He clawed his fingers against the stone walls, like a rabid animal seeking escape. The cold rough stone walls abraded his fingertips, and in his bewilderment he continued until it felt as if his fingernails would snap off. The abject darkness of the cell swallowed him whole. No light to be found it was as if the abyss that trapped him devoured any bit of light. He sat back, hunched over, his bloodied fingers clutched to his face as he wept into his hands. His intermittent sobs broke the air of the stolid room as he rocked himself back and forth, muttering in the vacancy of the void. Standing up, he pressed his hands against the cold walls, palms flat against the rough stone, and probed inch by inch, centimeter by centimeter, as his bloodied fingers probed crack, crevice, and mortared joint.

No shades of grey, no shapes formed, the darkness consumed his eyesight. The image of the darkness, one large globular mass, he never knew to be so black, so consuming. A feeling of emptiness washed over him, and closing his eyes there was a comfort in this, as if he were asleep, as if he were not really there, and this was all a dream.

In the onyx darkness he probed each nook, each minute crevice in the rough stones, searching for something, anything, other than the cold rock of his prison. As time passed, unknown to him, he found each corner, forming a square room, only four corners where walls join together. Through this search he found nothing, no door, no window, no entrance into the room.

He could not recollect how he came to this place, this dark dank prison, where darkness seemed to be his guard, the emptiness his warden, the stones his cellmates. He could not remember any events before his consciousness of the darkness, all he knew, was he was in a stone prison, with no way in, and no way out.

He probed the low hung ceiling, and could feel the disgusting slime of moisture clinging to the stones above. Looking for metal, a joint, a piece of wood, anything to signify a trap door, a hatch, an entrance. His greatest fear wasn’t his entrapment, but a lack of access. He realized if he could not escape, no one could enter, and that he was sealed within this crypt, as if buried alive in this stone tomb. He probed the darkness, he clawed the walls, he bloodied his fingers. The darkness, as black as coal, consumed him, it ate away at him, till nothing was left, but a bag of skin and bones, and a crazed laugh which echoed around the room, in the darkness.