The Pole Barn

You don’t remember how you got here, just that you woke up on a dusty futon in a large empty garage with a slick concrete floor that you place your bare feet on as you jolt awake. Light is coming through the high windows on the one wall but you can only see tree tops swaying outside. You’ve never been here before but something feels familiar about this place. You try to recall what happened the previous night but you feel like someone played kickball with your brain then poured the gooey mess of gray matter back into your skull like a punchbowl. You’ve got a piercing headache and when you feel the base of your skull there are stitches there. You start to feel panic coming on.

You can’t remember anything before the moment you woke up and that’s when a cold animal fear metastasizes in your body, spreading slowly at first but gaining momentum, growing larger. You stand up but feel woozy and have to sit back down. You take a breath and try to remember your own name. Your name is _________. 

You start to panic.

“Take a breath,” you say aloud to yourself and your voice sounds unfamiliar like you're speaking from the bottom of a well. Your throat is dry and scratchy as if you’ve been screaming all night. You start to remember how you got here. 

Last night you remember the woods, thick and dark and alive and something was following you through them. You weren’t sure how you knew but you could feel something watching you. You saw nothing and no one. You were scared and muddy and barefooted. Then you came upon this place, a towering white pole barn in a clearing. You think you can remember a chopped wood pile next to the door and a single light on above the entrance. You remember running for the structure, not looking back, never looking back. Then you were stumbling inside and felt around in the dark and collapsed on the first soft thing which must have been this futon you are now sitting on. 

You look around. This is one of those big empty spaces with a concrete slab floor and framed in walls with aluminum siding. The walls are bare studs with batts of pink fiberglass insulation in between them, covered with plastic sheeting to hold the insulation to the wall. The ceiling joists are twenty feet above you and there are thin slit windows high up on one wall. There is a front garage door and a back garage door and a small regular door that you entered through last night to the right of the garage door. The place is totally empty except for a woodstove in the corner and the black dusty futon you sit on. You get up and feel wobbly on your sore legs. There is a small room in the corner near the futon. You go to it and open the louvered shutter door to find a toilet and a sink.

“What the fuck is this place?” you say aloud to yourself and then you feel your stomach churn. You flip open the lid to the toilet and vomit into the rusty water. It’s mostly bile. You wipe your mouth and turn on the tap to the sink and splash water on your face. There’s no mirror in the bathroom, you must look like a mess. You check your pockets but there’s nothing in them. Where did your phone go? Your keys? 

“Okay, don’t panic,” you say. You turn off the taps and dry your face with your shirt. You make for the exit door. You try the knob but it doesn’t budge. Locked. Cold fear creeps up your spine. You bang on the door. You run to the big garage door and try to lift it but it won’t move. It’s locked from the outside. So is the one at the back.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” You yell. You kick and pound on the back door with your bare foot and pain shoots up your toe and you hop around on one foot until you plop backward onto the futon. You hold your foot and feel yourself on the verge of tears. That’s when you hear it. A rustling sound. Something is moving around just outside. Not like a squirrel, something big. You look up at the windows but only see the swaying of tree tops and white sky.

“Hey, hello, is anyone there? I’m locked in here. Hey, is anyone out there?” you shout at the door.