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Description
Wake
Wake. I hear nothing, see next to nothing and can feel only the chill that drains the soul.  My senses are stripped an only reaction remains.  Thoughts race, too fleeting to fully recognize with the consumed nothingness that surrounds me.  Can't stop to think, decisions are not made, they only happen. Beyond thought is nature, the nervous system rules and the reversion to the wild is complete.
Nothing matters, only escape. Anything for freedom from the shackles of deathly cold.  Hope is gone, logic is the betrayer and all that remains is the primal drive for escape. As I come to the top of the steps, a place timeless and far removed from our reality.  I am confronted with a blackness, impenetrable and imposing as a curtain of ice.  I walk along the hallway, the dark is enveloping, from instinct I must discern my surroundings and make my way.  As I enter the dampness from the previous night engulfs me, clogging the air, the room is claustrophobic.
I have no thoughts of the future, no concept of anything outside myself, this dark wasteland has secluded me from every other human being.  Empathy, love, hate, these words have no meaning for me; such abstractions of the human psyche fall away in the face of fear.  It is insidious, acting as a parasite, stripping us of our structured, civilized selves and leaving only the visceral savage that hides in us all.
I enter the small room and am saturated by the heavy air.  I reach for the light, but the room stays dark.  The pounding of my blood and shallow breaths resonate as the only sounds in the universe.  Thrust aside the veil, pull, no push down, a quick spurt of life escapes the head.  A clattering of warmth challenges the deafening silence.
I have been stripped to the core, my essence is bared and I can only be.  To complete the process I shed my last remaining defenses.  I seize up as the final rush of air slams into my bones, I am shaken violently as the enraged ocean shakes the lonely schooner.  My nerves raw, my body broken, I stand a completely empty being, ready to be reborn.  The hiss of no animal sounds and the thickening air clouds the room.  Mustering from the depths a strength thought departed, I lift myself into the cell.