#the waking

One of the more concerning places the man had awoken to in his life, he was in a state too painful to be swept beneath the cautionary rug he usually kept in place for such day-after phenomena: Thick knots of harsh industrial rope cinched his wrists and cut into the pink flesh of his stomach where it burned and rubbed away at the thin layers there.

The fiery vixen trapped in the corner opposite him eyed her company with dead eyes and a beautifully arched spine. Needle-like teeth bared at a hidden superstition that Orville couldn’t see – something far behind him, or perhaps simply looming at his shoulder. And if anything was a cause for concern, it was that Orville could feel it, whatever it was, floating through the space around his head like a noose.

A cold chill swept through the room, void of all exits for the air to flow, like ghostly hands that touched and caressed and did nothing but hurt, and Orville shivered. The fox - because he was, naturally, fixated on what he could see, what he could understand - had a patched, matted coat of crimson fur: Blood stained her throat, crudely sewn across to hide where it had been split open, and Orville guessed that the grimace on her face had been preserved as she had died.

It was that train of thought, staring through starry eyes at the dead fox with wool bursting from hidden seams, that lead Orville to his next worry: He didn’t know where he was. But he did know, beyond all doubt, that the vixen had once woken in a position not dissimilar to his own.

And just look how she had ended up.

Orville had learnt once (probably from Henderson and his gang of nerds… or from the page in whatever stupid textbook Thomas had torn out, to teach him how to roll a blunt) that animal sentience enforces fight or flight. Something beyond the specifics of a name, an age, a persona. The place where humanity and ferality collide, out of reach of the conscious mind, was something all animals shared. Something he shared with the fox.

Had the creature an inkling of who she was as the hunter held a knife to her throat? Or was she simply caught in the mechanical mode of survival that wild animals know all too well?

Orville wondered, bizarrely, if he would ever find out that self-preservation disregarded all but survival. Wondered what the use of his name was if it killed him. Somewhere in the depths of his shallow mind, who he was was imprinted in his brain; hidden within the cascading neurones that fired questions without answers and lacked understanding.

He had never been smart. Philosophising about the world had always been the forte of some other guy, someone better. Orville thought it was best left to them, too. He was too old to start a new hobby.

The man tried to roll onto his side to avoid the telling eyes of that fox - and all the thoughts that it sent spurring into unhelpful action - but the movement sent a current down his spine that rippled painfully through his legs. Something warm trickled down the bared flesh of his ribs, slipping wetly onto the sheets twisted beneath, and he rubbed it between his thumbs idly, lubricating the stained twine locking him in place.

Semantics flooded his brain. Would he choose fight or flight? Would he bare his own teeth when cornered? Or would he, like the disfigured head of the roe deer docked above the foot of his bed, be forever imprisoned in his final moments? Would the fear remain shining in the whites of his eyes once all life had drained?

He squeezed his eyes shut, the world spinning around him. He didn’t want to think about it.

Orville let his breathing even out, laboured and wheezing. There was no use premeditating a death that would so inevitably find him. He was too tired, tired of fighting for his life when it only resulted in postponing the unavoidable. Orville used to find the thought comforting, that there was such an assurance in the world. Now, though, he had things to live for, people to live for. He no longer knew how he would die, and the thought of it being by his own hand was a nauseating one (“It’s the coward’s way out, Orville,” his dad used to say, back when the man still saw him as a son, and Orville had bit his tongue in case he let it show that he was a coward, dad, always will be).

It was like some sick and twisted joke, one where he was the punchline. King Orville had forced his way to the top of the food chain in high school so the jokes wouldn’t be on him. Now that protection was gone, where did it leave him?

Here, he thought mildly. It left him here… Wherever here was.

He blinked and heard the whispers of his life, shredded and remade; taped together like torn photographs. The man thought that maybe, just maybe, he was dead already, and this was the part where people said your entire life flashed before your eyes. Orville’s life was filled with regrets. Everything he should’ve done, and things he should’ve gotten right the first time around. Things like Maddie, his weary brain supplied dismally. That hurt more than the aching in Orville’s ribs, more than the pounding in his head.

He shifted again. The flesh of his back peeled away from the cotton sheets, scabs tearing and fresh rivulets of blood turning the crisp white pink as he struggled upright. The pain was instant, red-hot and searing, and Orville’s eyes threatened to roll into the back of his head as his world flashed white. He’d always had an odd dissociation with pain - even now, he heard more than felt his breathing pick up behind the filthy rag that had been shoved to the back of his throat, understood the natural response to pain but couldn’t quite get why. But tears pricked suddenly in an onslaught of bad emotions that were only furthered by the partial sweetness of agony.

Fuck.

The weight of his situation seemed to crash down on him all at once, a cresting wave diving for the shores of his fear: He didn’t know where he was.

Orville was tied up. He had open wounds. He didn’t know where he was. And he was crying because he didn’t remember how he’d gotten there. Didn’t know what had happened. All he knew was that he was likely going to die.

Probably.

Hopefully.

tag list: @anonymousfoz