It was the darkness that ultimately took my interest when I first awoke; and though it was distinctly something that shook me to me to my core I became fixated on it for the first moments of my new life. So as I sat, or stood there, waiting, the friend that was nothing but a colour became my only companion. No noise, smell, no feeling - just emptiness. It must have been another few hours before I started to regain thoughts again, questions that could never be answered at this moment in time but would stick with me until I abused their answers. I spent odd moments of time screaming and shouting but wholeheartedly knew it would be no use. Eventually I came to understand that I had awoken in a box, a crate even? Tall enough to avoid my hands touching the top on my tiptoes, wide enough to let me lie flat - enough space to pace three steps each direction. For a duration I thought I was alone, that is until a small box was distinguished by my hands was found in the corner of the space i found myself in. I didn't dare to try to figure out what the box was or what even was inside, I just wanted to wait. My yelling and banging of the walls had tired me out and there was, what appeared to be, enough time to fall into sleep again - for the third time since it began. And so once more I drifted into the emptiness that took me away from the predicament I was trapped within, but nothing came of those dreams. Just empty boats beating against the current in limbo, swaying across from a distant light in the distance. A green light. A faint one at most.
What seemed like seconds later I awoke again in the blackened area. For what could have been another tormented few hours in absurdity, a pleasant surprise eluded me. Not only had the darkness been simmered out by a dim torch light hanging from the ceiling, but I was now given the opportunity to investigate my surroundings. Although I had assumed solid walls, it was in fact fence like walls that surrounded me. Allowing me to peer through I could gather that I was in some sort of elevator, in the middle of a shaft. The outer walls were inches from the fence walls, the outer ceiling to far up high to see. Next came the small box I had figured out was with me in the dark. As predicted, a small wooden crate sat alone in the corner of the mysterious elevator. Apart from the screws that kept the box together, it was completely plain. A bleached wood on all sides - but one. On the third turn anticlockwise, I discovered a small imprint on the box. Scorched in a black tarmac design, four letters were found. Four letters that meant nothing but my ability to read. I COULD read; and for some reason that discovery was special to me. I had spent so much time in darkness I had forgotten the small things I took for granted.
W.C.K.D
It came at no cost to understand I wouldn't be given any answers to what the lettters meant. I could just assume and adjust to what it could potentially mean? I was allowed to sit and stare, of course, but sitting and staring wouldn't give me any more answers. And for the next hour or so, that is all I did. That is until another sense came back to me - hunger.
The world before this elevator had been scattered across the depths of my mind - the memories pizzled into a thousand pieces so recalling the last time I had eaten was distant, impossible to reach. It might have been hours, days even? Though it couldn't have been longer than a week, the hunger had just arrived. No food had been provided by whoever put me in this place and it was that thought that triggered several more. Who put me in this elevator? What were their intentions? What did they hope to achieve from this action? And what had I done to trigger this motion?
But again, these questions only raised more and it wasn't too long until I realised how distant from my memories I actually was. There was only one question that could assure me I was alone in my mind. What was my name?
In the space of the next hour or so, I had drifted in and out of sleep a couple more times, asked a million more questions and had answered none. I was still helpless in this shaft.
So for what I had gathered, a wooden crate with the letters W.C.K.D sat alone next to myself who was alone in an elevator that hung alone in an empty shaft alone, only lit up by a single light. I was, and kept denying, alone.
That is until, the elevator started moving. Upwards. At speed. Heading into the darkness. Into limbo. Into more questions…
INTO THE NOTHINGNESS.
Written by Ben Davies.