My hands were fixed, legs pinned. I could feel the flesh of my arms against my body. I swung. Swam. Spun. I could feel.

Pain.

I woke up to it, the power of it unplugging the comfort of unconsciousness. Pain in my head: deep, throbbing, uncompromising pain that beat my skull from the inside, pushing brain against bone. My head felt full, as if it were filled with blood. As if it would burst. Pain in my back. A long, searing, tearing along my spine, flaring out across my ribs, gripping my stomach. My shins, calves, thighs burned. Pain so bright it had colour. Pain so hard I could see it.

Light.

Swinging, reeling in stark, brilliant white light – orbiting a blinding sun. Out of the light, colour. Infinity. Swirls of brilliant shapes merging, locking, shifting. The colours deepened with the thud-throb in my brain.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

I could hear.

Sound.

The anvil-song of metal striking metal, an undifferentiated, resonating peal that rang with the monstrous timbre of tolling sunken bells.

But with echo, distance. And with distance, time. I was in the world.

I was.

Sweat crept up my torso, dripped into my nose, ran up my legs. My carotid artery bulged in my neck. The sound of blood roared in my ears. My tongue lolled on the roof of my mouth.

I came to with a rush of realization and nausea and opened my eyes. My hands were tied behind my back. My legs were bound at the ankles. My ankles were fastened to a twist of rope. Back and forth, back and forth: my body swung upside down between two metal walls like a bleeding, lurching pendulum.

With a start I crunched my abdomen and brought my head up towards my legs. The effort was crippling. I couldn’t hold myself up for more than a few seconds, but it was enough to see how well fixed my feet were. I collapsed again, the abrupt jolt on the rope jerked my head back and pulled at my spine. The movement interrupted the flow of my swing and twisted the rope. I relaxed and let myself go limp and looked around, spinning and swaying on my own axis.