Madness moved around her mind
like a slippery snake, haunting her dreams and writhing through her thoughts.
Obscuring reality with insanity, twisting the pair together like a pretty braid
of imaginings and happenings, until all that existed was confusion.
Fact or fiction, the meaning
different, the outcome always the same. When madness occurred for so long
within the same place, madness became the answer. Madness became the escape.
“Is she awake?”
Selma heard the whispered
voices outside her cell and turned her head to the side. She stared at the
solid metal door and blinked rapidly as even the minute speck of light that fed
through a rust hole at the top burned into her retinas. Swallowing past her
dry, tight throat, Selma struggled to rouse from her heavy, suffocating sleep.
“I don’t know, you go and
check,” another voice snapped and Selma brought up the image of a round woman
with grey hair, with eyes so full of malice they made her chest go tight.
Selma fisted her hands and did
the slow, excruciatingly painful check to her body she always did after
rousing. Her muscles were always stiff and locked up, her eyes always stung and
felt as if someone had rubbed sandpaper over them, repeatedly. Her neck
screamed from being stuck in the same position for a long time. No one ever
helped her, it was always her waking agony.
Selma turned her head very
slowly and glanced up to the grey clock on the wall, she read the time—six o’
clock—whether that was Am or Pm, Selma had no way of finding out. Other than
that pin of light, there were no windows in her cell. What day was it? Selma
never had any clue. If Selma fell into a sleep, it could last between one hour
and one month, nobody knew for certain. Though, Selma could tell by just trying
to lift her leg that her muscles had been asleep for a while this time—a long
while.
Rotting in this cell…
Though ‘they’ called it her
‘room’ Selma had long since known it to be her cell. She remembered the cells
in the castle she grew up in and—“Stop!” She croaked through her tight, pained
throat and cringed at the pain it caused to speak. She had to get control of
these stupid, made-up stories in her mind. She had to gain control of her
brain, she had to tell her mind to stop giving her images of castles of such
beauty and size, and of a king and queen with smiling faces and loving, gentle
hugs—she had to, or she would never get free from this place.
Selma heard the rattle of lots
of keys and turned her head toward the door again, her chest sunk a little,
knowing that one of those cruel nurses was coming in. Yet hope rose as thoughts
of going into the sunroom where she could watch the scenery, the birds and the
ever moving sky.
Selma swallowed back the fear
and plastered an uncomfortable smile on her face.
Bad things happened when Selma
allowed her fear to rise. Bad things that she could not explain. Bad things
that could never be attributed to her—but Selma had known it had been
her. It was a deep, unsettling knowledge that made her wary around her
captives.
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