Beyond the Yellow Wallpaper

Prompt: Write something with the color yellow as a domanant theme, topic, or idea in honor of the July 21, 2022 promotions to Preferred Author.
Written for "The Whatever Contest." "The Whatever Contest -- Closed for Now" 
Word Count: 818
Fiction/Nonfiction: Fiction

Based on 'TheYellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

https://www.owleyes.org/text/yellow-wallpaper/read/yellow-wallpaper#root-422327-...

She watched from her hiding place, she could be seen anywhere but was particularly fond of it here. The house was in the country, there was so much space and yet her times of freedom were rare. There was a place where shackles had once been attached to the walls and bars on the windows to stop children getting out of them, it was a nursery after all, although it had been used for many things over time. She had been there a very long time and it was rare that anyone ever noticed her at all.

People had come and gone over the years mostly never seeing anything, maybe a strange feeling from one or two who may have been a bit sensitive to such things; but this house and others like it had an advantage, they were set in places of tranquillity so people came to recover from all sorts of ailments. Of course, she was always there, watching, waiting for the signs that meant there was a chance to distract them from their recovery. Occasionally she would send one of them on a journey nobody expected, one that set her free, if only for a short time.

Watching the latest arrivals now, a young woman with husband, baby and nanny in tow, she could already taste freedom. The woman was frail and her pallor grey, a perfect subject. However, there was a necessity to keep her desperate need for freedom under control. It was too early to be seen yet, so she hid at every opportunity, but in places where she could still watch; waiting, only coming out of hiding in the twilight hours to study the woman sleeping, knowing this peaceful sleep would be short-lived; once the moment was chosen there would be no sleep. It had been so long since she’d been able to run free and the thought of it jangled within her to such a pitch that she couldn't help but jump and run within the space of her confinement. She knew freedom was close.

She began, after a while, to peep over the barriers, her long fingers scraping the oily, bile coloured covering on the walls. She could see the paths on it, the ways which there would soon be the chance to run, zigzagging across faded yellow flowers and sickly, mustard, jagged edges. It was perfect. The woman was already trying to fight the battle that was raging in her mind but didn't know it was already lost: the watcher already had a plan to help the fight lean more into a downward spiral, heading only to chaos.
One step at a time, it was always this way, first, freedom would extend from being able to move around the current prison to having access to the whole room.
The woman would see there was something moving, first on what appeared to be sunflowers, long since wilted, on the space directly ahead of where she sat in her bed.
There would be placations from those with her. Nothing was ever seen by others, in what was left of the degraded yellow colours. Yet, she was there, creeping along the ragged brown lines, disappearing into the, now moving, decrepit yellow wallpaper.
Then the movements would spread, there would be a figure, running, now, around the room, making a sickly coloured smog develop in the room. The figure could run in and out of this, vanishing at will.

Of course, again the others wouldn’t believe her, nothing was moving, nobody was watching her, she wouldn’t even dare mention the smog, looking to her as if it had sucked up some remnants of hell. No, they obviously couldn’t see any of that, some comment would have been made. This delicate mind was slipping away. They would say it all just needed time, stillness, and definitely no exertions.
There would come a point where access would go beyond the room into the rest of the house, then finally to the garden, the ultimate aim.
To do all of this, a keen eyed watch had to be kept on a constant basis, for that moment, the one where their eyes would first meet. As her fingers slid across the entrance to the prison, she could already taste it, sense the familiar wonderful heaviness in the air, the sickly sweetness. The smell was so close she could almost reach out and touch it; but not yet, it wasn't time, but soon. If she attempted it too early the descent required wouldn't happen, too late and she wouldn't be seen at all. It was such a delicate balance, but this was part of the game; the thrill of testing her age-old wits against someone whose mind lay on a knife-edge, ready to tip either way.

She quivered and smiled to herself as she waited behind the yellow wallpaper.