_______________Dyna's Point of View_______________
I jumped a bit when she screamed and looked away, covering my ears with my hands as it echoed. More tears came up and pouring out of my eyes and I didn't even notice.
When she stopped, breathing in and out in the dark enclosure, I removed my hands from my ears and turned slowly to look at her again. My eyes passed over the other man's face along the way. He looked as though he was frightened, but trying not to show it, his eyes wide but chest protruding in that 'nothing can touch me' way. Finally, my eyes met hers.
We appraised each other for many consecutive minutes, eyes roving over every feature, flickering over the smaller details multiple times in order to remember. I knew at once that she was a writer like me.
'Takes one to know one' I thought bitterly. My own writing career had yet to materialize. And lately, I hadn't been much in the spirit for trying very hard. It was ridiculous to waste my time when nothing would ever come of my work whether I had a few weeks or a hundred years to edit, rewrite, edit, and start over again. I was useless and talentless, always had been.
She took in a breath when we'd finished looking at one another, a word forming around her tongue and between her teeth, the edge of it protruding into the silence before she was intrupted.
"Wh-"
A groan came from the other side of the 'prison', our forth and final companion was coming to.
I wished he had something else to wake up to….
_______________Sydney's Point of View_______________
I groaned and reached up to put my hand to my head, which hurt like hell. After a moment of holding it there and wondering why all people thought touching their head would make the pain go way, I took my hand back down and held it before my eyes. I had expected blood somehow when I felt the wet skin, but I realized now that blood was warm and sticky, and my hand was cold and clear.
I pushed myself up and looked around cautiously, not at all sure of what to expect.
Three pale. Wide-eyed faces stared at me as though I were a visitor from a distant planet. Two women and a man
Were they ghosts?
They were certainly still enough, white enough… perfect caricatures of the antagonists in the few horror movies I'd seen or heard of in my time…
No. They were trembling, I realized now, and their expressions of fear. Ghosts would look like that.
For some reason, my eyes were drawn to the other woman, closer to my age for certain, with blue eyes and an angelic face that still managed to be beautiful even frightened and framed by disheveled hair.
At last, I had the thought to use man's most useful tool to answer the first of many questions. I spoke.
"Where are we?"
They all looked, first at each other and then back at me. The younger woman shrugged her shoulders; the other two still seemed a bit in shock.
I looked at all three of them in turn. "How long have you been awake?"
The young girl (I was going to have to figure out their names before I went mad) answered first. "About 45 minutes." Her voice quivering, sort of liquid –sounding, as though she were on the verge of tears.
I looked at the other two for answers.
"Only 10 minutes or so." The men answered, his voice defiant and firm, determined for me, or perhaps everyone, not to doubt his lack of fear or eminent concern.
"The same." That was the woman with the angelic face.
I looked down to see a small white tape hanging around my neck. This did not surprise, as I had noticed that the others had identical ironic trinkets.
I picked up the small tape gingerly, it seemed out of place in my large calloused hands, and I felt that the slightest slip-up or wrong move would break it. In thick, black scripts, it read 'Play Me' and beneath that message, the name 'Evelyn'
"Who's Evelyn?" I asked, my eyes on the words and not my companions.
"I am." Without looking, I already knew who the voice belonged to, the angel again.
When I did look up, she was examining her own tape, then her blue eyes met mine again. "Is your name 'Sydney'?"
I nodded slowly, then removed my 'necklace', tossing t gently to her. She caught it and threw the white square inscribed with my name to me. I caught it with ease and could swear I detected a hint of her scent on it. It was intoxicating.
_______________Dyna's Point of View_______________
After watching the two apparently called Evelyn and Sydney exchange tapes. I looked at my own and read the name there.
'Noah'
Looking at the hard-faced man to my far left again, I could not see how such an obviously biblical name would suit him. He seemed so… harsh.
When he noticed me looking, I tossed him my tape and then waited to receive my own.
He read the words on the cassette around his neck and looked up.
"So, you're Dyna."
I nodded, a few pieces of my hair sliding down as though to protect me from his gaze. He held my eyes for a moment, then seemed to break from a reverie and tossed me my assigned small white omen…
_______________Sydney's Point of View_______________
We all had identities now, strange though it was how little difference it made knowing names. Even my own seemed strange and unfamiliar.
"So…" Evelyn said hesitantly, as though she'd known that three pairs of eyes would bore into her fiercely once she opened her mouth. :We have tapes… but no player
The girl called Dyna looked around her, to the left and right and on the floor…. And I looked up.
"…there." I said.
Hanging roughly eleven or twelve feet above our heads was the small grey key to all of… whatever was contained on the tapes.
"So…" Noah said, his eyes upward just like everyone else's "The only way to go… is up."