The Hole by Mark L. Stinson

Author's Note: The following story is a fragment...or is it? I had plans to expand it, to make it longer and more involved, but it has remained as you see it here for two years now. I supposed I should call it finished. Better yet, I think I’ll call it...THE HOLE!

First there was just a moist sweet odor and nothing else. The sickeningly strong scent completely dominated her awareness, and she began a vain struggle to place its wet organic qualities. It was not long before she formed the fearful conclusion that it was a hybrid smell, some mysterious mixture of blooming flowers and the fetid odor of decay.

Joining the sweet rotting smell, but not quite overpowering it, was the perception of an absolute darkness as black as pitch. She focused on the darkness, trying to make out even the slightest hint of iridescence or the most fleeting spark of light, but there was nothing.

She was slightly amused and curious as to her greatly limited perceptions, but dulling this intellectual wonder was a growing irrational fear that perhaps it would be better not to seek answers. Perhaps she should simply let go of these strange new perceptions, and drift back into the now only half-remembered void of nothingness from which she had emerged.

But the human spirit is of an essentially curious nature, and she fought to perceive more, to feel and know where she was, and remember how she came to be there.

Awareness comes in layers, and suddenly combined with the sweet rotting smell and the overpowering darkness, a sweeping wave of cold uncovered itself to her attention. She strove to detect the source of this cold, but in the end she was unable to even eliminate herself as the source of the chill. This was too much for a detached and rational consciousness to be able to accept, and long gone were any feelings of amusement or curiosity. All that existed now was panic.

Where am I? For God’s sake, who am I? How did I get here? All of these questions poured through her mind, and in a final blow to reason she became aware of her body. A mind-numbing pain quaked and tore at her frame. It was like fire flowed through her veins and arteries, scorching and burning every inch of tissue and every length of nerve throughout her earthly shell. She screamed, but her lips would not part. She realized her eyes had been shut all along, but as she tried to open them, they too would not yield open. She was prone on her back, and as her arms and legs flailed, they struck tight walls along her sides, above her and below her.

After an eternity of hellish pain, she stopped her mouth-muffled screams and thrashing about, as much out of hopelessness as exhaustion. The sharp pains slackened to an ache that ran throughout her cold body, and she lay there trying to maintain her now tenuous hold on reason. What is this place? This hole? Where was I before the nothingness? Who was I before I entered this hell?

She strained to push her arm between her breast and the close hard ceiling that was mere inches above. Her fingers fumbled at her lips, straining to find the source of her inability to open her mouth and purge herself of unhealthy screams. Nothing covered her mouth, but by parting her lips partially aside, she felt the thick evenly-spaced rows of stitches that held tightly closed her lips...