Opening my eyes as if for the first time, I look around my barren cell. I blink and squint, still struggling to adjust to even this dim darkness. There is what seems to be a thin line of light, a crack, but still faint, still dark. When I step towards it, I find myself suspended, pulled back in the air, bound by my waist to the far wall.
I do not remember how I got here, nor anything of my life before my incarceration. I cannot say whether I am innocent or guilty of the crimes of which I stand accused. I do not even know my sentence or if I am detained without trial. I may be a prisoner of war or some other captive lacking the rights of ordinary criminals. And I have seen no sign of my jailer since my arrival in this cramped dungeon.
Well, it is not cramped in reality. It is I who am cramped, hemmed in, held fast by this bind around me. The material is strange, almost soft, so unropelike, warmer than a chain should be. But however soft and warm, I am still bound. And furthermore, I am sure my cell is shrinking. It is hard to be certain. Like I have said, it is hard to see, squinting and peering as best I can down here, but these walls are closer than they seemed yesterday or the day before. What kind of jail is this? Where the walls loom down on you like a tide? Sometimes I am sure I can hear rushing waters, just beyond my cell. I am deathly afraid of drowning.
Sometimes, overwhelmed with rage and sadness, I fling myself against the walls, pound it as best I can with my tight fists, the hardest thing I have, kicking and screaming. But the walls only gently rock, and I hear my jailer’s laugh echoing far off from some distant watchtower, evidently delighted by my feeble efforts. Even if not for such mockery, I soon exhaust my strength and collapse against the cell’s soft, warm floor, anger ebbing until only sadness remains. Sometimes these outbursts are the last thing I remember before I wake up, curled in on myself like an ammonite. Other times I am too agitated to sleep, stewing instead in my feelings for hours, glancing occasionally around for some weak spot I may have hitherto overlooked.
I am not violent by nature. I’ll admit, I have fantasised about what I might do to my captor if I found him, what tortures I might exact. But these are just games played by an idle mind. I am no criminal. The true criminal is the one who keeps me locked away down here. When I think of him, I shake impotently until I cannot bear it.
I’m sorry, I’m sure such whims of emotion are of little interest to you. But they are all that I have down here in this empty cell. I have not even my memories to console me, no knowledge of the outside world, of what lives I might live in freedom. Freedom to me is simply a cell with wider walls, or perhaps no walls at all, just an endless expanse of this warm softness, going on and on. I press myself against those walls and their supple embrace, if I can close my eyes and permit myself to forget my circumstance. I revel in this small sensation, rubbing up against the walls of my cell, savouring some slight friction, frottage, my skin softening into what I can now imagine as some thin, fleeting membrane. I delight in the small pleasures I can find.
And indeed, I may have found much cause for rejoicing. As weeks and months have passed, I am ever more convinced that my cell is not shrinking after all. It is I who am growing. Perhaps I only needed to accustom myself to the darkness, to its strange nurture. Who knows? All I know is that I feel stronger by the day. These bones that, when I first opened my eyes in this cell, felt weak and brittle now feel firm and ready to unfold like wings. My muscles ripen on them like a proud harvest. I’m sure that someday, someday soon, my efforts will be victorious. I will slice through these walls like a sharpened blade. I will bring them down like Jericho. I will be free, free. I will know the meaning of the word. Someday soon.
Congratulations! It’s a boy!
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