Chapter 15 - Imprisoned
Miles lay on his bed, breathless and shaking. He clutched the handgun tightly, as if he feared that the shadows would attack him at any moment. Every time he tried to draw a breath he felt as though he was inhaling ice, chilling him from the inside and leaving him feeling faint. The pale moonlight burned the image of the bloodstained sheets into Miles' memory, the white cloth smeared with crimson and muddy water. Slowly, he backed into the corner of the room and sat against the walls, motionless.
A sudden ringing echoed through the empty room. Trembling, Miles held the gun at arms length with both hands, aiming it at the blinking light on the phone receiver. The answerphone talked in its emotionless tone, only to suddenly change to an all too familiar speaker.
"Miles, it's Nick... Amber, she's... I... You have to come to the flat, it's... "
The recording trailed off as the speaker broke down into an emotional wreck. Unable to take any more of this torture, Miles screamed and threw the gun at the machine. The sound of metal crashing against the floor told him his aim was true. Sitting alone and defenceless in the darkness, he curled up tightly and stared into nothing, haunted by his own conscience. The bitter taste of tears and blood made him want nothing more than to escape from this shell in which he was imprisoned. Unable to reason with himself, he clutched his head tightly in his hands, his breathing sharp and irregular. The shadows were closing in on him, clouding his vision and stealing what air remained from within him. He finally surrendered to the darkness, granting him a temporary escape from his thoughts.
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Nick was confined in a cold and clinical jail cell. It looked as though it might have once been white, now discoloured and broken through years of neglect and abuse. Still recovering from his transferral from the hospital, he lay on a thin sheet of canvas suspended by two metal rods - the only thing to do in a room as barren as this was to sleep for as much of the day as possible.
As soon as he heard the grinding of the locks opening, Nick sat up in bed and stared at the guard walking through the door.
"You got a visit from your lawyer. Better hurry down to the visiting area - she looks pretty damn stressed." The guard sneered at this last statement. Clearly, he wasn't going to make things any easier for him during this time in prison. Sighing, Nick allowed the guard to place handcuffs over his wrists and lead him towrads the visiting area. If anyone could resurrect the hope of freedom within him, it would be Clarissa, he thought to himself.
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Clarissa sat by the pane of reinforced plastic dividing the room in two. She continued to look through Miles' diary that she had brought with her. Almost all of the pages were stained with blood and torn in places, making some of the text unreadable. Having read all of the entries a number of times, she couldn't help feeling a sense of pity for Miles - he seemed to blame himself for events that were obviously not his fault. This made her more concerned about the last entry remaining in the diary - it seemed uncharacteristic of Miles to act like that, even in writing.
She put the diary back down on the wooden ledge and waited for Nick. She needed answers and he might be the only one able to give them to her.
End of chapter 15