Reset

Jacqueline Druga RESET

ONE – Awakening

It is said, that in the moments before awakening, that an outside stimulus can be registered by the brain, therefore influencing the dream. A change in temperature, alarm clock, noise, anything can influence and invade the dream of the slumbering individual.

A dream lasts only a few moments.

That is what happened to Nora.

She was dreaming. An odd dream, she was on the beach with her two young daughters, yelling to her husband Rick not to let them go in the water.  It was too cold.

But, he allowed them and they went under.

Horrified, she raced into the water for her family, only to become engulfed by waves that felt thick, too thick. She couldn’t move, couldn’t swim, couldn’t breathe.

Nora was drowning.

A bright light passed over her eyes, the water changed from warm to cold and trying to gasp, she opened her eyes.

She had been asleep. But she wasn’t in bed, she wasn’t lying down. Her position, what was going on, was secondary to the fact that she couldn’t breathe.

Something was lodged somewhere between her throat and chest, and Nora coughed. Coughing wasn’t easy, because she couldn’t inhale enough air into her body to produce the cough.

Calm, she thought. Stay calm.

Using what little air she had remaining in her lungs, Nora gave it all she had. The object moved up to her throat and she went from unable to breathe to downright choking.

She was dying.

Suddenly, a sense of ‘release’ hit her and she fell face forward to the floor. In an attempt to stand, her body slid on the smooth cold surface. She pushed and pushed from her diaphragm and throat, but couldn’t clear the object. Surroundings fading, Nora, through her vision blurring, spotted a chair not far from her. She reached, gripped it, and after slipping once, stood and lunged her body full force, mid-section first into the back of that chair.

The object dislodged and she gasped for the much needed air.

Then she felt the horrendous pain to her stomach and chest. She broke a rib in her self-attempted Heimlich maneuver.

She caught her bearings and her breath, then she saw the object that came from her. It was thick, about the size of an egg and blue.  Clear and gel like, it looked as if she had choked on some sort of gelatin dessert.

After a very brief moment, reality set in. Choking done, breathing normal.

What was going on?

She was completely naked, and she shivered freakishly out of control. Her skin felt damp and she turned around slowly.

Behind her was an open glass door. It looked like it was attached to a closet in the wall. A panel of lights beside it blinked and more of the blue thick gel lay on the floor and in the encasement.

That had to be where she had fallen.

Where was she? Her mind felt full and in the fog, it took her a second to even remember who she was.

My name. My name. My name is Nora. I think. Is it? Nora Something. What?

It wasn’t a large room, but it wasn’t tiny either. More compact with space utilized to the fullest.

An unmade single bed, the sheets and blankets were folded and in bags on top. A desk and a chair, above the desk was a flat screen adhered to the wall. Next to the bed was a door that resembled something from a prison.

Against the other wall were two white doors and what looked like a chest of drawers, white as well, built into the wall.

Very clinical.

Very clean.

Her body still shaking, arms tight to her, she looked back to the small coffin closet.

Then she remembered…

Moving, on her back, rolling down a hall, white fluorescent lights blinking above her.

“She’s still awake,” a voice said.

“We don’t have time.”

“Should we hit her again?”

“No, it’ll kill her. It’ll kick in.”

Whatever they had given her made her unable to speak or move, she was drugged.

They moved her from that cart and placed her on something else. It wasn’t comfortable. She merely balanced on a thin metal rod that pressed against her back.

Nora wanted to cry out, to scream, to fight. But she couldn’t.

Something wrapped around her head, then her chest and waist. Leveled to a standing position, Nora was then lowered down.

The encasement.

She remembered the encasement and seeing that room before she passed out.