[Somewhere in the future]

Limping towards the front of the scared group of bruised and fatigued strangers, I spoke trying to keep the pain of a possible fractured ankle away from my voice, "I understand all of you are scared. I get how much you all have suffered. Remember how far we have come. Understand why we are doing all this. We have come too far to stop now."

"What if we all die at the end anyway?" Someone asked from the crowd.

"Then at least, we wouldn't regret not giving our all when we could to change the outcome." I had to convince them to keep going because by this point, I knew our abductors were not going to go easy on us and none of us would survive alone.

#

[Present]

My head hurt.

That was the first feeling I realized when I regained my consciousness. My body lacked the energy to even move a limb but I needed to open my eyes. I needed to see what hard cold place my body was laying on. I certainly wasn't on my bed and I had to make sure if I was dreaming or not. I've always had a bad habit of dreaming about movies that I watched.

Gathering all the strength I could muster, I opened my eyes but shut them back up instantly due to the utter whiteness of the room I was in. It took me a while to get my eyes adjusted to the pallid room. Once focused I noted the room I was in to be stark vacant except for me and a plain white door on the opposite wall. I checked myself and realized I was in the same clothes I was wearing before, except that they seemed burnt at some seams.

It may or may not be a dream, but I had to get out of the room. I recollected my thoughts.

My sister's baby shower,

The cloud in the backyard,

The spotlight,

It all came back to me. I checked my pockets for my phone but I had nothing on me. All my pockets were empty. Of course, the kidnapper won't leave me with any way to reach out to my family. After recovering from the initial shock, I tried to gather energy enough to pick myself up from the white tiled floor and head for the door, hoping I wasn't locked inside. To my relief, I wasn't.

I turned the handle and for a split second waited to rethink about who or what could be on the other side of the room. But if it was a dream, what's the worst that could happen? I could lucid it possibly, I've done it before. And if it wasn’t, I still needed to get out of this empty room, I couldn’t stay here forever after all or wait for my kidnapper.

Taking a deep breath, in one go, I pushed the door open only to realize I was supposed to pull it open. A bit embarrassed and frustrated by the whole dramatic situation, I stepped into the next room, only to find it void of any living being as well, further confusing me.

This time the theme was grey. The cemented walls, the floor and the single door to the opposite of me. But this time, the room wasn't empty. There were two rows of steel tables on both sides. One covered with desserts as it seemed and other with savory foods and drinks. The aroma made my hungry stomach grumble and I realized how famished I felt. That could be the reason for my lack of strength. There was a steel cupboard in the right corner as well.

I chose to open the grey door, hoping I could come across someone on the other side, who could enlighten me to my current situation. This seemed a pretty realistic dream or maybe I was hallucinating. I wasn’t sure anymore. Just like the white door, this one was unlocked as well and I decided to not do the same mistake twice, I pulled the door open only to realize this one was supposed to be pushed open, making me huff in annoyance.

But all that was forgotten in an instant when I witnessed what lay to the other side of the grey door.

There wasn’t another room, neither a hallway nor corridor, no path even. The door opened directly into a thick jungle. The ground couldn’t even be seen due to weeds and herbs and shrubs, along with the lichens on it while all the rest of the thick foliage of trees blocked the sunlight from reaching the ground, though I could see it was day time. The environment was humid and warm. I could hear, birds chirping and sounds of many insects were audible as well.

This was all clearly my imagination. None of it was possible. I live in upstate New York, there was no way I reached Amazon, though I wasn’t sure if it was Amazon or not. Now I had two choices, either

to step out and find my way to I-don’t-know-where or

to feed me and then find my way to I-don’t-know-where.

I chose the latter since I knew my body was in no condition to wander in a dense forest alone, with a dehydrated and hungry stomach.

I needed to be cautious though, this could be a trap. This could be a test. What if the food was poisoned or worse amalgamated to render me unconscious and then... .so many worse scenarios got pictured in my head. Though the grumbling of my stomach and my impatient nature won over logic and I began gobbling down the delicious delicacies mouthful after mouthful in a hurry to leave before getting caught and also because I was hungry.

Afterward, I cautiously made a bee-line to the cupboard. To my good luck, it was unlocked. Opening it I saw a couple of pairs of garments, reminding me of my partially burnt attire, and disappointing me a bit.

What else was I expecting?

A corpse?

I don't know!

I looked around, trying to amateurly assess my surroundings for any hidden cameras but found none that I could recognize. I couldn't keep walking around in my burnt clothing that was slightly more exposing than I would be comfortable with. Thus choosing the thinner pair, I quickly decided to borrow whoever's clothes they were.

While changing I observed a black bag back at the bottom of the cupboard. Reaching it, I came to know it was empty, so impulsively it was decided to pack the delights set on the two tables, into the empty backpack and run as far away as possible.

So, I took every packable edible that I could fit into the backpack along with the other, thicker, pair of clothes and some fruit and butter knives, before stepping out into the unknown environment. To whomever, this place belonged, must've been a very weird person. Plus I don’t know how I even got there in the first place. But the person could be a psychopath for all I know and I wasn’t going to wait for them to show up.

I was also not the kind of person to be homesick, but I had started to think about my family. Clearly, it wasn’t a dream. Though the question of the strange spotlight still confused me. Maybe that part really was a dream. I kept thinking as I was ready to step out of the grey room.

Were my parents aware?

Were they looking for me?

Was there a search party on the lookout for me?

Did they get the police involved?

How were they going to ever find me here?

What can I do to give them a hint of my location?

After all, I hadn't come across any kind of technology so far, so what could I possibly do?

Though all the questions in my head came to an abrupt halt when I finally stepped out of the grey room on the soft humus-covered forest floor and took a few steps ahead. The two rooms suddenly started, as in an Earthquake, making me scream and step farther away, as I gawked at the sight in front of me.

The ground opened up and swallowed the two rooms whole and then slam shut making the surrounding foliage fall on the enormous crack and make it look like the two rooms never existed in the first place.

I was in utter shock. I had no idea what just happened. There was a multitude of emotions going through me and I certainly couldn’t think straight. To say that I was confused would be an understatement but more importantly, I was scared, no actually petrified would be a better term to express what I felt, alone in that forest, God knows how I got there and just saw ground engulfing two huge rooms, I was just inside of.

'What if I had stayed a little longer in the rooms?' I could be in my grave right now, that thought made me shudder involuntarily.

It took me fifteen minutes straight to gather my thoughts and decide what to do and where to go. Now I was glad for my choice of stuffing the bag-pack with food and clothes and knives that I found laid out on the table, might help me survive until I reach civilization.

Thus choosing a random direction,

My trek began.