Gwendolyn

The girl referred to as "Gwendolyn" sat perfectly still, her eyes boring
holes into white bricks ahead. The air was stuffy and musty smelling, like
pressing your nose to the inside of any book at an OP shop and inhaling
deeply. It was also warm, smotheringly so and her molasses coloured hair
stuck to her forehead and the sides of her face in greasy tresses.
She felt opressed. It felt like there was a bit of rope inside her stomach,
knotting and unkotting. She pictured this, and felt like throwing up.

Instead she wretched, as there was nothing to throw up. This caused her
observer to stiffen and push his glasses up the ridge of his nose.
Watching, scribbling on his clipboard. His gaze directed at her keenly,
with interest but no sympathy. Cunning eyes dark as blackened gum glued to
the sidewalk. Sucking in everything. Swallowing her every movement, every
tremour that crossed her brow. Absorbing this all without pity or
understanding. Merely interest, nothing more.
"What have I done?" she said, breaking the deathly silence. Her voice was hollow, toneless.

The observer raked his fingernails across his whiskers, white as the walls of the enclosure.
Each word was a deadweight "You know very well."

His expression was strained, as if invisible hands were pulling at his facial muscles like the edges of a trampoline.
Such an appraisal would be uncomfortable for any person. For Gwendolyn it was unnerving.
She wished she could crawl out of her skin the way some sea creatures do and find a place where she felt more secure.
Such as anywhere but here.

But wishing herself elsewhere couldn't transport her. The lights were withering and the stranger even more so. There was no sign of exit.
She was trapped, like in a bugcatcher. The sleeves of the grey pyjamas she had found herself in where starched, foreign and uncomforting.
It crossed her mind that any number of things must have occurred without her knowledge. The continued silence was pained, absurd.
Simply having someone sit across from her, gaping and scribbling, was a refined kind of torture.

What she'd apparently done didn't come immediately to mind. There were a number of things in her past that she tried not to think about.
"Okay, okay, it was me. I confess. I give up. What do you want from me?"

A delayed response, "Oh I think you'll find it's not as simple as that."

What can you say to a cutting remark like that? How can you respond to such an inpenetrable expression?
You can't negotiate with a stance like a brickwall. A statue devoid of all compassion.
"But there are many people in the world like you, aren't there?" she said evenly.

It was then the lights went out.