When I woke up the first thing I felt was someone shaking me awake.

 

“Hey! Jack, is that you? Wake up buddy!” 

 

I wonder who that is…. Well whatever, I'm tired so it doesn’t matter. Leave me be…

 

“Hey idiot! Listen to me and WAKE UP!”, the speaker shouts directly in my ear. I jump up in fright at the sudden violent interruption and my forehead hits something hard.

 

“OUCH! Geez I know that was a bit loud but seriously you don’t have to be that surprised…” 

 

A man the same age as me stands up rubbing his forehead. Oh… 

 

“Oh!” I exclaim in surprise,” Matt?! Wha? Why….?” 

 

I trail off and sit up frantically looking around. Unfamiliar people surround us of all ages and genders, all seeming confused and scared, but nothing major had happened yet as most were still unconscious. The room, though more like an enormous rectangular cave than anything, was dark, cold and enormous with no clear ceiling or exit in sight. 

 

“Hey! It is you!” Matt pulls me in for an enthusiastic bear hug. He is very tall and athletic so his hugs are always death hugs, but I’ve always put up with it, he IS my best friend. Although due to us choosing different colleges we haven’t seen each other in a year so his enthusiasm is understandable.

 

“Hey buddy, Good to see you too.” he puts me down, “Where are we?” I ask. “I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere so strange…”

 

“I don’t know. Me and sis here were at home there was a flash maybe? I’m not sure….We must have been knocked out or something ‘cause we woke up but I don’t remember falling asleep.” 

I thought back, I felt slightly off, like my memory was missing a day but I still remember the last few days fine. Weird, it’s like a sense of inconsistency with no obvious cause. Ah I got distracted, oops. 

 

“I was packing my car for my camping trip today. There was a flash too, like blueish light or something, nothing after that though, sorry.”

 

“We woke up about five minutes ago I guess, well to be more precise she woke me up.” he gestured at his little sister Anna. She was small and had the same brown eyes and blond hair her brother did. They lived together with their mother but she was almost never home. I used to stay with them a lot before I moved out, so I knew a lot about them. I probably would have looked like family to the neighbors if it wasn’t for my black hair and blue eyes. 

 

Matt continued,

 

“We saw people starting to wake up but no one seems to know what’s going on. We were close to  you when we woke up so we  hoped that you could shed some light on the situation but from the looks of it you can’t.” 

 

Looking at the people here that was probably true. Everyone was panicking looking for people they knew or berating nearby people with questions. We hadn't been noticed yet since we were next to the wall in a corner at the end of the room/cave and we were pretty quiet in comparison to everyone else. 

 

Now that I’m looking there are way too many people here, at least four hundred, maybe five or six.

 

“What is this, mass kidnapping?”, Matt muttered.

 

“I don’t think it's possible to kidnap this many people at once Matt, besides why would anyone kidnap this many people?” 

 

I look up at Matt. He looks nervous, though he’s definitely keeping it in for his sister’s sake. Oh and before you think, you seem rather calm for a situation like this, you’re wrong. To be honest it hadn’t fully sunk in yet so I hadn’t started screaming yet I’m sure I’ll be panicking in a minute after the shock wears off. 

 

As if by design, just as that thought ran through my head a scream came from the middle of the cave.

 

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!”, a stout young woman yells angrily, while standing in front of a rather mean looking man. After further examination the woman was standing between the man and another person. A girl I think, younger and more delicate in appearance than the woman and likely the culprit of the scream just now, although that’s only a guess. 

 

“Hey I’m sorry if I scared ya pretty lady. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”, the man had a nasty grin on his face and clearly didn’t mean what he had just said. Great, nothing better than waking up in a strange creepy cave with no knowledge of how you got there and the first thing that happens is an idiot trying  to sexually assault some kid. Do some people only think with their dicks or do they do it because it somehow makes sense in their heads? Not to mention it makes him look like some imbecilic cannon fodder from a crappy movie. Sigh, I never thought I would ever see this scenario in real life, I cannot ever imagine being that interested in a girl, a kid no less, I’ve never seen women as that attractive.

 

 As my thoughts wander yet again the man seems to have made another jeer at the woman, to which she promptly responds with “FUCK OFF ASSHOLE”, or something similar, even louder than the girl’s previous scream.

 

The argument seems to have focused the entire vicinity on them, and as if trying to make the woman more angry, the Idiot, as I will now refer to him, tries to advance on the angry woman making a grab at her waist. This pushed the woman past her last glimmer of restraint as I witnessed the most amazing feat of violence I have ever seen, the woman yanked Idiot’s head with both hands and smashed his face down to her now raised knee. A crack sounded and echoed profoundly around the cave, which was now completely silent. Idiot toppled over face first unconscious blood leaking out of his nose.

 

HOLY SHIT. Wow. That was impressive. I think that deserves a standing ovation. Apparently not everyone thought the same thing as I did though. 

 

It was as if the floodgates had been broken open. By now most people had woken up due to the noise and mass panic ensued. Whether it was related to the magnificent (in my opinion) display of violence just now or the shock of waking in a completely unfamiliar place had worn off, people started screaming. There wasn’t much order to it, one person broke the silence first and the rest followed. I looked to my left at Matt who was comforting Anna, who was sobbing terrified, in his arms. Assuring her that everything was going to be fine with gentle murmurs he looked up at me clearly just on the edge of screaming himself, looking for help with his eyes. 

 

A second loud wave of screams and sobs stars around the cave carrying one singular meaning: Fear. 

 

As if it finally clicked in my mind that this was real, a wave of the emotion hit me like a bullet. I’m scared, no, I’m terrified.

 

“O-One second Matt.”, I manage to turn and crouch down facing the wall of the cave before taking a deep breath in and thinking to myself, ‘YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO BE AFRAID JACK!!’, I screamed. As loud as possible, like I was trying to breathe the fear out of me.

 

10

 

9,

 

8,

 

7,

 

6,

 

5,

 

4,

 

3,

 

2,

 

1.

 

I stopped and took another breath in. If you’re thinking ‘What the fuck was that man!?’ I sometimes have a sort of panic attack I guess. It feels like the world is crumbling around me and there is nothing but fear and helplessness. Weird right? Well it's damn scary when it happens so I developed a way to cope. Which was that. I have ten seconds to be scared and from then on I only think and feel about what to do next. It’s been surprisingly useful in many different situations and also why I’m usually very level headed and hard to scare. I like to think of it as having good emotional control. Anyway, I let my breathing stabilize as I turn to Matt and Anna and say.

 

“It’s not much but, here’s the plan."