The Cavern

My eyes were delayed a second as they adjusted to the dim lighting of my surroundings. I groaned, the pounding in my head slowly became more painful as I awoke. I could barely feel the lower part of my legs, yet my head was in a heightened state. Looking down - or up, as I would come to realise - at my feet, I noticed the bindings around my ankles and knees. Any attempt I made to break free of the restraints was futile; whether that was due to the lack of blood in my legs or the tightness of the rope was unbeknownst to me. Whether it really mattered was not to my knowledge either. I looked closer to my neck. My whole upper body was wrapped in rope, rendering my arms useless. Unlike my toes previously, my fingers had enough blood in them to move. Feeling what I thought was my jeans, I relaxed, reassuring myself of my senses. However upon inspection, what I was feeling was in fact the coarse rope I was bound with. In fact, I could not see my jeans. The cold breeze nipping against my skin suggested that my jeans, alongside other items of clothing, were not on my person. I sighed, and let my head fall back forcefully, my neck tired of bending upwards.

   Doing so prompted me to begin swinging in mid air, which is when I realised I was hanging off the ceiling. Confusion flowed through my veins in place of the blood that was missing.  Curiously, I observed my surroundings more thoroughly. The walls were rough, and sported many jagged edges. They were also dripping with moisture. Spinning around the axle of my body, I was able to see what was behind me - the entrance to what I had decided was a cavern. The only light entering this space seemed to be coming from that large hole in the wall. To my concern, there was a trail of blood drops out of the cavern. The sight of blood made me take notice of the rusty, iron-like smell, emanating from below me. I tilted my neck backwards to look at the floor.

   As soon as my eyes landed on their destination, a wave of regret washed over me for having done so. The moisture I had noticed on the walls was not water, but blood. There was a large pool of the liquid beneath me, accompanied with discarded limbs, bones, and organs. Some fresher than others, identifiable by the number of maggots that infested the flesh. I looked away before I added vomit to the concoction of human remains.

   The cold seemed to disperse as the fear began to take over, my body profusely sweating. I writhed in my cocoon of rope in a hopeless and ill thought out means of escape, only sustaining rope burn in the process. The headache had been pushed to the back of my mind, but now that I tried to think through this situation, my head began pounding once again. I groaned once again, which seemed to garner a response from the body soup. It groaned back at me, much to my surprise. Looking down, however, I did not pick up on any signs of life, but for the insects that have made this place home. In danger of regurgitating whatever I had left in my stomach, I looked away once again. My eyes found the point off which I had been suspended.

   The rope was slung over a hook, similar to a pulley. Reluctant to look down, I was unsure what had been placed as my counterweight, and whether or not I would be able to beat it somehow in a war of gravitational superiority. That scenario being unlikely, I resorted to getting the rope over the hook, or cutting the rope across the hook. The latter being more optimal, as I would no longer be bound to the counterweight. I began my attempts, swinging my body. It took considerable effort to get started, but once I began swinging, it was easier to add to the momentum. However it was still tiring, and each breath I took of the rusty air clouded my brain, already under the stress of the blood flow. My goal was to eventually swing hard enough that the rope slides up and over the hook.

   Straining with every push, I managed to get the rope up and impaled onto the point of the hook. All I had to do was swing even further, however at this point I was mere metres from touching the walls. Swinging any harder was sure to result in a headfirst collision with the rocky wall. However, my desire to escape was greater than my commonsense. On the return swing I pushed the hardest I had yet, so that the force would pull the rope against the point of the hook, releasing me. It worked.