Are You Awake

Alan Lacey heard his name, not once but a couple of times, it sounded strange though. It sounded like someone was talking about him, not to him, and in a tunnel.

Alan opened his eyes, or at least he thought he did. Everything was still pitch black, not the kind of black like on a foggy winter night when the fog blocks out the light from the sky and streetlamps. This was altogether a different kind of dark. Then Alan went to turn over to flick on his bedside light. He couldn’t move. Well, he could a little bit, but not enough to turn over. Alan then realised he was not in his room but a much smaller space.
He tried to think, the last thing he remembered before going to sleep was being on a night out with his mates from work. They were a lively bunch of lads and Alan wondered if they had bunged him in one of their car boots for a laugh. Or maybe he was just dreaming.

He had heard that if you pinch yourself in a dream, you can’t feel it. So, he gave it a try. He pinched his right thigh. He definitely felt it the twinge of pain told him he was awake. Back to the original theory then, he felt his way around the small space. It didn’t feel short enough to be any car boot and was that some sort of silky padding his fingers brushed against. Had they wrapped him in a quilt or something? Alan tried to figure out the dimensions of the space he was in. he thought if he knew it would give him a clue about his whereabouts.

He felt around the space. It was longer than he was, so about six and a half foot he reconned, thin, like a tube or a box, with only enough room for him to move his arms a bit by his sides. If he wanted to scratch the itch on his nose, he would have to manoeuvre his arms up his own body to reach it. The space also seemed to have a padded interior, and a few objects scattered around in there with him.

Alan could still hear a kind of far away droning voice. He wasn’t sure how far away because he still didn’t know where he was. Also, he felt a bit peculiar, groggy, like he hadn’t fully awoken yet. Wherever the lads had stashed him it was comfy though he thought, he even seemed to have a little cushion for his head to rest on.

He started to think of ways he could get back at them for playing this joke on him. Just wait till Baz is getting wed, he would tie him to a lamppost naked he thought as he nodded off slightly.

He woke again though when he tried to turn over, the space was
too slim, and his back was starting to ache.

Then he heard thuds on the outside of his container, so he figured the lads had come to release him. But no, the thuds got progressively louder and sounded heavier. That was when Alan decided he’d had enough of this prank. He started to shout, then kick at the box, still the scraping and thudding continued, and he was feeling quite woozy by now. He had felt around enough in the dark and his brain suddenly screamed at him “it’s a coffin the
bastards have stuck me in a coffin”

He wondered then, if the box had air holes. He remembered as a boy once he had rescued a hedgehog one winter and put it in a box with padding to recover. But the poor thing suffocated because he hadn’t known it would need air holes in its box. He began feeling around for any sign of holes in his tomb and could find none. He had drifted off to sleep again a couple of times during the search.

The comfort and warmth were making him very drowsy now; he was struggling to stay awake for long. The harder he tried the more tired and queasy he felt.

The more he felt around the bits of debris laying around the more he thought he recognised the feel of objects, a photo frame, a trinket box, some folded papers, then maybe his wallet. He was starting to find it more difficult to keep hold of the items he kept dropping them and dropping off to sleep.

Then he thought “them lot best come back soon; I need a piss” then sleep claimed him again. When he did wake up briefly it was to find he had pissed in his pants, “I’ll kill em” he said to himself. The thudding had stopped now, and he could hear nothing, just silence. A deafening silence, the kind he had imagined you would get out in space, where there was no-one, nothing not even air. He wondered where his daft mates had gone as he drifted off to sleep again. He also wondered if his air had run out and if he was going to die. For the first time he felt panic.

A moment later a loud, constant buzzing assaulted his ears. His bloody alarm clock. Time to get up for work. Alan opened his eyes, half expecting to find himself back in the box.

But what he saw was the familiar shapes and shadows of his bedroom. The light filtering in through the curtains and around the gap at the top above the pole. He could smell his sweaty socks that he had discarded last night when he had got in bed. He sat up to turn off the alarm that after it’s five-minute snooze had kicked off again. He was thankful that everything was back to normal. He had been dreaming. He had even dreamt the pain when he pinched himself.

He had never felt so glad to be getting up and heading off to work.