to die. If the latter, I hoped I could simply drift off to sleep once more and not wake up. I no longer cared so much about life - just that my death should not be too agonisingly prolonged. I’d always been a coward and it began to seem to me that death would come as a welcome release. A release from the pain, from my raging thirst, from the fear of what might or might not happen, from the unknown. If the thirst didn’t get me soon, the lack of air would. Evidently the box was not hermetically sealed, but the amount of air that was exchanged was insufficient to sustain life indefinitely. My head throbbed already, my body protesting at the lack of oxygen. Add to the visions of fountains the sensations of wide open spaces, miles of air and blue horizons. My mind was beginning to wander, but now, rather than torture, I felt it as a pleasant escape from the grim realities of my situation. I realised, as if given a gift of revelation, that it didn’t matter any more. I’d been worrying about nothing really. The key to escape was there all the time, safely locked inside my mind. Vast landscapes stretched before me, enticing, beautiful. Should I head up, towards the mountains, the clear air and the dashing, dancing streams, or down, towards the lush green valleys and the pellucid blue of the lake? Wherever I ventured, the earth was sweet and I was free to travel within it. Everything I wanted and needed was spread before my feet. The walls receded, the ties melted away, I filled my lungs with the scented air and stooped to drink my fill from the stream at my feet. I looked up into the face of the sun. I was at peace.