Ash I woke up in complete darkness. The walls and floor dripped with a blackness that was unspeakable. It was like an inescapable, oozing mass. And, to make matters worse, accompanying that dreadful darkness was a silence like none I had ever experienced in my entire existence. It screamed in my face, taunting and teasing me. I just wanted to run from it, to hide from it, but alas I could not. Something was preventing me from doing so. By something, I do not mean a guilty conscious, nor do I mean any other form of emotional tie. I was literally bound to something, and assuming by my anatomical position and the feel of the object beneath me, I concluded that it was a chair: Not one of those squishy, comfortable chairs, but instead, one of those hard, wooden, unforgiving ones that make your ass hurt after you sit upon them for even a short elapse of time, and judging by the way my ass throbbed, I had been in my certain predicament for a long passage of time now.