My Drive to Work

I'm driving to work this morning and suddenly I'm transported to an unexpected scenario:

I wake up in a strange place with my entire head wrapped up in a gigantic ball of duct tape. No eyeholes, just two narrow tubes to my nostrils poking out through the duct tape ball around my head so I can breathe. 

Everything is dark, and in my panicked scramble to sit up and search blindly for something—anything around me that I can use to pull the thousands of layers of duct tape off of my head—I'm confounded by my surroundings.

Using only my sense of touch—the outside world a dull hum and utterly dark to my tape-entombed senses—nothing I touch conjures any sense of familiarity about where I am.

What happened to me, I wonder, my heart pounding, the tubes stuck to my nostrils billowing like furnaces as I suck little streams of acrid air from the outside world into my lungs. 

Who has done this to me? 

Why? 

Where am I and how can I escape? 

I scour blindly, motivated by fear, but as reality sets in, I force increasing caution as I search for something that can cut the tape from my head and face. 

Is anyone else here? Maybe I can find someone who can help me. 

My fingers touch a wall. A corner. A counter. A cabinet. My hand glances over various objects that are impossible to identify. Fear hammers nails into my chest as I struggle to breathe through the narrow tubes.

The terror is overwhelming, but I recognize the need to relax. I need to think. I need to remember what happened to me before I woke up here like this.

Who do I know that might want to do this to me? 

The duct tape is nearly impossible to remove blindly, without help. I can get a thumbnail under a corner here, tear a little bit away there. But as soon as I make any limited progress, conditions outside my ball impede my efforts.

Suddenly, a person—or multiple people, it's hard to tell—seem to be all around me. 

Who are they? Are they the ones who put me in this place and did this to me? 

They seem panicked themselves, somehow—they push me aside on their way to—where? 

There's a scrambling flurry of muted activity, as if a crowd is rushing through wherever I am until—nothing again. I pause, straining in vain to listen. 

Am I alone? Is anyone else still with me?

Their presence and what motivates them, like my own plight, is an unknowable mystery to me. And while they aren't doing anything to help me, they also aren't doing anything to harm me, which is enough—for now.

I touch the tubes protruding from the tape ball of my head with my fingers. I can feel my face, under layers of tape, getting sweaty against the adhesive underside of the tape, making the entire thing slip about unevenly across my skin, disturbing the alignment of the tubes to my nostrils, making it harder to breathe. 

I consider pulling one of the tubes out, to see if that might allow a better edge of the tape to pull apart from—but stop myself. Removing a tube might make it harder to breathe, and it is already difficult enough. 

Terror and aggravation and confusion mounting, I scream in frustration. My fury is muted by the ball, amplified inside the duct tape cocoon my head is wrapped within, making my ears ache from the unexpectedly deafening sound.  

After a moment to breathe, and calm down, I continue crawling again.

My quest is disturbed occasionally by another sudden rush of unexplainable activity around me. 

Where am I? Who are these people? They must see me, so why aren't they trying to help me? Are we in danger? Are they like me, bound in tape? 

I find a wall with my hand and gently walk beside it. It seems preferable to waiting in one spot.

I hope to encounter someone who can help me, but feel no encouragement from the thought. As I walk, carefully, anticipating some edge or staircase with anxious steps, I wonder what the truth behind it will be.

And then I realize I'm parking. I turn off my engine and am astounded by how little I remember the drive here, completely absorbed by my unbidden duct tape daydream.

How did I get here? Did anything happen on my drive that I was absent for? Did I run any red lights? How did I even know where to go if I wasn't present for the task?

I get out of my car and go to my job.