SPOV:

The same shackle rattled against the same dirty, wet, cold stone floor that I had been sitting on for fifty years. Hundreds of marks were scratched into the walls around me. At first, they counted days, and then weeks, and then months, and then years as I realized that no one was coming to save me. No one was coming to rescue me. No one probably even knew where I was. No one that cared anyway. About five people from the Scarlet Hand, the organization that kidnapped me (remember them, they're important) knew my current location, and all they cared about is keeping me in here, my own personal hell. Everyone who could have possibly cared about getting me out is most likely long ago dead or are very elderly, and the elderly aren't exactly who you want riding in to rescue you.

I was going to sit here for decades, centuries, ages. Because I was immortal now, thanks to a little experiment. I used to be their lab rat before. Now I just sat here, looking forward to my one meal a month (thanks a lot, immortality, I can't even starve myself to death), because I got to irritate the guard (as much fun as I'm ever going to have sitting in here...beats staring at the wall in the darkness, anyway). And then he would leave and I would be stuck on my own again. Besides annoying the guard, my meals are what I looked forward to the most, and not for the food (mushy and grey and as depressing as my 'staring' wall), because I got a glimpse, just the slightest glimpse, of the green world outside. The smallest breath of fresh air they had to let in before closing the door to the outside world once again. The last glimpse I had gotten of the outside world was the beautiful smell of pine trees fifty years ago before the shoved me in here, shackled me to the floor and the wall, and shut that door without a single regret.

So many lives could have started, ended, prospered, failed in fifty years. So many leaves could have changed, so many flowers could have bloomed. So many trees grew, so many waves crashed. So many thunder storms rumbled angrily, lighting up the night in fake daylight. So much rain poured, rivers ended, birds sang, insects crawled. So many suns rose and set. And I would miss many, many more. And it was depressing.

Sometimes I thought about stopping my count and accepting that the world was passing me by and few people knew it. I got up every day and scratched another mark into the wall, anyway (I had gotten better at telling when a day had passed). I kept thinking that maybe I could still get back, and everything would be okay again.

Even if I did get out of here, I sometimes wondered what there was to go back to.

My parents grew old and are most likely dead. My grandmother was most certainly dead. My uncle would be buried six feet under by now, as well. My little sisters, Daphne and Red, and my baby brother, Basil, would be in nursing homes, wheelchairs, moving slowly around when they used to be so happy and energetic and free. For all I know, they're living their last days. Not all people lived to be 100. Were they sick or healthy as a horse? Were they in pain or were they perfectly fine where they were? Their lives were slowing down, and I was to be forever chained to wall, forever twelve years old, my golden blonde curls never fading to gray, my sparkling sapphire blue eyes never dimming. My teeth would never yellow, my bare feet would never grow, my white knee length dress would never become too small. I used to check. I don't anymore.

But I still hoped. Hoped that someday, someone would remember that little nine year old girl that disappeared off the face of the earth. Hoped that someone would start the search again, wondering if only they could find her bones and bury them beside her family's. Hoped that they would stumble upon me instead, alive and breathing, waiting for them for fifty long years, wondering if her hoping was all done in vain. That was when the door opened and my hope flared into an unquenchable fire.