Concordi Discordia

Epilogue

And as time goes by, those surrounding her begin to notice a pattern to the behaviour of the prisoner in Bronzefield SCU009.

Arielle Goldsmith tries to help in any way she can. Her advice is unwelcome, but everyone tolerates it so as not to destroy her. They hear, but they don’t listen. Medical terminology learnt from television programmes doesn’t really help in the real world, in the world where Arielle doesn’t truly belong but will still try to fit in anyway. She’s trying to force herself into the world's jigsaw puzzle despite the fact that she can never find her place anywhere.

Marise Lamford paces, her footsteps light but carrying the weight of years. Sometimes a slow, steady stream of whispers can be heard coming from her mouth. She’s muttering law terminology that she’s heard of, but has no idea what any of it means. All she’s doing is trying to treasure a small shard or normality, whatever that is.

Harriet Morton sits alone in the corner of her cell. Sometimes she sings to herself, echoes of antique nursery rhymes and hits that mummy used to play. Her escape is in the pretend; worlds where she can be a fairy or a princess with friends formed in her mind only. The cell is a castle, an underwater cave, a pretty field full of flowers and rainbows, glimmering with light and hope. One time, she plays a game where she’s a police woman called Karen Davies and she helps sad people. She can’t understand that she’s pretending herself, that she’s not Harriet Morton, and no one has the heart to tell her. But sometimes, at night, lost and alone, she’ll cry herself to sleep with oblivious tears.

David Maitland once asked himself what went wrong. Why he suddenly lost everything he ever knew and couldn’t get it back. But then he realised that he couldn’t answer. The last thing he remembered is running away from an interview with a man who called himself William Hale, shouting for James. He’s not seen his friend since the incident, and now he’s given up that he ever will again. He’ll never know if he’s alright in the end, and although he’s never been a religious man, prays that his friend makes it through. There’s no need.

Catriona Morton lives in a world of fantasy. She creates a new world, a time and a place where she and her Hattie are happy, a combination of false memories, fragmented flashbacks and a miasmic imagination. Her desperation to live in freedom has lead to herself becoming trapped inside her own mind. She floats between nightmares and cold, steel-hard loneliness, but which is which?

Elysia Adinall is all but a ghost, drifting, unfeeling, through the days which stretch before her in a perfect, infinite grey brick road for her to follow.

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The sky is red on the morning they find her. It’s far from beautiful; it speaks of anger and sex and sadness and frustration and the unforgiving Earth itself.

A scream is heard from the bathroom of the Specialist Care Unit.

Help is brought far too late. It was always too late.

The knots are thick and messy. Tied with shaking hands.

And open and exposed is the sheer vulnerability and reality and brutality and frailty of human flesh, human life.

Must’ve planned it well, they decide when they can’t think of anything else to think of.

Night time. A light fitting. A toilet stall. Clothing in place of a rope. Clever. Now just a naked body, swinging slightly.

Some of them can’t help but be impressed at the mind of this woman, however broken. Then they berate themselves for allowing their heads to come up with such an inappropriate, disrespectful thought.

Looking close, past the bruising that mars her swollen neck, past the traces of forgotten injuries on her body, a single tear track is left on her cheek, an iridescent echo, a glimpse of her last actions.

Someone, and they don’t know who, starts to cry.

It’s the morning of the seventeenth of January, two thousand and twelve.

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The next morning, James Harper opens his copy of The Reading Chronicle, scans the headline and drops his paper in shock. For the first time since the incident, he is the one feeling guilty.

And at the same time, Karen Davies, in the middle of making breakfast for her children, unfolds her own copy of the newspaper to look for a full-time job again.

A gasp catches in her throat. She finds herself unable to speak and she breaks down over a bowl of cornflakes and it sounds so pathetic and mundane when she thinks about it and weeps further, buries herself in her hands to shield herself from her children.

“Mummy?”

Her daughter, age nine, takes her hand and holds it.

Because that’s how the world ends, you see. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
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I'm honestly in tears right now. I can't lie.

I just couldn't resist finishing it off, so once I'd planned it all out, I sat, wrote, and posted. I hope I've left you satisfied!

I don't think that I can express my thanks enough for everyone who has read, commented and subscribed. This is my most popular and most successful story on here, and it's one that I'm certainly the most proud of, and I'd like to thank you all again.

My new project will be started very soon now: Oh, How We Dream. I'm very excited!