The thunderous boom from a cannon shook the ground beneath his nude body and rumbled through the foggy haze in his head.
Who am I? I do not exist. I must be dead.
He lay on his stomach. Pebbles and rocks cut into his cold skin. A pain, sharp and searing, worse than death, shot through his abdomen.
Is there a musket ball in my gut? A knife? Was I run through by a bayonet?
He could not move. He was paralyzed. The agony was unimaginable.
But I am not dead.
Boom!
Another shot from the cannon startled him, sent his heart racing, but still his body would not answer his thoughts. Somehow he found the strength to lift his eyelids.
The noise from the cannon echoed off the glistening walls of a black cave. Witches were shrieking, flying in circles overhead, laughing and cackling at his demise. Would they take him to Hell? Or had he already arrived?
But this was no battlefield. Everything was wet and cold and dripping. Where in God’s name was he?
Who was he?
That question, more than any other, was the most disturbing of all, for he did not know the answer. He did not even know his own name.