Have You Ever Felt Trapped?

Have you ever felt trapped?  Have you ever woken up and felt trapped in a bad situation that you try and try to get out of but no matter what you do, you cannot escape?  Have you tried to escape a bad job, a bad friendship, a bad car payment, a bad underwater mortgage, a bad relationship, or a bad next door neighbor who felt it his duty to ruin the neighborhood?  Have you ever been trapped in traffic, trapped in a meeting that never ends, trapped at a social event where the host would not let you leave?

I still remember a time in college where I took a hiking class and a guy got up to do a presentation on first aid on a hike and he starts out saying, "The last thing I want to do up here on this rock is drone on and on about first aid for the next hour..." and yet, that was exactly what he did!  He droned on and one about first aid for an hour while standing on a rock!!!!!  And I was trapped!  I could not escape!  For an hour that I will never get back, I was doomed!

So think of the worst situation you have ever been trapped in. I remember one such experience when I was a kid at church.  Someone was saying a prayer and the church was silent. The person who was saying the prayer finished the prayer and said, "Amen." Everyone else then said, "Amen" and opened their eyes--including old Herb Peterson, my friend's father.  Herb had closed his eyes and listened to the prayer along with everyone else only when he opened his eyes, he let out the most fearful, terror-filled, heart-wrenching, wailing scream that anyone has ever heard.  It burst out of his lungs and echoed around the silent church causing everyone else to scream in turn.  What had happened?  Had the roof fallen in?  Had a mouse scurried up someone's leg? Had one of Herb's old war stories about WWII come to life and the Germans were invading Hooper, Utah?

The answer, I hesitate to tell you, was much worse.  When old Herb opened his eyes, he did not see the Germans marching into the church or a squirrel running up his leg (that did happen but that is another story).  What Herb saw when he opened his eyes was a diabolical, winged demon from hell the size of the entire church!  In fact, it was so big it filled the entire church! It had a black head, clawed beak, multiple eyes and multi-jointed arms and, oh my god, it was reaching for him!  He screamed.  He screamed like he had never screamed before in his long life.

And then the fly flew off his glasses.
 
OK, now that I have shared with you someone's deepest, darkest, most terror-stricken moment, imagine if you will that you are crossing a narrow, treacherous  bridge without any railings.  Under the bridge is a deep, inescapable pit. If you scurry across the bridge, you are free. If you fall you are trapped. Now imagine crossing that narrow bridge with your biggest, deepest, Herb-shrieking horror chasing you.  If you fall, you are trapped with the horror! But if you make it across the bridge, you are free!

So you frantically bolt across the bridge away from the worst horror of your life and, oh no! you fall into the pit!   You desperately try to get out. You climb and claw and scrabble frantically at the metal walls of your prison trying to get out.  But nothing you do makes any difference.  You are trapped in the condo's BBQ Pit's stainless steel sink!  You cannot get away! Only, you are worse than trapped because that terrible, horrible horror reaches down into that pit and grabs you and just as you think it cannot get any worse, it somehow, inexplicably does!

You have become the horror's pet!  You have become the horror's source of entertainment!

 So what devilish games will this horrible terror subject you to? Will you be put in a gladiatorial arena to fight to the death against similar victims? Will you be forced to send letters to your kin begging for them to ransom your release?  Will you find yourself interrogated in a dark room with the sound of dripping water under a bright light as an enemy combatant?

Or can it somehow get worse where, horror of all horrors, you become an unwilling, trapped star in a twisted, diabolical show?

Will it ever, ever end?