He woke up to darkness. Luke panted, staring up into nothing with his arms down by his sides and his legs laid out straight. There was something plastic covering his face, crinkling and bumping up against his lips each time he sucked in a breath. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so cold.
“Mama?” He tried, but his voice was little more than a rusty croak. His breath picked up speed, his eyes stinging as he strained against the dark to see anything at all. He kicked out against the air and managed a cry of pain as his toe slammed into something metal just inches above him. Another struggle, a hard jerk of his body, and it became clear that he was boxed in. There wasn’t just plastic over his face, it was laid over all of him, tying him down and suffocating him as he struggled to move. It felt like he was trapped in his dad’s big old freezer out in the garage. He’d hid in it once as a kid, during a game of hide-and-seek, and he’d screamed and screamed and screamed when he’d realized he wasn’t strong enough to shove the lid back open. He tried to scream now and couldn’t get much out. Plastic sucked in-between his teeth and his throat was so dried out that it burned.
Twisting, he tried to pull his shoulder forward until he could work one hand in front of his chest, then the other. Above him, he clutched at the plastic. It was thick and didn’t seem to have any stretch, but even so he tried to dig his fingers into it until they ached. When he felt something give, he scrabbled for and tore at it until his hand ripped from the plastic and banged into the metal roof above him.
He used both hands to hit it again. Then he slammed at it, letting out a strangled cry and wondering if anyone at all could hear the noise. He dragged his fingernails across the surface to create an awful screech, then he cried out and struggled and banged at it until it was a full body effort, making the surface underneath him rattle and shake. Luke kicked his feet and felt his eyes burn and his lungs grow strained as he struggled like a child in a tantrum, until suddenly the thing he was laying on slid and banged his head into the end of the box behind him. It forced the last of the air in his chest out in a ragged sob.
“Mama!” He finally found his voice again, even though it tore painfully at his throat. Luke banged against the roof and let out a wordless yell. “Mom! Mom, please, mom-!”
He fell back again against the metal behind his head, and finally, something gave. A door cracked open with the sigh of a pressure seal and immediately, he was trying to force his hands back behind his head to grasp at the edge of the opening. With a jerk, the tray he was on slid back with more force than it had been intended for, and he tumbled to the ground. His knees cracked against the floor while he gagged and struggled to claw the bag the rest of the way open.
Light leaked in from the hallway through a window in the door. The floor was clean, plain concrete, and as he panted for breath, he noticed the place he’d fallen from. It was a rack on the uppermost row of what looked like the morgue lockers he’d see in the crime shows his mom would watch in the afternoons as she folded laundry. Only the one was open, and it looked even smaller from out here than it had felt while he’d been inside it.
“Holy shit,” he breathed, soft and raspy. He could’ve suffocated in there and been dead for real. It took another second for it to dawn that they had to have believed him dead for him to have been there in the first place. A sickly feeling rose up in his throat as he tried to recall what had happened to him, but then he cut himself off. He didn’t dare press on that bruise right now. Trembling, he tried to push himself up on legs that had gone numb and stumbled for the door. A frustrated whine surged from his throat as he struggled to unlock the latch, but once it was free, he jerked it open and pushed himself out into the hallway.
The lights were dimmed, illuminating a white tile floor and walls painted a cool blue. Every sound he made as he stumbled over the floor, the slap of bare feet against the tile and the metallic rattle as he clutched onto a supply cart for support, seemed to echo. It took him time to realize that he was completely nude, though when he glanced down at himself, the more jarring part of it was the fact that he looked.. Normal. He was struggling to breath, and all his limbs felt weak and his head was hazy, but there wasn’t a scratch on him. He thought he remembered..
Nothing. He kept walking until he reached the door to a staircase, then pulled himself up one excruciating step at a time. Every bit of his conscious mind was focused on the task when the door to the next landing swung open and a woman stepped out. She was dressed in scrubs, her hair pulled back and a stack of linens in her arms. She turned the corner to begin down the steps. They both froze when they saw one another.
“..Oh,” she said softly. He parted his lips to speak and didn’t know what to say. The woman took another step to peer at him a little closer. “..Sir?”
“Mm’ lookin’ for my mama,” he said, and it hadn’t been what he thought he’d say, but it felt true. He didn’t know where she was. She probably thought he was dead.
“Okay,” she said gently. Slowly, she set down linens, then pulled a sheet off the top of the stack and let it drape out in front of her as she approached him. She held it out to him, and when he didn’t move to accept it, she carefully laid it over his shoulders. A gentle, but firm hand on his arm pushed him to sit on the steps. “Okay, honey. I’m going to get someone to help. You stay put.”
He did as he was told. The woman hurried back up the steps and through the stairwell door. It shut behind her, the sound echoing up another five floors and down towards the one he’d come from. Then it was quiet except for his own breathing, which he realized was still shallow and quick. He tried to force it to slow. He tried to press on that bruise, found his eyes beginning to burn the moment he recalled being home, and forced the thought from his mind. He couldn’t worry about what had already happened. He just needed to find his mom and Syd and make sure they knew he was alright.
He counted his breaths until they slowed. Then he sang in his head, a song that played a million times over the work radio on a daily basis. Beginning to end, three times, and then he pulled the sheet tighter around himself and counted the steps from where he sat to the landing of the next floor. He started to wonder if he hadn’t been forgotten about. After Bryan Adams had bought his first real six-string for the fifth time, Luke grabbed onto the railing, hauled himself to his feet, and started up to the door the nurse had disappeared behind. Each time he moved, his head filled with smoke and his eyes flooded over with static, but he couldn’t wait any longer. Up the steps and out into another hall, he paused.
The place felt empty. The nurse was nowhere to be seen. A halogen light at the other end of the hall flickered incessantly, and there was a smell in the air like salt and copper. The kind of smell that’d stuck to his fingertips when he’d been a kid with a bag full of change for the arcade. He followed it further down the hall, until he stepped in something warm that made his foot slip against the tile. A glance down showed him a bright red smear. It led from his foot, into a room, and then to a hospital bed inside it. A man that was maybe in his forties lay with his sheets thrown off and his mouth hanging open. His throat looked half torn out, but he was still wheezing softly for breath. His eyes lit up as they noticed Luke.
He made a noise that could’ve been an attempt at the word help. Luke watched as the man’s chest rose and fell in rapid breaths as he made his way into the room. He looked down at him, searching the pleading look in his eyes, then let his gaze drift to the open wound in his neck. Saliva was pooling thick underneath his tongue, and the static seemed to have moved back into his sight. He leaned down and sunk his teeth into what flesh remained.
