ETERNAL DAMNATION

BY:

TOM SCHAFER

What manner of a dream is this? William Bradford thought as he lay still in a shroud of darkness. The black shadow that hung over him left him no room for vision; In fact, he thought for a moment that he may be blind. As he lay trying to grasp his surroundings, a cold chill swept through the darkness and crept through his veins. He would have shivered if he could have, but he was taken aback by the sudden realization that he could not feel the blood that should be pushing through those same vessels at this moment. That knowledge should have sent his heart leaping through his chest, but instead came nothing.

"Where am I?"

As the words left his lips, he realized that no breath had escaped from his lungs with them.

"You are only dreaming." William told himself, but as he tried to force himself awake, a sound echoed over his head.

Shwoop-fwugh, Shwoop-fwugh. Shwoop-fwugh.

William recognized the chorus playing above him, or at least, he knew he should recognize it. He had heard that sound before; He knew that he had, but he could not remember where, or even when.

The soft rain of unidentified noise continued above William as he frantically began to search his mind for answers. Where am I? What is going on? Who am I? As that last thought rang out, William’s body forced itself upwards. Thick wood resisted it after a few inches, and the sound of a man’s voice came through as William slumped back onto the pillow that he realized had now been propping up his head.

"What the hell?" The man’s voice shouted. William could barely hear it, it sounded like someone shouting from downstairs in his mansion.

Mansion? What mansion?

William cut his mind off before it had the chance to produce more unanswerable questions. Instead, his hands reached out to his sides and above him, feeding him the necessary information about his surroundings. He was encased in a thick wood, and it did not take his mind long to deduce the measurements. He was in a coffin.

"He’s not dead!" William heard the muffled voice shout out from above. As the voice shouted, a strange-but somehow familiar- pain shot through his abdomen. It filled his body with an urgent need to escape this trap, to slay those who had set it, to taste their blood as it poured from their wounds.

Who am I?

William’s thoughts escaped him, replaced by a rage that he could not remember, yet somehow could not forget. His fists balled into fleshy hammers and he began to pound upon the wooden crypt above him, smashing it to pieces as his rage and confusion grew.