Part 2

The song is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by the Beetles

Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

"Sydney."

"Sydney!"

Sydney heard her name being called and it was a shrill note breaking the perfect symphony going on in her head. She let her eyes focus on the grime in front of her, on the hell in front of her and the dirty floor underneath her. She looked in the direction of the door and noticed that it was open. Sark was standing in the doorway, his silhouette lit by some dim light behind him. The light vaguely hurt her eyes so she looked away. Sydney did not look towards the light anymore.

"Eat something" he said placing a metal dish on the floor. They no longer gave her utensils and she no longer required them. They were relatively sure that no physical escape was possible from the prison that they had locked her in, but they were not about to allow her any other. Sark stood there for a few moments awaiting some form of acknowledgement but finally gave up and shut the door with a bang.

Cellophane flowers of yellow and green
Towering over your head.
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes
And she's gone.

Sydney waited until the pain subsided in her eyes before crawling over to the metal dish. She didn't walk much anymore. It was just farther to fall. She was always careful to keep her back towards the south. Sometimes that involved crawling backward in the room but she never, ever turned around. She knew, in some part of her brain that once upon a time, she always used to face the south. Sometimes she forgot why she didn't anymore.

Yesterday she forgot. Yesterday she turned around. The south end of the room had looked almost exactly like the north end of the room except for a small window above a small metal sink. And then a balloon of pain had burst in her head. Lying on the floor, writhing in pain, she had remembered why she didn't look towards the south anymore. It might have been yesterday that this happened because the pain was still fresh in her mind, but maybe not. It might have been last year.

Follow her down to a bridge by the fountain
where rocking horse people
eat marshmallow pies.
That grow so incredibly high.

Sydney didn't worry about the pain anymore. She didn't see her reflection in the metal dish after she had finished her meal with her hands. She didn't see the dirt on her arms or notice her jagged, broken nails.

She saw herself in ballroom, dancing the waltz. The lights sparkled overhead and the music was a symphony. She had many partners; lots of men wanted to dance with her. She was a princess and this was her hall. Danny would come often and dance with her around the floor and she would introduce him to her parents as the man she wanted to marry. They would be happy for her and throw a big ball and people would come dancing. The food was exquisite and the wine glasses sparkled like diamonds.

Sometimes Noah would show up as a dashing young knight and try to win her hand. He was bolder and more physical than Danny and sometimes she would decide to go with him. He would take her on these wild adventures where he slayed evil warlords and ground them to dust. Sometimes she stayed with Danny and lived as a Queen in castle made of glass. The dreams varied and the heroes changed and many times they blended together to give her the only peace that she knew. But never did she dare to dream about another man.

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore
Waiting to take you away
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds
And you're gone.

She didn't know how long she'd been here. Her life had now been broken down into three stages. The first stage of her life was before she was captured. She couldn't think about this time. This time had blue skies and freedom and love…she could vaguely remember pain as well, but there had been so much pain between now and then that all she could remember was the love. She didn't try to picture anything from this stage, she would just wrap herself in the feelings of warmth and happiness and disguise them into pictures she could think about.

The second stage of her life was her capture. She could think about specific events leading up to it, the first few days and weeks after it, but she tried not to dwell on it too much. She remembered feelings of anger, but mostly there were feelings of fear. After the anger had died down and the weeks turned into months she remembered climbing up on the metal sink to look out the small window. The window was no bigger than her palm, it was really a vent, but it allowed her the only view she had of the outside world. She could not see much, she could never see the sun directly but it had been the only thing that could give her any comfort. She had spent hours looking out that window…

The third stage had begun not too long ago and this was the stage that she knew she was now in. This was the stage of pain and sorrow. There could be no light in this stage, not after-- The searing pain in her mind told her not to probe too deeply. After the pain began to ebb she was free to resume her analysis. Now she was empty. That was what the third stage was. Now she was a shell with no desire for life. Her dreams were becoming stale and they no longer had the power to shield her. She looked at her hands and knew that they had once held love, but they too were empty now.

Picture yourself on a train in a station
With plasticine porters with looking glass ties,
Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile,
The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

But now she was a little girl and she felt safe once again. Her father was home and curled up on the couch and he invited her to come join him. She quickly scrambled up to his side and gave him a big hug. He smiled and kissed her tenderly on the forehead and asked her how her day was. She replied that she'd missed him and he rewarded her with another smile. He was watching some TV, pictures she could see but they didn't hold any interest for her. So she laid her head on his lap and closed her eyes. She fell asleep in her father's lap while one of his hands gently caressed her hair.

Sark watched as Sydney stood up and walked quickly to a corner of her cell. She knelt down on the floor and he watched transfixed as she leaned her head forward and then smiled. His face held a touch of concern as she lowered herself to the floor and lay her head on her arms. He was not surprised that she wasn't crying, she hadn't cried in over a month, but he couldn't fathom the reason why she was smiling contently.