You watched people in town
becoming ill,
lying in their beds.
You thought of yourself as healthy,
unable to catch the same disease.

Days later
the sickness comes upon you,
darkness taking your vision.
You later wake
starting into pitch black.

You begin to panic,
letting out a shrill scream
that is muffled in the space around you.
Your trembling hand reaches upward
finding a solid, ice cold object above you,
and you realize you cannot get up.

Frantically you begin pounding your fists
against the hardness,
trying to escape.
The solid surface does not budge.
You begin clawing at all sides,
feeling the agony of splinters
catching under your fingernails.

After what you believe to be countless hours of
useless efforts,
you can no longer breathe easily.
Struggling to hold on
you scream one last time,
praying for someone,
anyone,
to hear.

You pause and listen,
no one heard the scream.
Your consciousness begins to fade,
and you can hear an almost silent bell tolling
in the distance.

In the last moment of consciousness you realize
where you are,
and where you’ll be going.