He woke within a drumming pain inside his head and so knew that he’d been overtaken in the struggle. His ankles like his wrists were bound too tightly, and aching, crusting wounds along his left side left him rigid and unmoving just as surely as would any bindings. Silently he breathed, listening in between for company or solitude but wasn’t sure enough by what he knew. So with his eyes still shut he studied his surroundings by its scent and sound.
Cold and moist, a basement likely, green moss and black mold and mildew filled his senses. Through the reddened focus of his eyelids he could tell there was a window and that it was day. Strains of music came filtered through an occasional car that sped on by. The country then; they’d taken him far out of the city. A single mockingbird, with enough experience to mimic all the warbling and sweet chirps insisted instead on cawing like the crow. Sure now, he opened his eyes in acceptance of the hopelessness of where he was.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology