He put his palm over his eyes, then removed it. On. Off. On. Off. No difference.

He tried not to think about it. He had felt his head and there were no severe cuts, no tender bruising.

It’s just dark, he thought, chiding himself for panicking over nothing. It’s just really, really, REALLY fucking dark.

“Dee?” he called out, tenuously. “You there?” he said again, a little louder.

No reply.

He closed his eyes in exhaustion. He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep. Didn’t know what time it was, or how long he’d been stuck amidst the rubble. He tried to think. Anything to take his mind off the weight crushing his back, his trapped, possibly broken, limbs. Okay, think dummy, let’s figure out what time it is. Let’s keep it under control.

His mouth felt like sawdust, his hobbled tongue fattened with swelling, an engorged leach stuffed between his cheeks. His broken nose was throbbing and clogged. C’mon, Matthew, he thought. Focus.

He took a deep breath, let it out, and tried to think.

The interview was Monday at 10 A.M. He figured he’d been stuck in the rubble for at least twelve hours. Not knowing how long he’d been asleep, it might have been longer. His watch was on the arm which was jammed and trapped, and he wouldn’t be able to see it anyway, not in the dark. His phone had been in his attaché, and for all he knew it was sitting right next to him, but he didn’t think so. He thought it was buried elsewhere, his phone likely vibrating stupidly underneath a hundred pounds of rock and steel, the “smart” technology inside too stupid to know how useless it was.

So let’s assume it’s midnight. That felt right to him. He was tired, and it was cold. He realized, with some surprise, that he wasn’t hungry. Likely because my stomach is being squeezed to the size of a grape, he thought, praying again that his organs weren’t permanently squished to jelly.

“Dee?” he croaked, the word coming out as if he had a lisp, more like “Thee” due to his swollen tongue and dry throat. He wondered why rescue crews hadn’t come yet. He strained to listen, but heard... nothing. No alarmed voices. No sirens. No vehicles or bullhorns. No help.

Nothing at all. It was as if he was deaf as well as blind. Complete and total sensory deprivation. Except for the pain, of course. There was that. The cramping of muscles stuck in the wrong configuration for too long, the spasms shooting up his spine, his broken mouth and bent nose, all reminders that he was alive, that he was a physical being.

And don’t forget about the rats, Matthew, a small, high-pitched voice said inside his head. The rats are REAL, oh yes, boy-o, they’re very real, and very, very hungry.

Matthew shook his head, clearing the voice away. He began to whimper, fear and panic surging into his body once more. He tried to tamp it down, to think of something else, anything else.

Kelly, another voice said from deep inside his head, a different voice this time. A kind voice. Think about Kelly and Diane. They’re home, they’re worried about you. They’re coming for you.

“Yes, of course,” he croaked. “They’re coming.”

He thought about little Kelly. It wasn’t that long ago he first learned to smile, then to laugh. His sweet baby’s laugh that sounded like heaven, that gave you chills and let you believe the world was good, that life was good.

Life is good, he heard the other Kelly’s voice the dead Kelly saying in his ear. Don’t forget that you’re a very lucky guy. Now why don’t you stop bitching and try to help yourself out of here, eh boy-o?

Matthew nodded to the voice, took two deep breaths, steeling himself. His confidence growing and, knowing he would be losing more and more strength as his body tired, felt a renewed determination to do something, anything, to better his situation. To fight against this twist of fate he’d been so savagely dropped into.

He decided to free his arm.

He held his breath, allowed his mind to feel its way down the length of his trapped limb. He began the process by wiggling his fingers, just to see how much room there was. Only his pointing finger could move at all. He let out the breath he’d been holding, nodded to himself.

“All right, all right,” he said, and started to rotate his shoulder. First to the left, then to the right. If only I could see, he thought angrily, but kept at it. Left, then right. Left, then right. The pieces of the demolished building moved like dry gristle, and he blew away the puffs of dust and grit that fell onto his face, into his eyes and panting mouth.

After working his shoulder around a few minutes, he couldn’t tell if the arm was any looser or not. Damn.

Time to try pulling.

So he pulled, and twisted, and wiggled his finger. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and he began to breath more heavily. He smelt his own foul breath, tainted with blood and bacteria. He closed his eyes, tried to feel the debris loosening throughout his stiff shoulder and down the length of his arm. It’s not MOVING!

He growled in frustration and was suddenly enveloped in a red-hot, crashing rage. He was no longer gently twisting and pulling, but yanking his shoulder toward him, his fingers twitching in spasms at the end of his blind limb. He spat and cursed as tears fell from his eyes and he yanked harder, then harder. He was panting too quickly, could feel saliva mixed with old blood leak down his chin. His nose throbbed and his eyes were squeezed shut as he pulled with everything he had.

He felt the seam of his suit coat rip above his shoulder blade, and his arm, miraculously, felt a little less restricted. With renewed hope and vigor, he began to try and yank his bare arm through his coat, letting the fabric catch on whatever rock and metal were restricting him. Two of his fingers were moving now, then three. He could rotate his wrist and he felt that if he could slide it backward, into the coat sleeve, he might be able to slip it through.

“C’mon, c’mon!” he snarled through gritted teeth, because his arm felt just as stuck, as wedged, as it had been only moments before.

He stopped, breathing heavily, the frustration boiling over him like a heat rash.

“No... no... NO!” he yelled. “NO! NO! NO!”

Then he tugged, just as hard as he could.

The jacket ripped at the shoulder. There was a sharp crack and something slid, and something broke, like a pane of glass smashed with a hammer. Scared, he jerked frantically and, to his surprise, his arm slid free. Hysterical, he pulled it toward him as if bitten. In his quick jerking movement, his hand caught on a thick dagger of protruding glass, sharp as a razor, that caught the crease of his hand just beneath his wedding ring and punched through the finger, tearing it halfway through, just above the knuckle. Shocked, he froze. He could feel the finger dangling, the blood pulsing from the wound like a garden hose that had been stopped up by a crick, then suddenly loosened.

A second later the pain caught up, ripping through his cushion of shock like a flamethrower, shredding his mind with the stabbing thrusts of a thousand knives. He screamed, and the echo of his scream died in front of him, absorbed by the indifferent dark. His mind raced with pain and panic, terrified he was losing too much blood. He knew he had to free his arm, to somehow stop the pulsing blood from emptying through his torn finger. The glass was still caught in the webbing of his hand, part of his finger still hung by a tendon to his body. He could hear the dangling clink of his wedding band tapping the glass shard as his finger swung dumbly.

He screamed again and, with a last violent burst – eyes bugged out and wet lips curled in preparation of doing what no man should ever have to do – he let his mind slip into momentary madness, and pulled.

The finger caught, stretched... then ripped away.

His hand was free.

Sobbing through screams, he pulled his arm, gingerly now, though the ripped sleeve. He rolled his body as much as he could, desperately trying to get his arm out of the coat, the remainder of it thumb-tacked into his back, like a pin in a cushion, by the weight on top of him.

Feeling slightly dizzy and severely nauseous as more and more blood pulsed out of his body with every passing second, Matthew slid his arm from the torn sleeve.

He brought the mangled hand to his face, as if hoping to see the damage. He could see nothing, not even a shadow. He moved the hand even closer, hoping to get at least a sense of how bad it was, when a squirt of warm fluid shot from the jagged hole at the base of his non-existent finger and sprayed his lips.

Spitting and crying, he reached around with his other hand, managed to pull the white square-folded handkerchief from his breast pocket. He flapped it open and pressed it against the wound where his gold wedding band had once rested. He lowered his head to the blood-drenched concrete and wailed, the pain nearly unbearable. The blood had soaked through the cloth and he knew it wasn’t nearly tight enough. He removed it, felt the chilled air coating the wound, and then re-wrapped the blood-soaked handkerchief around his hand again. He couldn’t tie a knot, but managed to tuck the loose end into the cloth to keep it tight.

His hand pulsed and twitched, but he thought, perhaps, the flow was slowing. He pressed the wound hard against his chest, trying to apply as much pressure as he could.

“Don’t let me die, please don’t let me die,” he whimpered, and saw twinkling lights frying at the edges of his vision. God, don’t let me die, he prayed, and then closed his eyes and dropped his forehead to the cool, slick concrete. With his injured hand clamped beneath him, his eyelids fluttered, and he passed out.

“SIR? SIR? YOU there?” An insistent voice.

Matthew stirred. His head felt like an anvil that had been well-used. Recently.

His eyelids were gummy. His mouth a thick, rough hollow in the bottom of his face that inhaled the oxygen his brain needed to let his body know how good and truly fucked it was.

“Matthew?” the voice came again, more apologetic, questioning.

Matthew groaned, turned his head, opened his useless eyes.

“Dee?” he said, his voice a croak.