They Judge

A man awakes to find himself somewhere worse than death.

Inside the room a smell lingered about, the fragrance danced around his nostrils making him nauseous. Where am I? He wondered. His heart was racing and so was his mind. He tried to get up from what he imagined was a chair but could not, he was firmly stuck to it. He was sure he was naked, there was no cloth laying on his skin. The realization of that he was crying came only when he felt slow moving drops vertically on his face, there were no sobs just tears. 

‘Hello?’ he whimpered, he sounded like a fawn with it’s paw stuck in a bear trap. The trap was not meant for the deer as he was not meant for this treatment. He opened his eyes but nothing had changed as he still saw black.  Was something draped over his head or was the room in eternal noir solitude? 

‘He’s awake it seems’ a voice in the darkness came forward. It was a bittersweet reward he wasn’t alone. Questions stampeded through his brain, so many raced towards his mouth at the same time that when he finally opened it out came nothing but a garbled response. Did it make sense to him? More tears began to fall upon his cheeks. As he tried to reach up and wipe away the slightly itchy liquid his arms didn’t follow. They, like his legs, were firmly in place. 

‘Do you know where you are right now?’ a second voice pierced the black and stabbed his ears with terror. There was another person in the room with him. He wasn’t sure if they were real, all they were to him are voices and he feared making them angry.

‘No’ the man replied. ‘I want to go home’ a small amount of disdain was in his voice. The most important thing on his mind was Am I going to die?.

‘We’ll decide that in due time’ said the first voice the deeper of the two. The mans eyes widened with extreme fear in bewilderment. Had he spoken out loud? The two voices seemed to murmur about when the man in the chair sat quietly. More tears began to fall. 

‘Crying won’t get you anywhere, be brave. It’ll be over soon depending on your responses’ said the second voice or was it the first? They sounded the same to him, his head began to pound in confusion. 

‘my head hurts. Please I don’t know whats going on. Why am I here?’ he cried out. After a moment the sound of a wooden chair being pushed backwards across an linoleum floor rang out, somebody had gotten up. His heart began to beat harder in his chest as if it was a bird ready to spring free from it’s confinement. The sound of polished shoes clicked on the floor towards him, each step bringing more fear and terror. The hair on his body stood up and caught the little breeze chilling him. 

‘God please’ he moaned. There was no god here, nor would there ever be. The footsteps drew closer and closer then stopped in front of him. The man could hear his heartbeat in his ears and he was positive so could they. One of the voices was standing before him; what it looked like he had no clue but the smell was putrid. Almost that of a rotted corpse, it brought the contents of his stomach up into his throat. Keep it together, don’t lose it he concentrated. Some sort of limb landed on his shoulder and rested there. He screamed. It retracted as slowly as it came and then the footsteps retreated towards the other side of this hell.

‘The whimpers of a man are quite pathetic indeed.’ said the voice as it traveled back to where it came from. The chair was brought closer and the man assumed it had taken it’s place. The man in the chairs headache was gone and he could think clearer again. He breathed in the foul air and kept his vomit down. It was as rewarding as taking that first giant gasp after surfacing. 

‘Thank you’ he said with honest sincerity, he felt still some contempt towards the figures, his captors. The voices stopped and he was alone again from what it seemed he was left in this room. The voices sat there and watched him, his head whipping back and forth in frustration. They looked at each other and slowly moved in on him. He made no screams, there was just silence.