Pounding

My heart is pounding. It won't stop. I feel it in my head, hear it in my ears.

I am lying down and I feel my chest move up and down with each beat. I take deep breaths. Hold them. I can't slow it down. Yet I can barely move.

My limbs are weak. My head is foggy. What is happening to me? What did they do to me? What are they still doing to me?

It is completely dark. All I can tell is that I am lying on something cold – metal or stone. I feel a slight draft across my naked skin. I am too weak to get up. I feel little else.

Just the chill. The weakness. The pounding of my heart that will. Not. Stop.

In such a place, I would expect to sleep, but I never do. I am kept in a sort of twilight awareness. I count heartbeats for a time and give up after one thousand. Later, I start again, making it to two thousand.

When will this end? Why I am I here? How – how did I even get here? I don't remember.

I feel as if I am just waking up, just at the edge of shaking off the fog of dreams. But I never do. The fog stays. My thoughts are muddled. I cannot piece together a line of reason.

I do not know how long I have been here. I do not know how much longer I will be.

All I know is my pounding heart. One beat after another, feeling each like a hammer-blow in my chest, my stomach, my head.

It will not stop.