Something I wrote for school and decided to publish here cause I am proud of it.
She waited, waited for a chance, a chance to escape, to leave her misery, to let go of the wretched chains.
But no matter where you go, they follow, darting like dangerous predators stalking her, shadows ready to strike.
Oh, the once-great city of Troy, its once-mighty walls burnt to the ground and its noble people scurrying upon the dusty soil like rats, attempting to hide from their Archean conquerors. Oh, great Priam, father to Cassandra, her visions that you once ridiculed resulted in you looking at your sons having fallen to Greek spears. Your pride and joy blown like Hector's ashes blow in the wind whilst your city Troy is left like the bones of dear Paris are left for the vultures to be plucked clean.
The beautiful marble of your home splattered with crimson blood. White. Red. Red. White...
The crimson rays of Apollo's sunset drifted down from the heavens showering your pale skin, like the old times, before her wretched curse, before her madness.
Trojan streets stained crimson with bloody tears and greek soldiers growing fat upon devouring Trojan guts
Each door locked. Her frail body crawling like a frightened animal, rabid and injured. Tugging until his light remained no more. Blood bleeding out of her hands, ghostly as an apparition of tragedy. Crimson blood cascaded down upon the floor, no different than that of a waterfall of the very liquid flowing through her veins.
Andromache's delicate hands cradled the limp and lifeless body of her son, the last memory of her brother. Hector's life taken in front of my own cursed eyes, his body dragged through the mud like a swine. His eyes, oh so much like his son's, closed by Achilles blade.
Her father, King Priam, kneeling in shit, begging for his son to be returned, broken like the walls of Troy, once defended by Hector's shield. His pride crushed, looking more like a man waiting for death than the King of Troy. Her mother, once Queen of Troy, now chained to the prison walls, like a used whore. Her robes of finest silk sullied, her face bent in anguish and sorrow. Her arms straining to reach for her daughters and offer comfort.
Everything she knew blurred together, her dreams, her wishes, her reality. Her body uncontrollable shivering in the nightmare of screams and atrophy. Cold, empty eyes stared back at her, stained with cruel misery. There was an instant where she could hear her mother, voice laden with fear. "Cassandra, Cassandra!"
She tried to tell them about the thousand ships full of men, how they come, seeking to win back Helen's wretched hand, instead, she was locked away. She tried to tell them of their demise, she tried to tell these cursed Trojans of their destiny, instead of receiving gratitude, the term lunatic was attached to her name. She tried to tell them of their doom, she tried to tell them that this war will send every single Ilian soul hurtling down to the realm of hades. She told them but they didn't listen. She told them that they will feed their children to the dogs, she told them that they will take their women, and kill their sons. She told herself that her brother will live, she told herself that her brother's child lying in the dust like an insect was an illusion, another curse from vengeful Apollo.
She tried to tell them, tell them that the mighty Archean's sail towards our great and prosperous city. But they ignored her heeding.
She told herself that this is a dream, where she will wake in any given moment in her chambers and not in Grecian cells. But no matter what she tried the dream did not end, its walls kept on caving in, intending to crush her. 'Stay back", she screeched to the walls. 'Stay back", but no matter what she did they continued coming towards her, like a hungry beast, coming to feast on its fallen prey.
The rush of roars and screeching rising, the drumming of her cold, empty heart, beating in her chest as steel bites against steel in a rising crescendo, a screeching chorus of misery inside her head. She could still hear the screams, the screams of her fallen brothers, of the children, gutted like animals, of babes taken from their mother's teats, the screams of the women raped and sold. She heard everything and she can still hear it, every day every moment, getting louder and louder.
Screaming did no good, nothing but make her throat raw. No one was here to hear her screams, her cries, no one was here to sympathise with her, just like they weren't before. They were so completely blind. Couldn't they see it? There was no use locking her in these walls, like a pet. Her duty was to inform them, to inform them of their doom.
The colour had drained out of her, bleeding away into a dull grey void. cocooned in something warm but inside freezing cold. Empty. A gaping hole in her chest eroding with every passing second, she would be nothing more than a husk soon, cold and empty, a dead existence. Her life nothing but remnants of a paltry, inconsequential existence whisked away by a vacuous zephyr.
She tried to escape, again and again, but from herself, she could not run. It was everywhere around her, in her, beside her, taking her mind and drowning her in its madness. It held her throat tightly to prevent any sounds, extending its icy tendrils towards her mind. It was her. She knew that. In this goddamned tower, sealed away old pretty, charming Cassandra the clever blessed Prophetess of Troy, left behind only her cursed self. Its bloody maw gaping.
It waited, and waited, and waited, for the right moment, the perfect moment, before it rushed forward and swallowed her whole, hacking her apart till she was nothing but a shell.