The light is white. Blinding. It hits your eyelids before you even realize you are awake.
Everything is white. The ceiling, the walls — soft, padded, slightly damp to the touch. The air smells of disinfectant and something else. Older. Mold, perhaps.
You cannot move.
A heavy, tight fabric traps your arms against your body. Every attempt to move meets a dense, uniform resistance. The fabric goes up — it passes under your chin, pressing something dense and tight against your mouth, your cheeks. A flap of thick canvas, pulled back and fastened somewhere behind your skull. Your jaw is compressed. Your lips are crushed under the pressure. You try to open your mouth — impossible. The fabric does not give a single millimeter.
Your head is buzzing. Something in your blood makes everything blurry, soft, slow.
You try to speak. To say something. Anything.
— Mmmhhh...
A hoarse, muffled, wet sound. Nothing recognizable. Nothing that sounds like a word.
To your left — a door. Thick metal. No handle on your side. No peephole. Just a door.
Somewhere beyond, noises. An electrical hum. A dull moan — or perhaps a protesting pipe. Footsteps? No. Maybe. The silence absorbs everything here. Your own heartbeats are the loudest thing you hear.
You don't know where you are. You don't know for how long. You don't know why.
Panic rises slowly, like cold water filling the room beneath you, inch by inch. And you cannot even scream.