Afraid.
So afraid. In fear, lost… my mind.
I hid in that room, behind that bolted door. The warden would often make his rounds; I heard the endless, traumatising, thumping of his footsteps drowning and crescendoing throughout the nights. My heart out of control, all I could think of was what would happen if he broke down that ruined door. Would I feel at home in death? Would I feel bliss or relief after the bittersweet escape of black, stormy death? My demise could speak volumes more than the hush breath which would become my last…
I would wait; wait for the warden to kill me soon, if only he would.
Watching, every day I would gaze outside for a sign of life. My bedroom window was barely transparent and the foggy exterior of the brittle building left most aspects of the lush, heartwarming trees up to the imagination.
Of course I now know they weren’t lush, they weren’t green, but grey. It’s saddening really to see the demented, crumbling construction I once was mad enough to call home; no child that young should be forced into a prison like that.
I was so lost in my mind, I gave in to it. I subjected myself to it.
To that Hell.
Thunder struck on the sixteenth year of my life. It was the first time I’d witnessed lightning like that in a long time, and it was certainly the first time I’d seen lightning in the nine years I’d lived there. The crash of glass, the fall of hail, the strike of lightning, my face gone pale. Everyone had hope for the first time in their lives. In unison, the tiny fists of the hundreds of students banging against the windows. A strange, foreign force compelled me to join and strike my dirtily stained glass. A fast crash of thunder and glass fell to the ground outside. We jumped out – all of us – and felt that bittersweet release we all hoped for.
Or so I thought, I just lay there… Shivering in the cold, shaking at the thought of being caught again.