Fade to Black
by Alyssa Lopez

              I wake up from a deep, dreamless sleep with a headache, not remembering what happened. What time is it? Where am I? It feels cold wherever I am. I cannot see. It is pitch black all around me. I cannot even see my own hand in front of my face. It is almost like I am blind, as if I was never able to see in the first place. I am afraid that may be that is what I have become, but I stand and stretch my arms carefully out and feel nothing. I walk two steps forward and I feel cold, damp dirt. I follow the dirt around and it feels like I have gone in a complete circle and the cold, damp dirt is my wall.
               Now the damp dirt is all that I can smell and I can just sense that I am in a hole. I am in a deep, dark, damp, cold hole. How or why did I get in a hole? I look up. It is pitch black as well. I cannot distinguish if the darkness above me is a door shutting me in or the sky without stars. I feel so scared. My head starts spinning and my heart starts racing, I need to find a way to get out of here. I sit down in my dungeon and I try to remember how I got here or why I am here.
               I remember being with my friends at my apartment in San Diego entertaining them with movies, food and non-stop stories and Christmas jokes of laughter. That was a great night. All our men were at a hockey game. When they got back at 9:00pm, everyone left and my man and I turned off the lights, got ready for bed and fell straight to sleep. I do not remember anything after that. My memory shuts down. Was I kidnapped in my sleep? I feel too cold to recall any more. I touch my clothing to figure out what I am wearing. It feels like my black, laced shirt with my thin, black sweater and my black jeans with the heart on the back right pocket. My shoes feel like they are one of my many pairs of converse, probably the black ones. Odd, these were not the clothes I was wearing the day I hung out with my girls and I definitely recall changing into my pajamas before I went to sleep. So, that was not the night before I came here, it was a different time. The cold knocks me into another deep, dreamless sleep.
               When I wake up this time, it is still pitch black, I am still in my dirt dungeon, but now there is a thin, rectangular shape bulge in my front, right pants pocket. I reach in and it is my phone. I quickly click it on and slide it unlocked. Light glows from it and I cheer for excitement that I am not blind. To my surprising relief it has a signal. I dial 911 and listen to the ring that just makes my breath breathe anxiously. A lady with a gentle, friendly voice finally answers after what seems like 50 rings, calmly asking me what my emergency is. I tell the friendly voice everything from the time I woke up and found I was in the hole, to finding my phone randomly in my pocket. It is like whoever kidnapped me wanted to get caught.
               The lady says she is tracing my phone call and finds I am in Santa Cruz near some beach, but the trace will not give her any more information, not even the name of the beach. She tells me to stay on the line while she calls the authorities. Tears start dripping down my cheeks and emotion flows through my veins, emotion that I cannot explain.
               A memory like a picture clicks into my mind. I remember me dressed in a grey, glittery shirt and my black and green short, plaid skirt with black stilettos on my feet. I am on a dance floor with my man, dancing the night away. Christmas colors shine on the dance floor. The memory fades and the lady comes back on the line. She tells me authorities will be searching every beach and to call if I remember anything else. She takes my name and number and information to contact my boyfriend, friends and family. When I get off the phone, I look at the glowing screen and the date does not register. The two memories that come to my mind are both from December 2008. That is the last month I remember outside of this hole, but my phone says May of 2009. I start feeling light headed, drop my phone and fall into another dreamless sleep.
               When I wake up for the third time, my skin is ice cold and my teeth are chattering. I reach my hand out to get my phone, but it is not where I had dropped it. I get onto my knees and start searching for it. I find something, but it is not my phone. It is my keys being held underneath a small rock. What could I possibly do with my keys? Why would the kidnapper give me my keys? I no longer have my phone. This person is just messing with me and I am never going to get out of here. I scream and roll up into a little ball cussing my lungs out because there is no possible way that the authorities will ever find me. I am stuck in this damp hole with hope dissolving with every breath I take and every chill that shivers down my spine.
               I am lost and no one will be able to find me until my body is crippled, pale and frozen in this stupid hole. I feel that I am going insane and grab my keys and throw them against my dirt wall. I suddenly hear the keys hit something above me. A memory waves through my mind. I remember on December 28th, 2008 my boyfriend had bought me this heart-shaped, magnet keychain, from a market that he had passed through one day coming home from work. He said he had thought of me when he saw it and wanted me to have a pretty keychain, instead of an old rusty one. Right away I put my keys on it and told him whenever I saw it, I would think of him. We smiled, hugged and he kissed me on my rosy cheeks.
               That day I was in complete winter clothing. I wore a long sleeved red, white and black shirt with my puffy black jacket covering me like a blanket, a silver scarf that my sister, Reyna, had made me one year, my faded black jeans and my soft, warm, blue boots. My memory ends there and I look up, realizing there is a metal door shutting me inside. Is there a chance that I can get out? Does my kidnapper want me to get out? I try to relax and think of how I can get up to the door, but there is nothing to climb up. Before I can go any further with my thoughts, my eyes roll back into my head and a nervous, shaken feeling tingles through my brain and I faint.
               The fourth time I wake up, almost hoping it is the last time I wake up, I already assume my keys are not there anymore. Even if they were still here, I could not get to them. After all this time that I have been stuck in this place, I have not once had a taste of food or a drink of water. I have had nothing and I have no idea how long I have been here. I do not smell either. I have not had a shower for days, maybe even months and I still smell soap fresh. I just realized I have been able to survive without food. I once heard on the news that you can survive for seven days without anything to eat or drink. Has it only been seven days or less? It has felt like forever, especially when I had my phone. The date had shown that it was four months later from the last month that I remember. I shake off the feeling of emptiness in my stomach and I stand up and I start to walk around because my legs are sore from sitting down so much.
               I trip over my feet and fall into the wall, but it is not just the wall that I fall into. It is a rope-like feeling that rubs against my arm. I feel it even more and find that it is a rope-like ladder. A ladder! A ladder to get to the door! That is really exciting, so I just start climbing right up. This is what the kidnapper left for me. Is all this real?
               When I reach the top, I feel around for a latch to open the metal door that locks me inside. A memory rings in my head. I hear bells chiming tunes. Christmas tree smells are still in the air, yet it is not Christmas. It has just passed. It is New Years Eve. I am wearing my black, laced shirt with my thin, black sweater and my black jeans with the heart on the back right pocket. I am wearing my black Converse, just as I am wearing now. I am with my family; parents and siblings, some friends, their men and my man. We are all chatting and laughing about the past New Years’ that we have all had and the one that is coming up next. Everyone is just so happy, everything’s so perfect. We are all at a hotel on the beach in Santa Cruz. We always travel somewhere different for New Years. That night, we ran out of drinks and everyone decides to select my man and I to go out and buy some more. All I can remember is walking into the store and then everything disappears.  
               As soon as that memory drops away, I find the latch and find the strength to lift it up. Before it is lifted all the way up, I can already taste the cold winter weather and feel the breeze against my face. Right when the light hits my face from the outside, it abruptly is hard to breathe and I am struggling for air to fill my lungs. I open my eyes and air magically fills my lungs, I am now able to breathe. I find myself lying on a bed, in a white walled room, with an I.V. attached to my left hand. I feel relieved to find my walls are not dirt and that I can see. I look to each side of me. On the left is a door and machines regulating my heart beat and on the right is a window. The window is slightly open, sending a freezing, cold breeze that wraps around my body. I lift up my right hand and there is an I.D. tag with my name; Leslie Sky Ledesma and the words Santa Cruz Hospital on it.
               I am confused. A lady in a nurse’s outfit walks into my room. She smiles at me and brings a tray of food and a cup of water and ice to my side. She asks me in her gentle, friendly voice “How are you doing sweetie?” The confusion continues. Where have I heard that voice before? She tries to make me feel comfortable by telling me that my family will be very excited that I am finally awake. She tells me that she is going to go and get them.
               I stop her and ask her “What happened?” She explains that it would be better if my parents told me. Those words hit me so strong with a warm, loving sensation. She smiles at me, touches my arm, turns around and walks towards the door and moves out so quietly. My mind whirls.
               I sit up in my bed and see flowers in pots of dirt all around my room. It smells like they just were watered. On the right of me, there is a table with my phone. I pick it up, click it on, slide it unlocked and read the date. It says May 28, 2009. I also see that I have had about 1,000 missed calls. I accidentally rattle the metal railings from moving around that are perched up on my bed. I see something hanging from the right railing. I grab it and it is my keys, with the heart shaped magnet keychain attached. I smile at it, thinking of my man, Jeremy Rayz, as I promised to him and wonder where he is right now.
               I am almost certain I know what happened to me, but need reassurance from the people that were with me the night before my struggling to get out of my dungeon-like trap. Minutes later I hear a stampede of footsteps coming down the hospital floors. There comes in a line of my mom, dad, Reyna, Adam, Jeremy, three of my friends and their boyfriends. They all ask how I am and tell me they are so glad I am awake and that they love me so much. As soon as I get the chance to talk over all of their excitement, the very first two questions that I ask is what happened to me and how did I get in the hospital.  
               They re-describe the last memory I had before I opened the metal door that was locking me inside the hole. They tell me that I had forgotten a gift card that Jeremy and I could pay with for the drinks, so I went back to the truck to get it while Jeremy started picking out what we wanted to buy. Jeremy says I was out at the truck for 10 minutes and he got worried so he went to go see what I was doing. Our truck was right out in front of the store, so it should have only taken me five minutes tops to get it and come back in the store. He found me lying on the ground bloody and unconscious with a million people gathered around me. A witness tells him that it was a hit and run and that they had already called 911 and that they are on their way. Jeremy held me so tight until the ambulance arrived and stayed with me until I was hurried into the ER.
               I was hit by a drunk driver in a giant van. They caught the guy an hour after I was rushed to the hospital. No one knew if I was going to make it. I immediately turned paper white in the ambulance and ice cold and blood was rushing from my head and my side and the bruises had started to appear. I had broken my ribs, my right arm, and my right leg and hit my head pretty hard on the truck door. There was a huge dent on the truck to prove it. After the doctors had patched me all up, they told my family that there was nothing more that they could do and that I had slipped into a coma. Everyone believed that I was going to wake up from it, while the doctors did not have a good feeling about it. I have been in the coma for four, almost been five months.
               I go into a trance and I begin to remember everything about that night. I remember telling Jeremy that I did not want to pay a whole bunch of money for drinks and this is the perfect time to use the gift card. It was a $50 gift card that my brother, Adam had randomly given me as a Christmas present. Who could pass that up? I am very determined to go back, as I always am or stubborn as everyone else calls it. I walk to the truck, open the door and get the gift card.
               As I turn to shut the door, I catch myself in the mirror and fix my hair, it was blowing everywhere from the winter cold wind. I shut the door and lock it. Before I can even take a step I hear a loud screeching noise and see a van coming right at me. The van hits the truck and nicks me pretty hard into my ribs and crashes me into the truck. The van continues tumbling over the parking stops in the parking lot and keeps rolling out to the street and then it is gone. I watch it roll away from me as I lay on the ground. I see people running towards me and someone shouting to call 911. Everything gets so fuzzy and my breath is fighting to stay and then everything gets black. The only thing I remember after that, before waking up here in the hospital, is waking up in the deep, dark, damp hole.
               Everyone starts calling my name, “Leslie! Leslie!” to get me out of my daze, afraid I would slip into another coma. I just begin to tell them about my cold, deep, dark, damp, dirt, dungeon-like hole that I was trapped inside. I know now that the memories that I kept having and passing out from were trying force me to remember the night of the incident so that I could wake up. When I passed out into the deep, dreamless sleeps, my mind was trying to tell me that I was in a coma and that was the coma I had slipped into.
               Was my keys magnetized to the metal door, showing me that I was the key to getting out of my coma? Did I just have to realize that I was in one? Was the metal door my eyelids? Did all I have to do is open them? Was the rope-like ladder my ribs struggling to breathe? Did all I have to do is open my lungs so that air could get in? There are so many clues calling me back to what happened when I woke in the hole and when I woke in the hospital.
               Everything makes sense now and I am so happy that I am alive. I did not want to be lost forever. I did not want to die. I was determined to get myself out of the darkness and back home. I was determined to discover the truth and the answers I had been begging for when I was stuck in my dungeon. The answer was not right in front of my face, so it was hard to see. The answer was me and all that I needed to do was find the light that was fighting to shine through.