What lay beyond the window seemed farther away every day. The only portal to the world he had left, it became a nostalgic jewel. A stolen treasure. His memory. But that world had never been open for him. Now, the only difference was that it was out of his reach. He could no longer touch it, feel it between his fingers, long for it. He turned away from the panels of glass; once his back was turned, the window moved. Impossibly far now that he was only seeing it with his mind’s eye.
He turned back and touched his fingers to the glass.
Cold. Was it raining?
He bent, pressing his forehead against the cool panes. Faintly, he could hear droplets beating themselves uselessly against the glass. He closed his eyes, but the darkness stayed the same. It always stayed the same. Never changing. Eternal.
Sometimes. Sometimes he felt that if he ripped his eyes out, he’d be able to see. These useless, blinded eyes. But whenever he found his fingers reaching for his eyes, or sometimes even pressing into his skin, a hand would wrap around his thin wrist. And then the prick always followed. It would be a small stab of pain on his arm and sleep-induced darkness would swallow him.
He awoke from a repeat of this episode. This sick play that he was forced to perform. If, perhaps, he were allowed to meet his fellow actors, perhaps his imposed confinement wouldn’t be so terrible. But everyone he met was always a dark shadow and the faint sound of retreating footsteps.
Why did everyone leave?
Why didn’t anyone stay with him?
He touched his face; fingers trying to discern some hideous mark that made people avoid him. But smooth, unblemished skin was all he felt beneath his all too sensitive fingers. Perhaps he was just ugly, something that couldn’t be loved.
He knew what love was. He knew it had many different manifestations. But he didn’t understand it, just as anyone who hadn’t felt it couldn’t understand it. His life was very much reduced to his darkness and the cold panels of glass.
He had woken up with a name echoing in his head and he didn’t know its origin. His memory didn’t function, and he could only write off the name as some fragment that was so important, it remained. Death. Death, Death…
Death, please save me.
