DARK

The ominous rumbles and growls from her stomach, crushed under the weight of the huge slab of concrete holding her whole body pinned to the stone floor beneath her, was a clear sign to Kate Jackson that she was about to lose her long battle to hold in the contents of her bowels and over flowing bladder.
How she longed for the blessed relief of just letting go but the sheer terror of what might happen to her if she did forced her to fight against the suffocating panic bubbling in her throat.

It was no longer her dread of the shameful embarrassment she would feel when someone finally came to rescue her; lying stark naked in her own body waste. It was the blood curdling squeaking and the scuttling of tiny feet scurrying around in the pitch blackness of her tomb. Hungry rats searching for a juicy morsel to feed on; and the stink from her own traitorous body drawing them nearer and nearer.

Would they know instinctively that she was vulnerable; that they could gnaw on her succulent fleshy body, crawl deep inside the soft, cosy warmth of her exposed vagina or hold a banquet in her bowels? Would they know that she was helpless to stop them, that her numbed limbs, caked with dried blood and grime, were pinioned, like a meat sandwich, between cold hard stone?
“All things bright and beautiful … all creatures great and small ….. . Oh, God … where are you?” she whimpered. “Please don’t let your creatures eat me.”

Against her will, salty tears of self pity coursed from her eyes, trickling like tiny rivulets down the sides of her deathly white face and into her ears. They continued their onwards journey  to the warm crevices in the nape of her neck, seeping into the damp, matted hair that hung limply  around her dirty grazed shoulders.
The desperate need to raise a crushed arm; to brush away the abrasive irritation of drying salt and layers of dust and grime was almost too much to bear. The army of bugs dining delicately off her icy cold body paid no mind to the growling tremors from her constricted abdomen. Nor did they pay any mind to her feeble whimpers of protest as they crawled over her face; seeking warmth inside her dust filled nostrils.
The panic was mounting, surging and swelling out of control like a reservoir of water about to burst its banks.
Kate Jackson was trapped in a silent black tomb. The only sounds to be heard, the occasional whimpers that escaped through her tightly closed mouth, and scutterings of  hungry rats.
She thought she heard someone calling her name. She had thought that so many times since her tiny world had suddenly spun out of control. Since her apartment block had collapsed around her while she had stood naked in the shower.
Lying sprawled across her bed with the damp sheet entwined around her legs, Kate Jackson had been restless - the night was unbearably hot and sticky. The short cotton night-shirt she was wearing was sweat soaked and uncomfortable. It clung to her body like an itchy second skin as she padded across the bedroom floor - to breathe in some fresh air through the open window.
The blackness of the sky surprised her. Tthere was no moon and not a single star to be seen. Four floors below, the street lamp outside her apartment block cast an eerie yellowish glow over the dusty, rubbish strewn pavement. Somewhere in the distance a stray dog howled. In the still of the hot, airless night, Kate Jackson shuddered.
She turned and glanced at the clock on her bedside table – it was five minutes to three.
Taking a clean towel from her dresser drawer, she went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, stripped off her damp night-shirt and then luxuriated under the cool refreshing water, holding her arms high over her head as it cascaded all over her; washing away the sweat and stale body odours of the almost tropical night.

Without warning she was thrown to the floor of the shower.There was a deafening noise, like an express train hurtling through a tunnel, a huge flash of bright light – then nothing. A few seconds later, though to Kate Jackson, lying curled up in a terrified ball on the shower floor, with cold water still washing over her, it seemed much longer; the building began to rumble and shake. Slowly at first and then, as the sounds of smashing and crashing objects from the other rooms in her apartment assailed her stunned ears and pots and jars on the glass shelf almost flew across the bathroom – to smash into a thousand pieces on the hard ceramic floor tiles, the apartment was plunged into darkness and the building shook violently from side to side. Kate Jackson crouched as small as possible, wrapped her arms protectively around her head and screamed at the top of her lungs as huge chunks of concrete and plaster, from the ceiling above, rained down on her naked, wet body. Then there was another darkness. A blind, suffocating darkness that sucked at the air – drinking in every particle of moisture.

Kate Jackson had lain in her black tomb for thirty seven hours – buty she was unaware of time. She was unaware of anything as finally, exhausted from the effort, she released her hold on her bowels and, as the first rat sniffed tentatively at the congealed blood on her trapped legs; her sanity.