It hits you hard right in the chest

“Oofta.” You wince as you feel your body thrown backwards. Your vision is full of stars and for a moment you are half aware that you are hanging in midair. You’ve clasped the box against you and you can feel the little figurine pressing against your chest.

It’s tingling. Wow your chest is really tingling you think, looking down at the box. Oh wow, you think, it actually hurts a lot. Your brain screams at you that you should not be floating ten feet off the ground and that you need to get the weird old box off you. Your arms flatly refuse to cooperate. They are palpitating, the muscles in them tense like you are being electrocuted. Your legs dance against thin air impotently.

You gasp for breath as the awful frying sensation continues, like your skin is being shocked with a cattle prod centered right in the middle of your chest, the voltage slowly being cranked up by the second. Your eyes are watering, the room becoming opaque through a curtain of tears. It is soon an all consuming pain in your chest. Your mouth contorting in silent agony trying to scream. Your whole world condenses into a single sensation of harsh electric pain. Your mind goes blank from the pain. All consuming pain.

Pain. Pain. Pain.

A stinging and burning pain like you have never felt before. Your legs are no longer dancing, your whole body is tense as piano strings and twitching uncontrollably as if you have lockjaw.

Then the pain ends suddenly.

You gasp for breath, still clutching the box to your chest, and are then hit again in the chest. This time it sends you sailing backwards into the shelf behind you.

You hit the shelf with a crash, knocking an avalanche of decades old research papers, albums, and artifacts off with you.

You fall with them to the floor, hitting the ladder on the way down for good measure. But hitting the floor like a sack of bricks is downright pleasant compared to being electrocuted and you can’t help but let out a relieved sigh even as things rain down around you. Some ancient doctoral theses land on you one after the other but they are dull pains compared to what you just went through. Old yellowing papers flutter down like fresh snow around you. The ground is cold and nice you think as your eyes drift close.

You wake up again, gasping cold damp air. You are not in the archives anymore. You are suddenly aware that you are somewhere else.

You look up. The sky is a pale blue white above the tops of towering conifer trees. Looking around where you lay, its forests as far as the eye can see. Wilderness is a good word for it. You push up from the cold and spongy moss beneath your fingers to your feet.

This has to be a dream you think to yourself. Or you could be dead, you think. You touch your face.

“Am I dreaming?” You ask aloud. The forest is quiet, deathly silent. You click your tongue.

You decide to reach down and pinch yourself. You realize that you are quite naked, and reflexively cover your manhood up as you pinch your side. You can certainly feel pain, that much is for certain. Not dreaming then you think.

“No no,” you say aloud to yourself, “maybe dead?” You take a ginger step off the bed of moss and into the trees. Your mind begins to ramble while you start to ramble through the woods aimlessly.

It’s not long before you realize that covering up your manhood is pointless out here. You’re still uncomfortable with being naked out here in the woods, but not physically uncomfortable, which considering the cool wet climate, is odd. It feels like you should be shivering out here, naked and alone in some ancient forest, but you don’t seem to feel the part.

“I suppose this is my life now.” You sigh to yourself as you jump over a small stream.

You wander through the woods for what feels like many hours, scraping yourself on rocks. Your legs are rubbed raw by sharp branches pricking and scraping your skin. Your feet get caked in thick boggy mud that dries on your skin, leaving you looking like you're wearing socks.

You scream out repeatedly, calling for help, for assistance, for somebody or something to answer you. Not even the birds do.

You start to feel hopeless, upset even, walking through the forest, looking for anything, anyone to help you. There’s nothing but miles and miles of thick and hilly forest stretching off for mile after mile. You keep walking, for hour after hour it feels like, not really sure what you're looking for or where you could find help. You figure that the sun probably should have gone down by now, but without any way to tell the time you can’t say for certain. So you keep walking.

Much later it seems, you duck under a wet and heavy tree branch and come upon a small wooden hut hidden in the trees, made up of many pieces of wood and bark leaning together with a dirt ramp going down into it. Out of the middle of the roof, wisps of smoke are rising.