The Beginning

I'm calm.

A great silence within me magnifies itself as I sit here against this cold, dark wall. The longer the silence continues, the longer it invades my consciousness, until all I can feel is a sense of complete and utter stillness.

Nothingness and emptiness is an escape for me, a tunnel of peace while the world around it dully rages on. I perceive that dull rage to be somehow slower and quieter, even when it is certainly very angry and very loud. From the inside of a tiny, sealed bottle, the roaring sea is muffled and helpless, despite its ability to envelop everything.

On this day, as any other day, I sat with my back against the stone wall of my imprisonment. While I do relish the silent incarceration in my mind, the physical one that currently binds me is less agreeable. I am never able to truly accept that whereas my psychological tunnel will eventually lead me somewhere, the dungeon in which I rot will always remain confined. An epic entrapment with stone walls that stretch towards a shrouded ceiling; yet I feel their unforgiving solidness close in around my aching bones.

Perhaps I would've learned to appreciate my prison's grandeur, if I was not victim to its silent snare. A majestic, hollow place that echoes both sound and sadness. An emptiness that seemingly adopts the sorrow within, and absorbs it into its very construct. A structure built with a clear purpose in mind - to seclude the unfortunate, and stand by forever while those within wither and die.

A single beam of light enters through a high window during the late afternoon, a faint hope of a bright, green world on the outside. A tiny fraction of a mighty sun shining on the eternal dark abyss of my prison. A beam of light that partially reveals my bondage - the dust and dirt on the cold floor, scraps of nothingness, and most importantly, a heavy wooden door that has remained forever closed. Seemingly, that sad door is no longer fit for its name. Indeed, it implies entry and exit, but instead it has become a part of the four walls, looming and intimidating. I often find myself gravitating away from the door, realizing that it is merely an illusion that offers a false hope of escape. A hallucination that reaches out and calls to me but that I refuse to acknowledge. Yet I cannot fathom any other way that I would leave this place.

I frequently lapse into sleep, exhausted, even as I slouch against the north wall for the majority of my time. It is not a physical exhaustion, but one which affects my mind. I constantly think about my prison and its unsympathetic actuality. Its realness is a disturbing horror to me; a place where I am, and where I shall remain, ever intertwined with an unkind rock. As I contemplate that eternity, that infiniteness, the drowsy hand of lethargy softly snuffs me into exhaustion.

Before my eyes close, they weakly study my prison. Its strange door and high window, its dim floor, and its long, tall walls, - which express a sort of quiet aggression - causes me to grow tired and weary of its immensity and endlessness. An endlessness that belittles those with an end, my mortal self and my insignificant stature. It is something inhumane, yet I can feel its breath, soft but cruel, weak but painful.

In my nightmares, the prison's harsh reality translates into the fictional realm of dream. There, in that hazy and hushed world, I cower from my cage, just as I always do, but with no place to run and hide. Its walls are seemingly edged into my subconscious; I dream of nothing but my prison, and when I burst awake into the same calamity, I realize that sleep is never the oblivion that it claims to be. Why should I sleep, if it does not offer a temporary escape from my fears? Why should I rest, if it only makes me more agitated and distraught? Will my mind never allow me a moment of peace?

My prison is nothingness enclosed by solid walls. A nothingness that forces itself upon me. Whenever I contemplate other things, I become jaded and confused. My cognitive abilities melt away, and all that is left is my sense of helplessness. A strange feeling, but I have become accustomed to it. It is similar to a reoccurring journey, starting with thoughts about my past, only to somehow finish with the grave image of my current bondage, and the simple void that it withholds. The tunnel of my mind leads to a peculiar blankness. Only when I focus on that nothingness, and the comforting silence that it brings, can I actually be somewhat calm.

I am calm, sitting in my quiet limbo. Able to exist, but not quite able to live. A dispirited being that sadly reminds me of the prison again. A prison that stands there, is forever constant, sees the world change around it, but still remains motionless. An eerie testament to the futility of progression, while it endures, trapped in time.

If it wasn't for the high window, I would never engage in any progression, except the quiet feeling of one's own mind slowly becoming deranged (a regression, one might say). The window tells me when it is night or day, information that in my current state would be regarded as trivial, but nonetheless a comfort. The night and day are signs that a happy world outside of mine exists, but one which I dare not think about. One which I dare not dream about.

Perhaps the mere presence of something - no matter how far it may seem - implies that it can be a possibility. Yes, that it possibly can be a possibility. But the tall stone walls of my prison silently crush any such notions. They are the boundaries of my entire self.

Ah, the walls again. So cruel to me, yet they would signify a protective shelter in some other world. To keep the unwanted outside, and the welcomed within, a delicate distinction between the free and the condemned. For me, they return me to the blankness that lies at the end of my tunnel, with no where else to tread.



Whenever I wake from a restless sleep, I am always aware of where I am. My prison is both a reality and a nightmare, therefore I cannot wish it to be the latter, and wake up into a more hopeful former. The moments after I wake up are spent with a silent acceptance of my grim fate, an action only bearable through rigorous practice. I nod my head to myself in agreement, unwilling to waste any energy on denial.

I attempt to recollect some specifics about my hazy nightmare, with little success. An indescribable feeling of forgetting as soon as I remember; a frustration that I cannot extract from my mind that which I perceived but a moment ago. All that lingers is the certainty that my prison invaded my dreams once again, a surety that leaves me with no less sadness with each repetition.

After this short episode, I stand up from the cold ground, brush the dust off my rags, and begin walking around my prison. There, in the very center, lay two pieces of bread and a meager cup of water. My daily meal. An insufficient nourishment, yet I am somehow grateful. I am baffled as to how they appear in my prison every morning, camouflaged into its depravity, and hidden in its steady dimness. While I repose, or even when I'm awake but lethargic, I suspect that someone enters through a concealed entrance and plants the bread and water. Indeed, I cannot see the center of my prison from any of the four walls, except in the late afternoon when the light from the window is at its strongest. Therefore, an especially quiet person might enter, while I, lost in my silent muses, would never know until after I had woken up from sleep the next morning and found the bread and water.

Vexed but curious, I have slept in the center of my prison, hoping to catch sight of this mysterious person who has undeniably kept me alive for a long time. If I were to grasp her bony arm and stare into the emptiness of her eyes, I am not sure if I would thank her for her benign efforts, or choke her, demanding that she reveal why I was here in this sad place. The lightness of her step respects the peace of my prison; not a speck of dust is disturbed by her task. Yet, she slips by apathetically from the turmoil in my mind, offering no consolidation, lacking any compassion for the cyclical self-destruction of my psyche into blankness.

But I have never seen her. Having slept in the center of my prison (and as far as possible from its looming walls), I awake to find the bread and water right there next me, already tasting the moisture of the water on my cracked lips. Each time, I savor the soft grain of the bread, and the cool stream of water down my throat, but disappointed that I had missed an opportunity for human contact once again. Would the pale figure that graces through my prison feel sympathy or contempt for the miserable soul trapped inside? Or worse, indifference to its woeful state; one which, cannot be fully empathized without access to the machinations of its wounded mind?

I have never met her, yet I feel an inexplicable bond between us. I hope that somehow we can share this sadness; I, deep in its hollowness, and her, a witness to its effects. Through my muted dungeon, I have come to see that sadness, although engulfed in its lonesomeness, requires recognition from others. A recognition that is aware of another's suffering, acknowledges its complex maze, and suggests to either turn right or left. But of course, there is no exit to the maze, but instead an ancient, towering wall, a convenient parallel to my prison. Somehow, the utterance of futile assistance would be strangely comforting to the doomed soul. Hope that long ago might have died, can be falsely rekindled - a short-lived fire to extract much needed warmth.

Yet, for those that recognize true sadness and know that another's soul is indeed condemned and unredeemable, how would they ever bring themselves to say otherwise, hoping to grant a small measure of comfort? How might they say that the wall is vulnerable to breach, when they know with unstained certainty that the wall will remain forever solid and unbreakable? Is it not better to simply tell them their horrible fate, for at least they deserve the truth, and would not have to live out their last moments believing in a lie?