64 Hours

45 h0urs

~the forty-fifth hour~

The longer Bella and I sat midst the elevator, the more I questioned the time I had left to live.
I had no more words left to tell Bella, and neither did she. But we both had the same question in mind: when would we get out of here?

Whenever my thoughts strayed somewhere else, it lead to my regrets. Whenever I closed my eyes, all I could see was the pregnant woman's horrified face before the fire transformed her to ashes and cinders.

I huddled towards the corner of the elevator, resting my knees on the cold floor, away from Bella's warmth. It was all for her and Aria.

Was it simply a coincidence that my father appeared in the worst time possible? Could I truly trust him?

"Can you try using your cell?" Bella asked when I edged away from her.
I shook my head.

"No service here."
I only managed to gabble it out before our hearts dropped. The elevator let out an awful, keening noise, then dropped a centimetre down. The outside edges screeched against the walls, making us both go deaf.
There was only a minute of terrifying silence before the elevator began to plummet into nothingness.
Bella flew against me, knocking the air out of my lungs. I banged my head against the metal surface, making me go into a moment of trance.
I felt weak and dizzy as the machine we were in continued to fly downwards. The interior was trembling and moaning, Bella shrieking her head off while I braced myself for impact.

I clung onto my niece in trepidation, the darkness of the elevator making it worse. I felt like I was going on a very damaged, small spaced roller coaster. Without a belt.

That's it. This is how we both die.

I released a string of colourful words that were unheard over the horrid sounds coming from outside. It sounded like a truck of screw drivers rubbing against each other, killing my capacity to hear.
We were dropping into an endless void, the heart of an abyss and oblivion.

Suddenly the line, 'before you die, life flashes before your eyes,' made sense to me. It wasn't much of a flash; it was more of seeing the things most important to me beside me in the darkness, spiralling into the abyss beside me but telling me everything will be okay.

I was knocked off balance when the elevator came to an unexpected stop. I was plunged to the other side of the elevator. My body weight shifted underneath me as I face-planted into the opposite wall. Or was it the ceiling?

My nose stung, an unfamiliar ringing in my ears accompanying the pain. I blinked with haze, unable to stop the trembling in my hands.

I let out a shaky breath and put a hand on my face, which was running with a sticky liquid. Blood.

The second thing I noticed was the fact that Bella stopped screaming. "Bella? Where are you?"

"H-here," she replied, sounding far away.
My lungs dropped to my stomach when a blinding light lit up above our heads. It flicked for a bit, then went off again. Then, at a steady pace, it began to light up and give up.
It was like a horror movie. In the seconds of light I had every few moments I would see blood in the corner, Bella's hand there, and my hand smeared with red ink here.

"Adam, your face," Bella gasped, choking through her words.
"Gee, thanks," I mumbled, still trying to recover from the hell we just fell through. From what I could see, my niece had a thin scratch on her forehead, nothing else. I breathed out in relief.

My back felt like it was made of glass as I proceeded to stand up. Bella was quicker.
"Help us!" She beat her fists against the slightly crooked elevator door. "Someone!"