It must’ve been weeks by now. My life before the mold was normal, it’s still 2023 I think, and the last time I can remember I was on my way back to my apartment after I got off work. It was late, I had worked overtime and at 7pm it was already dark on my walk back home. I didn’t notice anything unusual, didn’t hear anything, see anything, and I arrived in my apartment without a hitch. I crashed on my bed, sometimes I liked to take naps the moment I got home – and that was the last of it. It doesn’t matter now, because I’m here, waiting, and there isn’t exactly an out.
It’s dark in here, or maybe it’s better to say there is not light at all, for it would be impossible to produce light wherever I am. If I had to guess, I’d say I’m underground, far, far underground – not that I have much to gauge that off of. It’s just so dense in here, my chest strains hard to fill itself with the fickle metal air that makes its way down here. I am lying face up on the floor, not that there is a floor per say – however I know that I am facing up due to the way my body is being pulled downwards. It would maybe be enjoyable, the way I would be positioned in sleep – if I could move my arms. Or my legs. Or wriggle any part of my body more than a few centimeters around in any direction.
I am encased in something fully – though I don’t know what - it’s black in here. It feels like concrete however, a rough, dry, cold and rocky substance. I can move my toes a few centimeters, and I can rotate my head sightly if I try to turn it one or two degrees to the left or right – But I am encased. Fully encased in a tomb, no, a mold of my own body. The miniscule movements I can make out of my own will only serve to remind me of what I cannot do. My hands are closed tightly together in a fist, and the cement is molded around them like melted wax, I push and struggle to bloom my hands open again but it’s an impossible task. I wonder if the phantom pains that amputees experience is similar to the agony I am experiencing, unable to operate what was once freely mine.
When I first found myself in here I writhed and buzzed until I couldn’t anymore, and then I cried. My eyes both being sealed in small cement bubbles, afforded with maybe an inch of space they cannot see, quickly filled with salt and stung my face. My body wouldn’t even adequately struggle in this tight space, and the energy produced by my adrenaline had nowhere to express itself but in fear. Not that I can see it, but there must be a small, straw like hole near my mouth to suck in air. The hole is no more wide than a cocktail straw from the feel of it. Each breath I take I’m reminded of how far down I must be. I suck in the air that reaches my lungs, dampened and warm from the seemingly miles of concrete that it has traveled to reach me. Why is the hole there? Is this all deliberate?
And so now I’m waiting, waiting for anything, but my mind can’t hold on much longer. There is no new stimulus to my brain. There is nowhere to go. Something new has started to happen in the tomb though. I first felt it a few breaths ago, but it wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. The back of my body began to feel a bit damp. At first, I figured it was my own sweat. This was only I lie to myself I could uphold briefly, because now I’m sure what’s happening. My mold is being infiltrated from below with water. Slowly, slowly, I can begin to feel it rise. It’s to my earlobes now, and I can feel small pebbles and sediment floating around my body, sending my brain reminders that my parts of me still are indeed there.
The anxiety is intolerable, but what can I do? I’ve started breathing harder, but when I breath too deep my ribcage presses painfully against the cement body as I gasp for the sparse tired air. What I fear more than drowning, however, is the thought that this won’t kill me. Whatever cruel being put me here… I know that they want me to live. I fear that the orifice connecting me to the outside, be it through miles of winding cement tunnel, will be left untouched, the water stopping right before. Maybe, just maybe, once the water reaches my face, I can swallow enough sediment to kill me slowly, but whatever is outside probably has planned for that, too. How much longer will it take?