Mulder opened his eyes and felt a spin of disorientation.
Were his eyes even open?
Half wake, half sleeping his eye shuttered closed and then opened again to be faced with the same inky darkness that he believed could only be a dream or a trick of the light.
The majority of seeing people rarely experience the purity of complete darkness. Their lives are lit, through gadgets, street lambs…the TV he often left on at night to help block out the noises in his head and the constant replays of his persistent memory.
...His gift and curse.
Mulder's nightmares were always well lit.
Closing his eyes again he took a deep breath and tried to re-evaluate.
Something was not right…he shifted slightly and felt the cold solid floor under his supine body and winced.
Not right.
Suddenly he realised that his eyes had instinctively closed in the darkness and he opened them.
He felt woozy.
Leaning slightly towards his right Mulder kicked his foot back. Two thoughts occurred to him…hard wall…sneakers…
Thinking back to the night before Mulder's stomach turned over as his fuzzy mind tried to remember arriving home from his run. He was almost sure he left…
His eyes blinked in the darkness, he definitely went out for that run.
The air smelled musty, like wet wood and soil.
He tried to clear his head and distinguish the smells around him, something else…warm…familiar...but with a hint of exhilaration.
As he tried to turn fully onto his right side Mulder felt a pain in his arm that caused him to groan and roll back, the roar of his own voice startled him and his gradually waking consciousness suddenly latched onto a quiet noise that he had failed to register over the sound of his own breathing and the cacophony in his head.
A second breath.
Mulder froze, his own panting suspended briefly and every muscle in his body clamped tightly with fear.
Wherever he was, he was not alone.