The low thud in my ears was all consuming. Piercing the silence, each thud of my racing heart pulled me, physically, back into the moment. It prevented my slipping into a daze or a daydream, prevented any possibility of blocking the reality I had found myself in. There was, at the end, only myself, my heartbeat and the clanking of metal around my feet and ankles.

Of course, I was far from alone. I was among a throng of fifty forsaken hearts, minds and souls trundling down a long passage. Each one undoubtedly wide eyed as much with terror as with a need to absorb any flicker of dim light that was emitted by periodic torches that marked our way. Each one of us trapped in a collective nightmare.

The metal around my limbs was warm from my body heat. Every ridged step rubbed sweat into the sores above my feet. It dripped down my body like that of a candle burning, but in the end candles are not aware that they will be snuffed out.

‘Look’ I said to myself, cutting through the thudding in my brain, ‘I didn’t ask to be picked. None of us did.’

Not a single miserable soul had asked for this path, this inevitability. When you live in captivity and all you know is a master’s whim, it still doesn’t seem possible he will drag you to the afterlife with him.

After all, I’d been in the masters household since I was a child. Others had been caught and reformed into slavery, or bought and sold and bartered between masters countless times through their lives. I had been lucky enough to know stability. I had known but one master since I was taken from my mothers arms. It seems laughable now that I hadn’t considered he would be all I would ever know.

The passage was lined with warm stone, intermittent torches provided respite from the darkness. Our procession walked on a gentle decline, down into the belly on the tomb.

We had been summoned to a grand hall the day he died. A hall most of us had never had the privilege to enter before. The ornate golden walls reflected pools of warm light down upon us. I sat among a throng of slave workers lost of amazement that such a marvel of craft and beauty existed. It did not last, the news of our new reality shattered the moment of wonder.

The master’s late wife, a woman I had sparely seen except in passing or in the ordering of a maiden to be beaten for insubordination or pretty theft. If she had an ounce of warmth within her, it was not publicly shown and, in that moment, was certainly buried beneath layers of black velvet that stood like night against the gold hue.

I remember her bright eyes, a piercing blue that turned me cold. They cast me beneath the ice to a fate I could never have imagined. Her eyes shone as she told us how we were to join her late husband in the afterlife. Together we were to face the honour of joining him in his entombment… to serve him forever.

My heart beat refused me the respite of becoming lost in thought.

Last night, the thudding became my fists against the underside of frozen ice. I dreamt of scrabbling to free myself from submersion. I was awoken chained to my bed, wet to the touch. Now, it is all I have as I sink into the fire of the earths core.

Without warning, the line of torches came to an end. We were plunged into darkness, except from the faint glow of a torchbearer leading the death march above the heads of those in the narrow passage.

Then we stopped.

I heard a scream of a woman ahead of me. She wailed as her chains rattled. Surly she was attempting to turn around and escape. Most, resigned like myself knew that our chains prevented turned even if it were possible to move while we were cramped in this space. I think I could hear her nails against the walls as she screeched.

A calm washed over me. Lost in darkness, I felt tired. I felt vanquished. I felt like every bit of fire I had ever dreamed of using to find freedom had been extinguished. In the mass of sweaty bodies I was alone.

I lie, I had never dreamed of freedom; not like those who escaped and never returned, and those who did. Not like the man who leapt at the master’s late wife upon hearing the news of our fate and recurved a belly full of bayonet. I had only one dream my whole life, I dreamt of my mothers arms around me as she holds me close. I felt her as bodies of those I’d toiled with lulled me into a moment of calm.

Ahead, I heard a stone door open, then the procession progressed through the sea of black.

I wasn’t immediately aware of when I’d entered the chamber. The darkness clung to everything and the muggy air followed us through.

I stood, only the sound of heavy breathing reminding me I was not alone. That, and the pleads to God that arose from time to time. Did they not realise, this was the closest they’d ever been to Him.

The sound of the door being pushed shut sent a collective outcry through the chamber causing a frantic final second. I joined in the jostled, a feeling of terror stronger then I’d felt so far pulsated through me. People screamed. People cried out to the torchbearer to save us. People hit each other and pounded flesh against stone. Then the light was gone.

Those closest to the door begged for mercy. A man beside me paced and thrashed wildly, wet, maybe his sweat or blood fell upon me.

A stranger held me. She was my mother in the black forever.