Sealed Tight

My head hit a hard surface which was right in front of me!

"Ahhhhh!!!" The rebound happened as the guiltless head was pushed back to the ground. "Oww…Owww….Ow"

The pain from the forehead dozed me for moments as I listened to my own cry ringing in my ears.

"What the heck!?"

Remember the shade change in the black I mentioned earlier. A freaking ceiling had appeared inches above me!

And my voice that I heard just now? The sound was just bouncing back to me like I was in a closed space.

So I checked immediately with the hands and legs I had regained the control of.

The ground I was laying on? From the texture, it was a smooth floor, a wooden floor-board or a plywood. That was the feeling when I touched what was underneath me.

When I tried moving my arms and legs, they hit on all three sides around and their movements were restricted. The ceiling extended along with the floor from the head to the legs. And the sides also had walls restricting the space.

My nerves tensed due to the unknown, strange and dread-inspiring setting I had somehow fallen into.

The space was so limited that I could bend my legs only halfway, sitting up an impossibility. If there were another two persons my size cramped with me, we would be stuck for good.

Mysteriously I had a pair of shoes on but that wasn't going receive much of my attention.

I stretched my legs while crawling down and also found another wooden wall. When I crawled up, my head touched another.

'A box!?' Despite the darkness that seemed perpetual, one that made you wonder if your eyes had gone blind, I realized I was somehow in a box, a cuboid with its six sides closed by wooden boards.

And all 'WH' word crossed my mind. I couldn't fathom how I ended up here from my room. Who would even bother to do this to me?

If it were a situation created by oneself, maybe one could stay immobile even in a stressful position like this for hours. Like the times where I hid in a closet or underneath a sofa's cushions waiting to freak the hell out of an unsuspecting victim. They obviously had me sweating profusely and breathing heavily but I could wait.

However, to a situation where the whole thing was forced, one would constantly struggle to break out and get things back in control. Who wouldn't?

'Who freaking dared?' A righteous indignation it was, making an appearance in my heart.

I remembered what I was doing before that state of blankness. So even If I assumed that I had lost consciousness in between the transition of my awareness, how would I end up in this state? I would be in bed. My parents would wake me up, if the alarms failed. I couldn't imagine any person for that matter who would conspire against me.

With how good I was at coming up with multiple assumptions, it went from prank of someone, to a kidnapping, a trap, a test of patience….or maybe I was just dreaming, maybe not.

My mind and heart started to seethe with anger. Who would dare do this to me? But in the face of current dilemma I calmed down like I habitually did.

Even in the face of crisis, I do not panic, jump to conclusions, and make hasty decisions. I was the one, he who calmed himself down, checked oneself and the environment, came up with reasons to the happenings and made the most logical decisions and took the most reasonable actions.

This was me, a coolheaded person that never freaked out in face of sudden problems. I chose to be different than the common folk. So if this is a problem, I would analyze it and solve it. And by myself at that.

Just few years back when a sudden earthquake hit my school, all classmates and even teachers ran out from the classroom like headless chicken crying, screaming and stumbling among themselves while I calmly continued sitting in my bench finding the pillars and the ceiling as new subjects of study.

I was ready to get underneath the desk if I saw a hint of crack or jump out the window a floor down, while trying the rolling stunt that action movies demonstrated. Eventually the earthquake vanished dealing no harm.

Later the principal scolded each and every one for creating the panic, sparing not even the teachers. For dormant lands, we didn't have drills for such emergencies so it was expected. He said that we should have remained calm and in our classrooms anyway. You don't know how proud I was of myself back then.

'I have to find a way out.' I thought, trapped in the box. If it was really a dream, I had achieved a new level of insanity.

The box was just six pieces of wooden board put together, a discovery lacking visual confirmation but still predictable. If I was put in it, then there should be an opening while the joints would be the obvious weak parts.

But first, I knocked at the walls and the ceiling in an attempt to find hollow space behind any of them. To my surprise, it felt like the boards were so thick or the space behind was so compact that the vibrations from the knockings didn't pass through but just dampened at the surface. This made me really uncomfortable.

I started touching and examining everything that I could, everywhere, the edges and joints and the smooth surfaces hoping to find anything to break the puzzle.

And I found it.

The ceiling wasn't just a wooden board nailed over the edges of the wooden walls by a simpleton. It was a kind of a coverlid that was placed over the lower case.

How did I know? There was a continuous separation in the side walls, a detail found by sliding nail over the surface and discerning a very low bump at the separation. This implied that this enclosed box was originally two halves with open tops now placed one on another for containment.

'Then I just have to lift it up.'

So pulled my arms over to my chest and started pushing the two halves apart using my hands against the coverlid and my back against the base. Then every nerve fiber from the tip of my fingers to the back of spine and extending up to my lower jaws felt the synchronous pulsation of energy.

Simply pushing wasn't enough that the strength used started to increase until I had to grit my teeth and make shouts to release fullest energy stuck in every corner of every fiber in my muscles.

Even after I used all of my strength and the exhaustion hit me, the lid couldn't be moved by a single millimeter. 'How can the wooden coverlid be this heavy? I have lifted larger shelves.' I commented, lacking any excuse.

A little rest with heavy breathing was in line. When enough strength gathered, I tried again. This time I hit as hardly as I could hoping the impact would do the trick. But nothing.

The cover was either very heavy or it was bolted extremely well. Or maybe some heavy stuff was pressing over the box. My best physical strength was simply not enough.