Carson, the President of the Citadel Bank, laid facedown on a dirt floor.
He awoke with a deep breath that sucked in a mouth full of cool dirt. He gagged and hacked and spit it back. As he wiped the muddy saliva from his lips and teeth, he assessed his strange environment.
“Where the hell am I?”
It was dark. He was inside a closet sized room. A black heavy metal door towered over him. It had no handle but there was a small window. Light flickered through it. Carson wobbled to his feet and peered through the bars into a long black tunnel. It was empty except for the torches mounted along the walls.
In his former life Carson had power over people. He manipulated others with his money and his station. Now he was buried alone inside the Earth. There was no one to control.
He was defeated.
He slid down the solid metal door, to the floor. He pulled out a heavy gold pocket watch and read the time. The numbers were meaningless without the sky. He couldn’t tell if it was AM or PM. He wasn’t sure if it was today or tomorrow or the day after. He didn’t have enough information to do the math.
In the vault, time was relative. It didn’t connect him with the past. All he could do was count forward from the first day of his life in captivity and hope for human contact.
It would feel like an eternity.
John Picha was born on St. Patrick's Day 1968 in Joliet, Illinois. He was raised in Frankfort, a suburb of Chicago, but his mind always seemed to be elsewhere. The little Midwesterner was captivated by comic books, cartoons and animation, mythology and all things imagined. He made the world around him more exciting by pretending. A bicycle was a spacecraft, a bush became a dinosaur, and, of course, there was always a bath towel hidden away for a quick change into a super hero.
John is also the inventor of Thumbtraps for iPad and tablet gaming.
www.thumbtraps.com
If you’d like to learn more about John or to see his other work, you can visit him on the web.
www.takejohn.com
www.youtube.com/johnpicha
If you like to read more adventures of Pandora Driver, simply do a search for her in your favorite eBookstore or visit her on the web.
www.pandoradriver.com