Waking up, he felt himself shiver slowly but deeply, and all of his body felt numb and unresponsive. Inwardly cursing his recurring nightmares playing up again, he made an attempt at regulating his breathing, but instead found it was hard to inhale, as if his chest had some dead weight on it, pressing down. He squinted his eyes and begrudgingly furrowed his eyebrows, fighting the onslaught of annoyance as best as he could. The all too well known lingering bad feeling from a recent nightmare made him almost physically sick.
After lying in the thickness of the dark for some uneasy minutes more, and desperately but unsuccessfully trying to get a grasp on his surroundings, he simply gave up on being cautious and decided to take quicker measures. Waking up from the depths of bad dreams had always been problematic for him. His mind seemed to have difficulties letting go of the nightmarish reality that his own twisted subconscious had chosen to torture him with on an occasional night, for years now. His therapist, that he stopped visiting half a year ago, had been teaching him all about connecting with his physical and "real" self first and foremost, about sensing his own body as a whole, and going easy and gently with it.
Right now, though, he was done with gentle and started counting down from five in his own head. On one he lifted his palms to his face, whilst sitting up abruptly. At least that was his intention, but as soon as his hands had moved no more than an inch, he felt a sharp sting shoot up unexpectedly from them. His curse was stifled when he suddenly started feeling thousands of tiny pinpricks burst through his skin, all over his arms. The somewhat uncomfortable sensation was slowly travelling up to his shoulders and reaching his chest and the upper abdomen. There were also faint tremors running uncontrollably through his lean frame, and he actually got more and more nauseous right as he was thinking about it.
All of a sudden he came to a realisation that the darkness he saw was actually close, really uncomfortably close to his eyelids, as if it was something tangible and not just empty black space. And come to think of that, when had he opened his eyes? He felt the first drops of pure panic enter his veins like a cold poison. At the same time the revolting taste of rusted metal hit the taste buds of his tongue, just as he found he was unconsciously biting right through his bottom lip. He was severely lost and disoriented, and the feeling was both physical and psychological, shaking him from deep inside his clouded mind. Dread overcame him, as he realised he was no longer in his bed, like he should have been, because his newly awoken to life neck was clearly resting on something cold, hard and unyielding.
Another thing that made him no less terrified was the fact that he could now finally detect thick bindings wound around his arms, wrists and chest - wound so tightly, that it was constricting his blood circulation and breathing, all the more in his newly increased terror with his heart beating a frantic rhythm. This whole situation was getting worse by the second, it seemed, and he fought to get more calm and focused, in order to be able to get something rational on his mind and to not succumb to fear. But it was easier said than done, especially as he had been prone to mild panic attacks even before this mess, whatever it was that got him where he was right now.
And where exactly was that, he wondered, trying to switch to reason instead of emotions, which were not helping him at the moment at all. He could tell his body was still alarmingly stiff and without feeling, going down from his middle section area. He strained his hearing, and after a few seconds of listening to nothing but his own pounding heartbeats, mixed with rushing of blood to his ears, he started making out some tiny noises in the background. They were muffled and distorted, coming seemingly from nowhere, and they made him all the more tense and uneasy with not knowing what to expect or what to do.
Time was non-existent to him from the very first moments he woke up, and any remnants of rationality in his mind were beginning to slip from all the disorientation and exhaustion. Unexpectedly this brought a weird thought to his sluggish mind. He wished he would rather be in one of his nightmares now; they were somehow familiar to him in a strange way, and there would always be a tiny part of him, which knew it was only a dream after all. He couldn't have possibly guessed it, but very soon he would come to remember this thought with a new desperate vigour. Because right now, out of nowhere, there came some loud and startling noises, and he barely had time to perceive hearing the sound of a heavy door opening somewhere to his far left, when there were heavy-booted feet nearing him and stopping right at his side.
He managed to shakily lift his head a bit and just then became aware of a rough cloth surrounding his head and blocking any view. An awful feeling of his own vulnerability stuck to him like a cloud that hung above his frail and unmoving body, whilst an unknown and unwelcomed person was looming right next to him. He could only wait in anticipation of any movement directed at him, praying it wasn't hostile. He was unlucky. Suddenly a strong hand grabbed his jaw, unmistakeably through the material, and he yelped from a bruising strength of the violent grip. Words came towards him, low and growling: "You think you're someone special, but you'll quickly learn your real place, and you'll learn it the hard way, from under my dirty boot, you piece of shit!"
A meaty fist connected with his cheekbone without a warning, another one followed right after, with even more blunt force, landing in the middle of his nose with a nasty crunch that was immediately followed by his own grunt of pain, turned into a silent moan. His chin was released, and the back of his head thudded to the floor, a deep ache spreading through his face. He didn't try to speak, out of fear of being hit again, and the man – judging by the baritone of his voice – appeared to be standing up to leave, with a rustle of clothes and a slight cracking of knuckles. He was afraid to be left in the dark again, even more so as he sensed the first signs of a murderous headache and scorching thirst coming up. He realised that he must have been drugged, and felt bile rise up his throat, while at the same time his nose started bleeding profoundly, increasing the chances of choking on his own vomit, and he worried but stayed silent nevertheless.
The other one's feet made a shuffling sound closer to him again, and the wind was knocked out completely from him with a cruel stomp to his stomach, which felt like it had crushed and twisted his guts right then and there. He groaned painfully and tried to coil into himself, barely managing to move on his side, now feeling thick ropes restricting his legs, too. Hot tears flowed from his eyes as he lay panting through clenched teeth, involuntary biting through his lower lip again. As the footsteps finally left the room, he heard more angry words snarled at him: "You'll get what trash like you deserve real fucking soon, Bellamy." With that the heavyweight door was slammed shut again, and he felt his consciousness start slipping away. There were red spots swirling behind his eyelids, the spots that then turned into blurry patterns, darkened from pain coursing in his body. He suddenly remembered what his dream had been about – a giant rat-trap was floating in the middle of a black, stormy sea of blood, and horrendous moans and screams could be heard coming from the depths of it.
His body slumped unconscious, just when he realised that the screaming was actually his own.