Silence—Glares Burn My Skin, Writing Heals with Ice

APOV

I was trapped. Trapped in this hellhole they now call my home. They. The people who threw me into this place and marked it with my name. I was entitled to its ownership, but was I really in my home if I was owned by another? It was their home that they threw me in like a rag doll. They told me I was as good as dead. As good as dead, really? I am still breathing, living, eating, feeling… I don't understand these people's minds. I am not as good as dead at all. So why did they build you a tombstone, Alice? You are dead to them, and they try to make you feel dead by encasing you in a cell. My own thoughts angered me with their cruelty. The world was cruel. The people who worked here were cruel. My parents were cruel.

They threw me in here and told me they hated me. They told me I was crazy, a witch child, and deserved to be punished. How could they live with their souls knowing they sentenced me to this torture? How could they live with themselves when throughout every minute of every day I was suffering here, enclosed, willing death to be upon me, while they had fun and went on with their lives like evil people? How could they say that I was the wicked one? They locked me in here. My own hell. So many questions, and they would forever be left unanswered.

I would spend my lifetime in this cell. And I had a long life ahead of me. I was only seventeen… And yet, they locked me up here, so I could be treated like my mind was cracked. My brain was fine. I was talented. I was smarter than them, and they were scared. They were all cowards, afraid of their own daughter. She was ashamed of me. My own mother was ashamed of my existence.

I looked around the cell in boredom. The walls were made of a solid, gray brick. In some places, there were jagged, sharp edges. I wondered briefly if I would be able to draw enough blood from myself to die. Perhaps. It could ease the sheer boredom that my life had become. But suicide was a sin. I, Alice, would not go to hell because I was too cowardly to live through my lifetime of nothing.

My life had become nothing.

I was dead to them, dead to everyone.

I looked around at the rest of the cell. Some of the bricks had strange drawings inscribed. One was of a naked man in a vat of 'toxic oil,' as the artist called the bucket the man was encased in. There were also drawings of strange and abstract symbols that meant nothing to me, but perhaps the world to someone else.

I remember when I used to look at the asylum and think the people trapped in there were crazy. I now realize that they were not; the asylum made them crazy. They had no option once someone hated them enough to kick their asses in there. They shouldn't call it a mental asylum. The people inside weren't mental or insane. They were simply hated by unjust people. I pitied the world for being victim of such unrighteousness.

Why did man call this place a mental asylum if all it was, really, was the place they keep the hated? They should just call it 'Hated People's Cells." It's better to be straightforward. Then I remembered why. The human race in America had to keep up its charade of 'civilization' and 'virtue.' These words meant nothing to me as I lay here enclosed in hell waiting to die. If the world knew what happened to people like me, the good-hearted people would save us. But the cruel souls keep secrets and lie. They have no limits as long as the world thinks well and looks up to them. I glanced to the 'window.' If that is what you can call the indentation in the wall covered in broken glass and dirt. No fresh air was allowed to seep through as the caked mud sealed it shut. There were vertical metal bars, too, as if the layers of mud and extreme height of the window weren't enough to keep me from escaping.

I wondered if I really was evil in God's eyes. Maybe I was to go to hell after all. I saw no evil in myself, but we often misjudge our own hearts. I wondered, and it passed time.

The floors of the cell were once concrete, but now were covered in sand. There was a small concrete bench on which I now sat and nothing else in the room except for an empty tray from the cafeteria in the corner next to the door. The walls seemed to close in on me if I kept my eyes open long enough, so instead I closed them shut.

I listened to the soft noises from outside my metal door, and they entertained me. I looked briefly at what I was wearing. A simple blue dress with red lace that I had sewed myself. It had been my favorite. How coincidental. I would wear it for my lifetime. It was already dirty from all of the scum and mud in the cell and on the worker's hands. They had thrown me into the room themselves—they decided letting me walk would be too easy and painless for me. Instead, they had to humiliate me by throwing me. I decided to get used to the treatment.

It's not like I haven't had harsh treatment before this; my parents beat me repeatedly. But this was different. The workers here have no reason to hate me. I have done nothing. My parents thought they had a just reason. The workers could hold nothing against me because I have done nothing. They have nothing to blame me for. Yet they still act like I am the shit on their shoes. I don't think they realize that I have a heart with feelings that can and have been hurt. Nor do I think they care. You must be a sick person to want to work in an asylum. I looked out the small window on my metal, locked door.

People were glaring. The workers and visitors glared at me as they passed, with looks on their dirty faces that made you feel like dirt. Their glares burned my skin as I stared back. They burned my skin and stabbed my heart. All I had ever wanted was a family that loved me. Now, nobody loved me and everyone hated me for no specific reason. Of course this would happen to the one unlucky, little girl like me.

They cut my hair, too. It had been one of my best features, but now it was gone. All I had left was a short, choppy look that reached to my mid-neck.

I was hungry. The glares were still burning like fire. I envied the people that were free from glares. Free from the evil fire that burned my skin cells with cruelty. I envied them so much.

A bell rang.

It was a loud twang, and it was very high pitched. My ears clawed for the noise to stop, and when it did, all noise was gone. All lights were shut off. I was in complete darkness. One light switched on in the hall and stayed lit, so I could still see.

Silence—excruciating in my ears

Silence—amplifying all my fears

Silence—it's real, it's there, it waits for me

Silence—I am swallowed whole.

Everything came crashing down on me when the silence continued. Everything I had ever hated, feared, loved, and envied… All was coming for me in the dark, silent cell. The burns were still sore on my arms, and I knew they would be there forever.

My story would be lost.

I needed people to know. I needed people to remember me. So I wrote. I wrote on the walls with a stone from the ground, engraving the words into the hard rock.

The writing seemed to heal the wounds with ice. I knew I would be remembered by somebody. I knew people would know my story. I knew I would not be living for nothing.

I would not live in hell while my story was lost. It would be found. And I would be content. As good as dead. In silence.