Captive [malexmale]

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

I woke up to unimaginable pain.

There was a stabbing pain in my left side, like someone had driven a stake through me and pinned me to the ground. My ribs were definitely bruised, if not broken. My arms throbbed as if I'd just endured the most rigorous exercise, and my left ankle definitely felt sprained. Everything stung too, probably from the sea salt. It wasn't until I twitched that I realized I was laying on solid ground.

I forced my heavy eyelids open, blinking against the brightest thing in the world. I cringed, squinting as my vision slowly cleared to reveal a white strip of sandy beach that seemed to glitter in the fierce sunlight overhead. I sucked in deep shuddering breathes, then coughed as sand stuck to my lips and the side of my face. I struggled to prop myself up onto my elbows, breathing hard as pain throbbed just about everywhere I could think of.

I lifted my head, expecting to see more sand, only to stare into the dark depths of a forest. Several shades of bright green assaulted my vision, splotches of vivid colors, blues, pinks, yellows, reds, from all sorts of flowers that I'd never seen before. And beyond that, more and more trees that climbed what appeared to be mountains further inland.

The obnoxious sounds of birds chattering and twittering echoed through the trees and out onto the beach. The wind very gently tickling the trees, causing them to whisper and rustle. Sand scattered on the beach, scraping cuts on my hands and fingers. I gasped at the painful stings, scrunching myself up into a little ball.

I'm asleep.

I'm dreaming.

This isn't really happening.

Nope. I fell asleep and I had yogurt before bed and I shouldn't have done that because mom always told me that it would give me nightmares, but I didnt listen to her because I was a man and real men didn't listen to their mom.

Oh god, I should've listened to her.

This was the worst nightmare ever.

But wait... If it was a nightmare, why did everything hurt? There wasn't supposed to be pain in a dream, not really. This pain was far too vivid and severe. I could feel the sea water burning my cuts, the agonizing pain throbbing in my ribcage, in my ankle. I swallowed hard, reaching up to my arm, giving myself a sharp pinch, hissing at the pain there. I scrambled through the sand, breathing hard against both the pain and hysteria that was steadily building up inside me.

My chest suddenly felt tight, my breathing rapid and movements jerky and frantic. I scrambled to the water that was gently licking the shoreline. Further down the beach, I could make out small birds dancing in the wet sand left behind the waves, before the waves rolled back and the birds scattered with high-pitched shrieks. I cringed, quickly looking back into the water, crawling further in until it was around my hands and knees.

The waves were unnaturally calm given the horrid storm last night.

I started to go further in, hoping that going inside would wake me up from this nightmare when sharp pain shot up my arm and I gasped, jerking my hand out of the water, sitting back on my knees as I looked at my hand. A new cut, this one deeper than the last one, oozed blood in a steady rivulet down from the center of my palm and over my wrist. The pain there burned and I looked into the water to see the shells thrown there from the waves.

Oh my god.

This is real.

All of this was real. The pain was real. The storm, falling off the yacht, this island. All of it was actually happening.