Sparks Fly

Everything about this place is so dark, cold, and damp that it’s to the point I can feel the wind cutting right through my paper white skin all the way down to my bones where it then buries itself and waits for more wind to come. I can’t even move sometimes because the wind is so icy that one wrong move could just slice my fragile barely beating heart to ribbons. It’s all I can do to breathe without feeling afraid that even that is just too much to ask for. And even then that can be too hard to handle.
The room I’m stuck in has a very high ceilings; it reminds me of a dungeon in the storybooks just like the ones that I would read about when I was a kid. It’s in the shape of a circle and the stones that make up the walls and floor are rough and uneven. There is very little light, and with the exception of a window way at the top of the wall right next to the ceiling I see very little of it. There is a wooden door on the other side of the room and occasionally my guard will come by to drop me some food, although it is usually inedible.
Sometimes when my jailer does come to give me my food the light from outside my prison is so bright that I go blind and back into the corner so that I don’t get my hopes up about getting out of here.
When I first was sentenced to this place I kept track of the days I’d spent here and I’d guess when I’d be let out of here. But that was years ago, six at least. I can’t really remember anything before my imprisonment although sometimes a memory comes to mind of when I was a little girl playing in the sun with two children younger than me or sitting with an older woman who might have been my grandmother. But I can’t remember anything too clearly anymore.
I even used to get a visitor or two in the beginning but as my clothes became tattered, my hair started to become greasy and a mess, and as I became less and less of a person I refused making up excuses that I didn’t need anyone.
Now though I wish I’d kept in touch with the odd person who would visit me because all contact with the outside world stopped two or three years ago when people realized I didn’t want to see anyone.
Shaking I curl up in a ball with my feet tucked under me and my arms wrapped around my legs hugging them to my chest. I can feel my pulse beating; it’s sluggish, beating as if it should belong to an old dying woman not to a young girl. But then again in some ways I am an old dying woman; I feel old as if the time in here has become six hundred years for every one year I have been stuck here. I feel like a woman because there is no way in this world that I can still be a girl who has barely reached the age of seventeen. And I feel like I’m dying because there is no doubt in my mind that I am dying.
I am dying a slow and painful death brought on by a poison that my jailer has put into my food. It is affecting my brain, of that I am certain. My jailer is not poisoning me to kill me immediately but they are poisoning my brain to turn against me so that overtime it becomes too much to handle and that I just end their responsibility of keeping me alive by taking my own life. As the voices and visions have gotten worse I’ve screamed at the top of my lungs begging them to shut up or leave me alone, but they always come back. They have plagued me since my birth but over the past year or so the voices and hallucinations have gotten more violent.
That is perhaps the only guarantee I have in this place.
Falling into a light slumber with my head propped up against my knees, the rats in this prison of mine have started to gnaw on what little hair I have left after pulling it out, a loud knock sounds on the rough wooden door.
“Ye’ve got’ta vis’ter,” says the man who brings my food to me and other bits of information I can weasel out of him.
Painstakingly I get up and hobble towards the door where there is a slant of wood that comes undone which the gruff man uses to hand my dinner through and where he gives me the rare message. No one wants to talk to a prisoner, let alone a prisoner who has gone crazy in their jail and no one can understand.
“Who’it?” I ask, over time my words have mushed together and have become all but understandable.
“Look fer yer’self,” He grunts before I hear his heavy footsteps walking away from this strange visitor. “Ye’ve got five minuh’tes.” He hollers back before slamming shut a door.
Peeking through the hole I spot a man watching me intently. He has a dark cloak on his shoulders and his face is sweet like child’s who has just been given a wonderful present from their Mam or Da. He has straw colored hair and bright blue eyes along with a wonderful mouth that has a gap in his front teeth.
When I see his teeth I giggle and he smiles at which I watch in awe. Not once since I have been locked up in this prison have I seen a genuine smile like the one he is giving me now.
Blushing I ask, “Who you?”
“Hello there Violette my name is Stone. I’m here to bring you home, that is if you want to go home.” The man, I figure he has to be at least twenty-six, looks at me with pity in his eyes for a second before it is replaced with a look of genuine want to help. “You’ve been very brave Violette to live here for so long. I want to help you get out.”
~
Using an old rag of clothing that had torn off of my clothes long ago, I attempt to scrub my face by dipping the torn piece of cloth into a glass I have fashioned from broken bits of rocks that would catch the odd drop of rain when the ceiling leaked.
I wanted to look my best when that man, what was his name?, came to see me again. He promised he’d be back within three days. I’d kept track by scrapping my jagged fingernails against a moist rock to keep track of the days. At first I got so excited about keeping track of days again that when I would close my eyes I would think a night had gone by and marked off another day. After I closed my eyes the third time I ran to the guard and asked what day it was.
All that buffoon of a sentry said was, “Sa’e day ye id’jut.”
After I had finally given time for the two nights and two days to go by it was the third day. My tiny hands shook with excitement at the thought that today I would be freed from this cell into the sunlight and fresh air. Maybe I could even hear the birds again without these walls to block out their beautiful songs.
Smiling I shut my eyes and tried to remember what it felt like for the wind to kiss my face when I stood outside. Instead of the memory I hungered for a cold dark wind blew across my face with its nails tearing my face into pieces. Shaking I opened my eyes and started to tear up. I’d been in this Hellhole for so long that I couldn’t remember the feel of a sunny breeze kissing my cheeks softly but instead the terrifyingly realistic cold hands of the drafts that had invaded my prison day in and day out.
“Out. Want out,” I cried grasping at the invisible hands that had begun to choke me while whispering into my ear, You’ll never leave us. Not as long as you live. Always remember what they did to you.
After a moment or so the tightness lessoned and I could breathe again. Taking in a breath of air I heard a loud slam on the door and turned excitedly before hobbling over.
“’Es? Time go ‘es?” I asked excitedly as my disgusting guard of six years opened the door for me reveling the man, Stone, who had come three days before to tell me I was going to be released.
He grunted, “G’on, git g’on’ng.”
Stone reached his and out to me and I gingerly grasped it; his palm was soft with what felt like a trace of a scar but I ignored that as I examined his fingers. They were long, making them look like he might be gifted at music of some sort and the nails were clean unlike mine. It almost felt wrong to put my chapped hand into his beautifully soft hand but he smiled at me encouragingly and so I placed my hand in his. Instantly a sense of warmth jolted from my hand to the very tip of my head and bottom of my toes.
Jerking my hand away hastily I looked at him quizzically but he just nodded.
“It’s alright Violette, it is just the warmth of my hand that is all.” He extended his hand and waited patiently for me to take it again. “I expect after six years in prison you haven’t touched many people.” His look turned to one of disgust as he looked into my former room but then back to a gentler one when he turned to me.
Nervously I reached out my hand again and placed it into Stone’s afraid that his touch would burn me. After a moment or so of my skin touching his it felt nice and didn’t scare me as much.
“Shall we be going then? Your family, especially your husband, is eager to see you,” He said gently walking forward with his hand clasping mine. As I walked with him out of the antechamber and into the hall where the staircase led to freedom I looked over my shoulder towards the room I’d been held captive.
The words that had been uttered into my ear replayed,
You’ll never leave us. Not as long as you live. Always remember what they did to you.
Shivering I turned my head forward and clung to my rescuer’s arm as if it was the only thing that could keep me from drowning in this violent ocean I had been thrown back into after six years on land.