He groggily regained consciousness and tried to move his arms. He found himself seated in a chair with his arms awkwardly positioned behind his back. They wouldn’t come loose and his wrists wouldn’t budge. They were tightly bound and the pressure of the straps was fierce. That’s when he realized the depth of his trouble. His head moved freely and his eyes were uncovered, but his mouth was gagged bringing him to the verge of panic. He calmed himself with a brief, though, effective breathing exercise he occasionally employed, as needed, to positive affect. His cool reestablished, he continued the assessment.
He was in a kind of containment tub. He didn’t know where he was but he knew the situation to be dire. He was in a confined space, tied down, immobilized and a raging headache from what he correctly assumed had been a blow from a blunt instrument. If he hadn’t been tied he’d be nearly able to reach from one side of the containment area to the other, it was that small. His feet, if they could be extended, would touch the wall in front. The three walls he could see were large sheets of Plexiglas glued together. The top was open with a single lightbulb over his head. It was not an LED, he noticed it to have been an older style bulb.
It would be from this starting point, then, the struggle would begin. His wrists were bound tightly but circulation was good. There was room to move, even if only a little. He pulled to no avail. Whatever material was binding him had virtually no give. He tried twisting his wrists. They could turn rather freely, but that motion did nothing toward attaining the goal of his freedom. He simultaneously pulled and twisted, also to no gain. It did, however, rub off most of the hair from his thin wrists. He took a minute to relax and rethink his predicament. Then, with a violent jolt he re-commenced the effort. This went on for longer than before yielding only a warm trickle into his hands which he rightly figured was his blood. Still no gain. What now?
He attempted to rock back and forth to knock the chair over. He wanted to fall backward in an attempt to break the tub’s perimeter wall, if possible, but the chair was solidly bolted down or otherwise affixed to the ground. He tried rocking sideways, as well, but was unable to get any motion. His hope was to find the resonating frequency while rocking sideways, get in motion and compound the effect of that kinetic energy. It was a little something he saw and remembered from an in-lecture demonstration during a college Physics class. Sadly, no, he was unable to propel the chair into any level of motion. He was stuck. What now? Yell? Bleat out for mercy? Resolve himself to his situation and wait to see what happens next?
The whole incident started late the night before at a restaurant. Maybe it was still late that night, he didn’t know what time it was presently. He’d gotten into what he thought was a playful verbal exchange with two men he didn’t know, something inane about the local ball team. When the meal was over, in the parking lot, he said good bye to his friends. That’s when he gathered it hadn’t been playful to the other two. All he heard was “Hey.” As he turned around he saw just a flash of the flannel shirt he’d seen inside, and then he went dark.
At this point he felt water on his feet. It was curiously warm and simultaneously terrifying. He’d heard the water start. He didn’t turn it on, someone else did, but he would be left to deal with the consequences of it. He didn’t even try to move his feet, he just let the water continue to rise and eventually wash over them entirely. The water level rose very slowly, yet too quickly, and worked its way up to his ankles.
He looked down at the water and could see that he was missing a shoe. The corresponding sock was dangling from the mid sole of his foot, a result of the one-sided struggle. He found this disheveled sock to be distracting. He wanted desperately to reach down and pull it tight. But he held firm and ignored the sock while he assessed the balance of the miserable circumstance in which he found himself. His wallet, he could feel, was still in his rear pocket. Odd, he thought. Was he not robbed? Was this really the result of a silly exchange?
As his personal terror rose he came to a decision. No matter how frightened, if this was to be the end of him he’d spend it thinking of his own personal highlight reel. He wouldn’t waste his dignity of these final moments begging for mercy or forgiveness to a fruitless end. He let the highlights begin.
He was five years old making a strawberry jelly sandwich all by himself. White bread, no peanut butter, just the jelly as his young taste preferences had not yet been stretched. He remembers how good it tasted. The taste, of course, may have been inflated by his own effort, his first self-made meal.
The water rose to his shins and he thought of his first pair of tennis shoes. He was 11. He’d had bad feet as a child, still did at 11, and spent the bulk of his youth rocking dress shoes for every occasion due to the hearty arch support. On this momentous day the doctor relented, said his feet were at least stable at this age and a pair of tennis shoes was OK for him to occasionally wear. He remembered being in the shoe store with his mom and picking them out. It was his grandpa who first noticed the slick new red shoes. “Wow, I bet you can run fast in those!” He loved his grandpa. A silent man with hearing difficulties for so many years, then very talkative after grandma passed away.
The water was at his knees. At 13 years old he crisply remembered and reveled in that bases loaded triple hit off the league’s best pitcher. His pitch velocity was so fast the batter could hear the ball sizzling on its approach to home plate akin to the hot plate served up with a fajita platter at your local Mexican restaurant. But on this evening the bat and ball made solid contact. Rounding first base he saw the right fielder still chasing after the ball. He came in to a stand up triple and nonchalantly adjusted the batting helmet on his head. The crowd was cheering, his teammates were yelling to him and the exhilaration was almost overpowering.
As the water rose over the belly button his mind wandered to the college years. He occasionally visited home on weekends then drove back to university late on Sunday night. A late Sunday departure allowed him to have dinner at his grandparents’. This had been family routine with Sunday visits going back to his earliest memories. This specific recall went to the first time his grandma sent him back to college with enough homemade pasta sauce and meatballs to feed himself and six of his pals back at college. He felt like a king inviting his friends to dinner at his apartment and feeding them on the exquisite delights of his grandma’s delicious homemade cooking. Fun times, the camaraderie and carefree conversations of their bountiful youth.
The water level increased to his chest while the highlight reel advanced to his first job out of college. He bought a car when he was hired. It was a new blue two-door sports car, and showed up for work his first day in a big office building feeling unstoppable and invincible. It felt like life was just starting. Or, at least, all the good stuff that life had to offer was before him.
The water was at his chin and he fought the mounting desperation. He thought of that sunny late Friday afternoon when his would-be girlfriend passed her phone number to him for the first time. She wrote it on a yellow post-it note, folded it in half and handed it to him across the aisle in the office. The best 30 seconds of his life culminating that exact moment when both their hands were on the note and they made eye contact. The image playing out in his mind strong enough, even under these circumstances, to bring him a moment of shear delight. The memory forced a smile onto his face.
He closed his eyes and turned his head facing directly up instinctively moving his nostrils to the highest point. He took a long breath and held it as water topped over his nose.
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