Waiting

I've been in here for a while now.

Just breathing as time grinds past.

Watching the thick clouds of dust motes dance in the variegated sunlight.

Watching that weak ray creep across the floor from sunrise to sunset.

At night I dream of old memories, because nowadays nothing changes. Sometimes they're so vivid I can feel them happening around me. I try to capture the textures again, in vain. The walls around me are less present than my thoughts.

But now my thoughts are empty. Nothing but the droning buzz of silence echoing around me. Ceaseless. Like me.

I wish I could cease. I would like to try again. Fight even harder than before. Force them to kill me before I stopped moving. Die free.

I eat when my body demands it. I drag myself over to the flap and ever so slowly consume whatever it is they give me. To relieve myself I have to build up the motivation to cross the entire, tiny room again; on which side there is the luxury of a toilet in a small closet.

I don't know why I bother. Only the suspicion that I'd get a check up if I stopped eating makes me continue.

The biggest problem is that I'm not just spending my lifetime rotting in this dull, beige box. The atmosphere is weighted by the centuries of Cat-cursed people whom have wasted away here, just like me.

Sometimes I think I'm waiting.

Waiting for rescue.

Waiting for death.

Waiting for them to remember me.

I wait here, eternally alone and damned. Not even I knew the entire truth of my cage.

I didn't know that Hatori would erase me. He rubbed me out of their lives like a spelling mistake from a diary. I just became the Cat, sitting on the tatami mat, in my cramped jail cell. Not Kyo any longer. Never was.

Never got tricked into living with Shigure. Never picked regular fights with Yuki and Haru. Never became happy as I grew into a friendship with Tohru. Never entertained a classroom with my short temper. Never, ever existed outside the box.

How do you know the cat is still in the box, without checking? Because it's nowhere else – unless it's found a way to vanish off the face of the earth. I haven't, personally. I just sit in my room and wait.

All my energy left me the moment they locked the door on me. I don't even hang my arms out between the bamboo bars; don't even try to reach the little garden just beside me. There's no point in going through my training exercises anymore. My body has become soft, weak.

I could rip off my beads, unleash the monster they all dread upon this estate, tear down the walls and run far, far away. I could free myself.

But the room is in my head now.

I've been waiting here so long I'm afraid to act. I don't know if I can handle having the world thrown at me anymore.

So here I am.

And I'll wait.

Until the next time.