Summer heat fills the dark room. There are no stars to light the sky as the gray clouds roll through. The night sky is still and empty. No breezes blow. The air is humid; and ever more so inside Alex's bedroom. Inside a window slams shut. The fair skinned, dark haired, Alex pushes her long, dark brown hair back into a ponytail as beads of perspiration run from what seems like every pore on her body. It had fallen out of place as she tossed in her sleep. Half up and half down, she hated how it fell down her back, but pieces were also still pulled back. Sliding on a pile of magazines that covered her bedroom floor, she stumbles and falls into a dark cherry desk. She swears as she reaches to turn a fan on in the corner of the room, and moves it so it blows cool air onto her face, blowing the sweated hair that she had just pulled back onto her temple, and across her neck. She kicks the covers off the bed rather than pulling them up tight around her before trying to return to sleep even though she knows she'll get cold soon and pull them up around her neck again. She cannot sleep without them up around her. Her round hazel eyes are hidden as she pulls her arm over her face, bringing her eyes into further darkness as they had adjusted to the darkness in the room. The bend of her elbow aligned with her ear, the small amount of light being emitted from the few stars peaking out from between the clouds is extinguished like a candle being blown out. Maybe tonight she can get a decent amount of rest without any nightmares.
There is a click, and the room spills with bright light. Unfamiliar sounds pass through her ears unrecognized. Humming- not like that of a hummingbird or someone buzzing on an instrument or humming a song. The drone of machines fills the room. This is not the room she fell asleep in. She tries to sit up, but she is too weak. As though weights have been tied to every muscle to her body, she cannot sit up. There are wires all around her. She can feel them running across her arms and chest. She tries to roll over, but something cold touches the bare flesh against her arm. Metal bars have been placed around the edges of her bed. No, this isn't her bed. Where is she and why is the room so bright? She feels a sharp pain in the tip of her finger on her right hand; she makes to pull it back, to recoil away from what's touched her. She feels her blood being drawn from another wire in her arm, just in the bend of her arm that had laid against the side of her face before she fell asleep before she wound up here.
Her mind races as she tries to understand what has happened to her. Had she been drugged? Did she do this herself? No answers reach her, and her pulse and heartbeat begin to fly as the panic level inside her raises to a new level of extremity.
She tries to open her eyes just enough to see, but they are too heavy. Darkness is all around her, but she is not alone. She cannot be left her. She wont be. She opens her mouth for some one to hear, but the only sound that reaches her ears is a muffled scream emitted and seems to pierce the room with silence. A great force of pain hits her as she realizes her mouth as been stitched shut. Even the humming sounds of the room cease as she fights the pain ripping at her. Some one must hear her.
I have to get out of here
She has to try to roll over again. The machines still humming, beeping is added to what seems to be the loudest sound ever to reach her ears. She continues to scream despite the pain rushing over her The beeping grows faster, matching the increase in her heartbeat. A fear greater than anything she has ever known strikes every part of her body. Her blood seems to be running cold through her veins as if such terror could freeze her. She feels so cold.
With all of her might, Alex begins to thrash, her bare flesh up against the cold metal bars that barricade her. Her arms are sensitive, and she has scars all over them, but she beats them up against, hoping to catch their attention. What is happening? They cannot hear or, or do not care to. The beeping and humming is getting continuously louder. Faster. The sounds are getting faster, still matching exactly to her heartbeat and pulse racing faster with every rushing thought.
Her eyes finally open. They haven't been stitched after all. The incessant beeping was her alarm. She is still in bed, more mangled and sweaty than when she first tried to go back to sleep. Her blankets are kicked into knots and hang from her feet to the floor. She had pulled them back up around her in her sleep- probably before the dream.
The warm bed creaks against the wooden floor boards of the old house as Alex sits up. Stretching her arms up over her head, she lets her feet dangle off the edge of the bed. She can hear birds outside. They call to each other, and she can see them through her window where the curtains hadn't fall quite back into place when she closed the window the night before.
"Another night over", she tells herself.