Among
the many terrifying situations that I could imagine, being confined in a small
space would be one of them, but that’s my claustrophobia talking. Apparently
I’m not alone though because according to the National Institutes of Health, about
12.5% of the population suffers from this fear, with the majority being female.
Grace
Upton in Dangerous Getaway suffers from that intense fear of enclosed spaces,
especially when escape seems impossible.
“She
moved her fingertips lightly along the wall until she felt what had to be the
start of the wine racks, and sure enough there were plenty of bottles to choose
from. Picking a bottle, she pulled it soundlessly from its nest, her hand
closing around the long cool neck with the same satisfaction and sense of power
cavemen must have once felt when clutching a cudgel with which to protect
themselves. In that sense, evolution had not happened at all as her primal
brain recognized its elemental function. Stay alive.
There
was another sound off to her left. Whatever it was, it was coming closer. It
wasn’t as far away this time, then silence that seemed to echo through the
cellar. There it was again, closer still. She could make it out now. Footsteps,
and if it was that Rhone Alexander coming to get her, he didn’t seem to be
making any attempt to hide his scuffling footfalls. In fact, they sounded
heavy, almost erratic which could be a terror tactic, and they were headed
straight toward her. Whoever it was she was sure they could hear her heart
thumping as blood rushed in a tidal wave in her ears, ready for battle. She
would not go out without a damned good fight.
Inching
away from the wine racks until her back was once again against the stonework,
she held the bottle of wine in an iron-clad grip, raising it over her head in a
two-fisted stance and waited, willing her breathing to slow so that she
wouldn’t feel so frustratingly lightheaded.”
The
list of other horrible circumstances from which people would want to escape,
besides claustrophobia, is practically endless.
That
piqued my curiosity about those who did manage to escape terrible situations, against
all odds. So I visited cracked.com
and found the following six great escapes, in some cases from certain death,
and certainly great harm:
Number
six was a young woman in China who woke to find a man on her bed, and to add to
her terror he covered her mouth and nose to stifle her screams for help. I
don’t have to tell you what he tried to do next – while trying to strangle her.
On the verge of unconsciousness she still had presence of mind to start
coughing and managed to tell him she was self-isolating due to COVID-19
symptoms. That was prior to vaccines, and it made him back off in a hurry! So
he robbed her instead.
He then fled her
apartment. Surprisingly, he later turned himself in to authorities.
Number
five is the story of a man in Greece who found himself at the mercy of the out-of-control
wildfires there in 2007. The fires were catastrophic with significant loss of
life, not to mention the destruction of countless homes and other buildings.
Nevertheless, despite the odds, this man decided to stand his ground. A
traditional winemaker with hundreds of litres of the stuff at his disposal, he continued
to pour wine into his fertilizer pump and fought the inferno for seventeen
hours, eventually gaining the upper hand and surviving.
Number
four involves one of the world’s most tragic events … and the humble rubber
squeegee. It’s about a group of window washers stranded on an elevator around
the 50th floor in the first tower of the World Trade Centre on that
fateful morning of September 11, 2001. Determined to survive, they managed to
jimmy the elevator doors apart with a squeegee pole. However the elevator had stopped
between floors and they were faced with a solid wall of sheet rock. Undaunted the
men then used the blade of the squeegee to dig an opening through the drywall
and escaped WTC One, astonishingly, just five minutes before it collapsed.
Number
three involves a man in Saskatchewan, Canada, stranded unexpectedly in his boat
on what became an ice lake when bad weather suddenly struck and the temperature
plummeted dramatically. He had no means of communication to call for help and he
would have died from exposure had he not found and chopped down four power
poles onshore, plunging several communities into freezing darkness. When the
power company sent a helicopter to investigate the source of the outage, they
found the dying man and were able to save his life.
Most
would consider number two to be a pretty grizzly solution, but when hunters
were returning with their prizes from the mountains on horseback, they
encountered problems with a broken saddle. Nightfall and subzero temperatures
caught up with them before they could remedy the situation. Now forced to spend
the night outdoors, they attempted to start a fire to keep warm. However high
winds prevented them from building that fire so they did what they had to do in
order to survive. No nightmarish details here about the how, but they took shelter in the hollowed out carcasses of their
horses and escaped certain death.
Number
one (also cbc.com) involves a mushroom foraging woman in the Northwest
Territories, Canada, who found herself being stalked by a wolf, albeit an old one,
for twelve hours. The animal blocked the way to her truck, actually leading her
away from it. Her dog tried to eliminate the threat to no avail and at some
point she and the friend she was with became separated. The woman, after walking
all day, was exhausted, dehydrated and tormented by “zillions” of mosquitos. It
should be pointed out that she was doing some heavy-duty praying when she heard
the growl of a mother bear. So the woman decided to approach the cub, which in
itself can be a deadly action, but it paid off. Somehow the stalking wolf and
the mamma bear began to do battle with each other, and the woman and her dog escaped.
In my opinion the woman’s prayer for survival was answered because divine
intervention is written all over this one.
Keeping
your wits about you when trapped in any difficult situation is key, but of
course much easier said than done. You have some very difficult moments to
overcome, just as Grace did in Dangerous Getaway:
“She
could feel her panic beginning to rise, just as it had that day in the old
steamer trunk only now there was no one to come to the rescue and that thought
terrified her. Moving away from the dim flashlight beam she slapped her hands
against the cold stone wall, giving in to tears.
“This
might as well be a tomb because we’re basically buried alive. The pain in her
shoulder burned like fire and she was having trouble getting her breath as she
stumbled in the direction of the stairs. She would beat her way through the
door with her bare hands; claw it to splinters with her nails. She had to get
out of this dark hole somehow. Was this how it was all going to end for them?
Dead and forgotten in a wine cellar in the middle of nowhere? Murdered? Buried
in the woods with God only knew how many others?
Strong
hands seized her from behind, his arms circlets of steel that held her in place
while she struggled to get free of him.
“Let
me go! I have to get out of here, but I can’t! We’re trapped forever!”
“Grace!”
He shook her gently. “Grace, get hold of yourself, we can’t afford to give in
to panic. It won’t get us anywhere. We have to keep our heads if we’re to
survive.”
“It’s
over, can’t you see?’ “
I remember this story if yours and enjoyed. The escapes you wrote about were interesting, especially the woman and the wolf.
ReplyDeleteEscape is a primal instinct we haven't lost since the beginning of man. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete