Morning maybe? Maybe noon? No light. No point of reference. Getting hungrier. Too weak to really even try to fool the puddle into showing me my damages.

Briefly wondered why I hadn't shit yet, then realized that my stomach probably pulled that feces and bile back up through my intestines to re-eat its own waste and squeeze a little more protein out of itself.
The thought of an emergency alarm going off in my stomach signaling to the microscopic soldiers who work in the waste management department in my abdomen that they sent out the waste-shipment too early and they need to recall it made me smile.
My smile lasted about a second, but I need all the happiness I can grasp.

I have always had a tremendous ability to heal.
"Most of us here on Vulture are extraordinary," my Mom used to tell me, "you know how we've been dry all year and everyone was worried?"
"Yes," I replied.
"And you know how we got an ocean of rain yesterday, so much as to cause a flood that would scare a whale?" she continued.
"Yes."
"I made it rain, son. I made it rain. That's MY gift. You'll find yours someday."
I pretended to be amazed, and thankful, but I never believed her.
This exact conversation took place after every rain of the season, up until I was about 11 years old.
11 was when I found MY gift. Or at least, those were Mom's words.
I wanted to surprise her with a present for her birthday, so in addition to constructing her an intricate diorama of me leading an entire army of animals to her doorstep to wish her a happy birthday, I cut out the words "I love you" from that morning's newspaper. When I got to the "e" in "love", Mom walked out, ahead of schedule. I turned away as quick as I could to hide the evidence of my in-progress present, but as I did so, my right elbow hit the corner of the countertop, and the scissors popped out of my hand and into orbit. Out of sheer instinct, I lunged for the scissors as they floated for what seemed like minutes, but my clunky, uncoordinated 11-year old body tripped, and I came crashing down to the ground at the same moment the scissors did. We became ONE.
When I turned over in pain, all Mom saw was a pair of pale orange handles where my eyes had been just seconds ago.
In a Rube Goldberg-esque string of events, as I was descending to the ground, I managed to get a finger or 2 on the scissors handle, but all it did was knock OPEN the scissors and spread the blades like the legs of a 3 A.M. hooker, and as we hit the ground together, both blades entered my eye sockets and burrowed in as far as physics would allow them to.
I don't remember any more than that.
Mom said I didn't cry.
When the doctor removed the blades, he said I would be blind for the remainder of my life.
Mom said I still didn't cry.
Instead, I told the doctor that not only will I be able to see again, but i'll do it within days.
"You'll see!" I said to the doctor. And as I laughed at my own dumb pun, the doctor replied with "Hopefully, YOU'LL see." Then, under his breath, I heard him apologize to my mother whose tears sounded like bricks when they hit the ground.
No more than 2 days later, after I grew tired of the dark, my eyes were fully healed.
In the following years, I obtained a handful of minor injuries that just seemed to go away after a day or 2. Broken bones, scrapes that invaded about 6 layers of skin and muscle, burns, etc.
I always wrote it off as a good immunity system and a healthy family tree.
But Mom always stressed that "Those scissors used their blades to help you find your GIFT. You don't need to look anymore. Now, you just need to imagine what you can do with it."

Over the past 30-something years, I never really accepted my strain of good luck as a gift.
But for the first time in my life, the moment immediately before I picked up this makeshift pen in a pitch black room full of shit and blood and vinegar and who-knows what-else, I realized that were it not for my "gift", I would have been dead long before I opened my eyes and gazed into this darkness.

Although I could taste blood every time I wretched from a combination of hunger and constant whiffs of a hundred vile fluids, I had no idea my larynx was slashed open until a violent cough blew open the wound and a quilt of blood ran down my chest.
And kept flowing…