It will be the smell that wakes him.

At first he was perfectly still, but now, he is stirring. His nostrils are flaring. His reaction is fascinating to watch. Cautious sniffs transform into abrupt intakes of breath and his eyes fly open, wide and childlike. Humans are all the same; all animals reacting in the same instinctive way to a stimulus. In this case: the realization that something is incredibly wrong.

And something is very wrong. He is not in his bedroom, as he should be, but instead in a room made up of four cement walls, a grey ceiling, no windows … and the overpowering smell of bleach.

He sits up and rocks forward. The room will be tossing violently back and forth, the after-effects of falling unconscious without warning. He clamps his hand over his mouth … That will be the nausea.

After a few minutes, his rapidly blinking eyes lift. He looks around, forcing himself to take in the strangeness of the situation.

Why am I here? How did I get here?

He brings his knees up towards his chest and –

There it is. The moment of recognition I’ve been waiting for. He stares down at his leg, his mouth dropping open as his eyes take in the shining steel cuff wrapped around his ankle, attached to a chain, tethering him to the wall.

‘Hello?’ he calls out, trying to keep the panic from his voice. ‘Hello?’

His face slowly falls as he waits for a response that won’t come. He won’t even find comfort in the echo of his own voice. The room is too small for that. The walls and ceiling both too close.

There is nothing but silence.

He forces himself on to his knees and then groans as his body rights itself, chest heaving with the effort. He is shaking. Shaking with adrenalin and nerves and the confusion that is keeping him from screaming out, from crying for his mother, from calling for someone, anyone.

This is fear. This is the moment he understands how fear really feels.

He steps forward, one small step into the room, his eyes darting around as he tries to make sense of his surroundings. He frowns, turning slowly in a circle, tangling his legs in the chain.

He focuses first on the corner of the room to the right. There is another bolt fixed to the wall, for another person to be chained to. But it is empty. So instead he turns his attention to the objects sitting innocuously in each of the room’s corners.

Four boxes, painted black.

How long will it take him to brave opening one? Some people would launch themselves directly at the boxes, scrambling in their haste to crack them open, like overeager children at Christmas. Others would cower, shrinking away from the unknown.

I had anticipated that he would be the former. But by his reaction to the room, I’m guessing now that he might be the latter. Not so big and brave, after all.

His eyes shift away from the closest box and look up to where a stop-clock is hanging in the centre of the ceiling, its red digital figures ready to begin counting down.

00:60.

Sixty seconds.

He stares helplessly up, his thoughts written across his features.

What will happen after sixty seconds?

And when will the countdown begin?