Slowly coming to from what feels like the deepest sleep of my life I'm met with the sound of subtle breathing and a dull heartbeat from inside my own body. In a deep lingering malaise I find myself struggling to move, my limbs not responding to my commands as I lay in the oppressive darkness.
As I lay there, unable to move or see through my closed eyes, I find my hearing becoming more and more attuned to my environment.
The cawing of birds breaks the silence almost immediately, the cries being so loud that I would be wincing if I could. Between the bouts of violent screaming from the far off birds I begin to hear more sweet and melodic chirping from those feathered friends that I by far preferred in my dreary waking state. They sound somewhat familiar, however, I just can't place them. It is as though they were some attempted recreation of bird calls I knew from memory, something I think I recognize but are just strangely off.
Listening to the sounds around me I hear one that sends chills down my spine, the loud buzzing and chittering of some inspect causing my hairs to stand on end. It sounded either small and very close or massive and far away, both of these options filling me with dread.
With my mind slowly becoming more aware to the waking world around me I hear the rustling of leaves and the creaking of branches all around me. It had been quite a while since I'd lived anywhere with any real foliage, my room at my childhood home being the last place with a tree all that close to my bed.
"Where am I?" I think to myself, once again trying to move but finding my body simply lagging behind my thoughts and refusing to leave what bed I had found myself in.
Despite not knowing exactly where I was, the sound of the heavy leaves and bending branches helps to soothe and belay my fears. The nostalgia of camping trips and sleeping under the stars doing its part to keep me even somewhat calm in the circumstances.
My heart leaps in my chest however as I hear the sound of movement nearby me. While muffled by some sort of wall, the sound of soft chatter and footfalls in the nearby dirt easily reach me. As someone that lives alone hearing strangers this close to my bed would have normally been enough to make me leap out from under my covers in shock. However, even with my heart hammering in my chest I still feel my sluggish body refusing to respond further than rolling over slightly.
As I shift in the bed I feel something beneath me, some sort of rough padding against the hard ground that evoked mental images of foam roll out camping beds. Despite the similarity I would have killed for a foam mat here, the one I found beneath me lacking the general softness and smoothness of the foam. It prickles at my skin as I roll, whatever fabric it was made from disagreeing with me as I lazily moved about.
The sound of movement nearby only grows, more feet and voices becoming added to the soundscape around me as my panic only grows. Had they always been there? Was I only just noticing them now as I became more attuned to my surroundings? the thoughts wrack my increasingly worrying mind until it reaches a breaking point.
Suddenly, it all comes back to me. The storm, the lightning, the man in the street, and my neighbor's apartment. The adrenaline pumping through me at the thought of my last real memory appears to rouse my body from its tired state, allowing me to roll slightly further and off the 'soft' sleeping mat.
Despite the extremely short fall the impact causes me to wake up even more, my eyes shooting open as they adjust to the dim lighting around me.
"Where...am I?" I groan and cough, my voice so crackly and hoarse it isn't even recognizable as my own. "Is this...a rescue camp or...something..."
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