The Hold - Description

Dark. Dank. Hot. The humid, musty darkness swallowed their spirits. So this was where they were to be held. As their eyes adjusted to the lack of light, they made out a wide strip of pale yellow on the ground against the left wall. Mattresses! Thin foam, to be sure, but mattresses nonetheless. After their rides in the getaway vehicles, a lie-down sounded like a good idea… if they could bring themselves to relax in a place like this, with their captors able to burst in on them at any moment through the sole door behind them. And just beside that door sat… a bucket. Oh, dear. So this was captivity. They secretly all harbored the hope that the other captives were as modest as themselves and would allow them some privacy to do their business. But what kind of privacy could be afforded in a single, concrete room containing over twenty hostages? And ugh, these walls! Those on the outskirts of the group, closest to the walls, were avoiding coming into contact with said cement surfaces – mostly because the originally gray cement was dotted and splattered with darker colors – was that mold? And that, blood? To add to the misery of their surroundings, there was a pervasive odor of urine – more perceptible to those standing in the vicinity of the walls. Had there been previous captives? Had they been denied a bucket? More importantly, where were they now? Was there a way of escape from four windowless concrete walls with one single door leading to a downstairs passageway potentially filled with their captors?