Panic Room

Part five; the first

Finally! In the Panic Room at last! Took long enough.

Wednesday; 1998; The panic room; Luna; 18:02

Luna flew inside of the room and fell to the floor with a thud, looking around her at a blank white room. The walls, ceiling and floor were all white and Luna suddenly remembered a line that she had read in a book. "And she stepped off the edge of the world into nothingness." Luna whirled round to try and open the door, but it had disappeared. It had been replaced by a plain white wall like the rest of the room. Luna stood up and walked a few paces but still encountered nothing. When her legs became tired, she sat down and was suddenly falling. Falling through space and time into a world entirely unlike her own. She was moving more slowly and suddenly she recognised where she was. It was the hospital where she had first met Oliver. The place where the nightmare had begun. She soared down and into the bed, and suddenly her head drooped and her arms and legs went stiff. 

She had all of her casts back on. 

She heard the footsteps and saw Oliver enter the room. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and waited for him to say that he knew she was awake, but he didn't. Instead he took out the white powder and poured it into her glass of water. He then opened her mouth and tipped it down her throat. At once, Luna felt her heart slow and her eyes droop. But she opened them all the same. A doctor wearing white overalls walked into the room and Oliver said something to him. The doctor rushed over to Luna's bed and stared at her, seemingly unaware that her eyes were open. He looked at a machine to her right and took off his hat, head bowed. 

Luna tried to follow his gaze, but could not move her head. At that moment, her parents rushed in and Luna tried to greet them, but could not open her mouth. They let out a scream, and Luna's mother burst into tears. As Luna struggled, the doctor bumped the bed slightly and Luna faced a machine. A machine that had a straight line running down the centre, because Luna's heart wasn't beating. Her mouth wasn't working. She couldn't move out of free will because she was dead. Luna was dead, but there. She hadn't left her body, and now her mother was lying over her and sobbing and her father was standing in a corner. His grief too deep for words. The doctor reached over Luna's mother's body and shut her eyes.

The next thing that Luna was aware of, was being carried somewhere. Her eyes were open again, but she could not see anything for the bag she was in. She was laid down on the ground and lifted out by her arms. Luna saw her father. Eyes red and swollen, lifting her over his shoulder as he had done when she was a little girl, and carrying her down and isle. Luna saw many people, all crying, sitting in the stands. Luna even saw Clair Monte, sitting in the front row, face buried in a handkerchief. Luna was carried to a podium and laid down in something hard and wooden. Her father bent and kissed her forehead, before tears overcame him and he walked away, weeping uncontrollably. Luna saw a portly man in a black suit and hat, walk over and close the lid of the coffin that she was in. He began to talk, but Luna could not make out what he was saying through the thick lid of the casket. After a while, Luna felt the coffin raised off the ground, and lowered into a hole. She began to struggle, but still she could not move. She tried to scream, but no sound came out. All of a sudden, she heard something drum on the coffin's lid like rain and realised.

They were burying her.

The dirt continued to rain down on the lid of the coffin, and suddenly all felt silent. They had finished. She began to shake and suddenly could move again, but it was no good. She had been buried alive. Oliver must have given her something to parallelize her, but it had worn off. Her heart started beating fast and she screamed, but underneath all the dirt, no one could hear her. She felt the ground tremble and everybody walked over and around her grave and left.

She was alone.

Luna could see no way out. She would die. Claustrophobia overwhelmed her and she screamed again, but for all the good it did she might well have not. Luna banged against the lid of the coffin, and to her surprise, it was lifted off. She saw that she was sitting in a hole beneath the soil. It smelled damp and of decay and Luna screwed her eyes up in the darkness. Sitting across from her was a figure unlike any Luna had ever seen before. Half of its skull was caved in and the flesh that was on its bones was black and falling away. As she watched, a rat crawled out of the thing's empty eye socket and into the hole in the skull. The creature moved toward her and Luna saw that it was a little boy, no older than seven or eight. He crawled toward her and smiled, revealing an empty maw. "Don't be afraid." The boy said as Luna screamed "Were all dead down here." And from the walls there came more. More bodies and skeletons. More nightmarish creatures. More torture. They were all obviously years dead, but none seemed to be older than she. A girl with half of her face burnt away and black hair reached for her, but Luna screamed again and pulled her arm out of its reach. The girl frowned, one pigtail swinging back and forth, and said in a soft voice. "Why won't you play with us?"

"Yes! Yes! Play with us! Stay with us! Lay in our graves and decay with us! Don't leave now Luna. Not when the fun's just starting!" The rest chorused and they crawled toward her, all smiling. Luna screamed and backed up against the dirt wall. The dead children all came toward her and Luna closed her eyes, waiting for it to be over.

She was yanked by her hair and opened her eyes to stare into the face of a dead boy, who had half his brains splattered down his front. "Come Luna." He said in a dry, gravelly voice. "Have a dance with death." He hoisted her up and suddenly Luna was flying. Up she soared, the world disappearing, and landed in the white room from whence she had come. Luna collapsed onto the ground, shaking. She raised her hands to her face, and saw that her fingernails were caked full of dirt.