VOICES
FICTION
Sub
I
Terra
Maggie Rosinski
wake to utter darkness. It isn’t the darkness that comes at night, when all is still and the moon still shows its glowing face. No, it is pitch black, so black that even in passing a hand before my face, I cannot see a thing. “Hello?” I call out. The darkness yields no response. I think I will sit up and move about to search for some light or a way out. To my horror, I find the search impossible. I can only lift my head a few inches before it hits a hard surface above me. I feel it with my hands, move my feet. All I can feel is a hard surface with rounded edges, I am completely enclosed. I once read in a safety manual at school that it was best in situations like this to conserve oxygen to prevent suffocation. So I close my eyes and relaxed, drawing in deep, slow breaths. In and out, in and out. Calmer, I dig into my pockets, half hoping there might be some sharp object or bit of stone I might use to break the walls of my prison. But there is nothing. My mind races, searching for something, anything I can do. But I am out of options. My first instinct is to panic, but I force myself to quell the feelings of claus-
trophobia, of helplessness, that are building up inside me. I slow my thoughts to a halt. For some time, I doze, lost in a dark valley of shadow and existential dread. Unseen monsters pursue me, but there is no escape from the dark coffin. I wake once again with a gasp, choking on dust and black humus. Oxygen is running out. There is not much time left. In desperation, I scream and bang with all my might on the walls of my prison in a final attempt to make myself heard. That scream might be my last mark on the world, my final words shouted from the depths and heard only by earth and darkness. It is too soon, too soon. My life has barely begun and now it is leaving me, friendless and alone. I think of all the things I have yet to do, and in my mind flashes the faces of those I love and who love me, images of happier days and the home I will never see again. With pangs of regret, the darkness seems to grow ever closer, threatening to swallow me whole. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I just fell asleep now, never to wake. I feel nothing as the air rus out and my consciousness fades away.
“For some time, I think I dozed, lost in a dark valley of shadow and existential dread.”
Z
q
“You Narcissist,” acrylic paint & clay by Emilia Stachl 32
