if i die tomorrow - permanent hiatus

confined

     The woman threw me into a cell -- literally. A shockwave of pain fizzed through my body as I landed on my bad arm, immediately accompanied by a spiral of nausea rolling through my stomach. 

     The click as she shackled my good wrist to a manacle threading out of the wall, rusty with the blood of countless captors before me, sounded like the turn of a lock as the world closed to me. 

     I gritted my teeth on a shout, forcing myself to silence. I could still hear her laughter even after she turned away, even after she was gone. It rung repeatedly in my ears like a frenzied animal crashing again and again against a cage. 

     She would not draw another noise out of my lips. 

     She thought she had destroyed me, torn down all that I was, all that I had left in this world. Well, she was wrong. I held one last shred of dignity, one last person I had to protect with my life. She could never, never take either of them away. 

     Dragging myself up to a sitting position, I felt my way along my forearm in the thick darkness of the cell, wincing as spikes of pain shot through my ravaged arm. The heavy chains weighed down my arm, hanging loosely off of my wrist, clicking irritably as I shifted over my left arm to my right. My fingers brushed specific places, points along the length of the broken limb where the breaks were. 

     I held on to the golden shred of light peeking into my room between the iron door and the wall like a lifeline. There was a bigger world out there, bigger than those walls, bigger than the suffocating air. I slowed my breathing, slowed my heartbeat, slowed my thoughts and directed it elsewhere. 

     My brain started working, emerging out of shock for the first time after devastation. I assessed the damage the best I could with as much cold professionality as I could muster, and trying to push down the fear that had risen like bile in my throat as the bigger picture cleared and I could see just how much trouble i was in.

     Three places. She had broken my forearm, just my forearm, in three places. 

     They were clean breaks, though. They would heal, given time. 

     Time.

     The one thing I have none of.

     I tensed my face in resigned preparation for what was to come, cringed away from myself, and touched my hand.

     I bit down on my lip, hard, forcibly holding back the scream tearing out of my chest. Blood welled up in my mouth, its bitter tang iron on my tongue. 

     Crushed. Completely and utterly crushed.

     The rational part of my mind knew that this wasn't damage I would ever recover from, if I had all the time in the world. The irrational part didn't accept it. 

     Yet again my mind flashed back to her, her, her as she twisted my arm, her as she squeezed my fingers in all the wrong angles. My breathing sped up, my eyes wild with panic, drowning in panic, buried in panic. The flicker of light weaved itself into my swimming world, scattering itself in all directions.

     I took a deep breath, trying in vain to steady my racing pulse. I couldn't afford this. I couldn't afford to lose my head. 

     All right, so my hand was crushed. I couldn't even throw a punch the way I was now.

     I flexed my left hand, my fingertips tingling.

     Now, all I could do was gather information, work out a plan that could, somehow, work with two people who couldn't fight their way out. I had only my mind on my side.