Life Sentence

CHAPTER 2

Kubra kept staring at the digital clock on the table. 7:52 a.m. It has been five days since she’d been put in this cell. Five days of no contact with the outer world. Five days of minimal sleep. Five days of crying. Five days of cursing. Five days of simply staring at the clock as the digits changed and made her closer to going insane.

    The only person she’d made contact with was the female guard who threw the tasteless meal in her cell. She’d tried relentlessly to get to talk to her; to have something to do but the women was as mute as a fish.

    The reason it was so important to her and why she thought this was the worst punishment anyone could have ever thought to give her was that Kubra was a very expressive person. She liked to talk. A lot. Whether it was sadness, anger, happiness___ any emotion you name, Kubra expressed her feelings through words. And her language of love was physical touch. Be it the patting of her father on her back or the gentle caress of her mother, the hug of her best friend or the holding hands of a lover ___ she felt loved and made someone feel loved through these gestures.

    Five days without any of these and she was going insane. Now, whether the jury knew this aspect of her personality or simply thought it punishment suitable for a criminal like her was something she also wondered in these five days, but stopped thinking when she had no means of knowing it for certain.

    Her head throbbed from all the crying and simply the stress. Her back was starting to hurt from the hunched position. Her vision was blurry from staring at one point for a long time. She stood up and started pacing her small cell. There wasn’t anything she could accommodate herself with. A simple wooden table with a chair, a digital clock placed on it which told the time and date, a mattress on the floor, a water sink and pot were basically everything it had. There was a small cabinet on the wall which contained some sanitary items but that was it.

    The door to the cell was unlocked and she knew it was time for “breakfast”. But instead of the usual tray of bread and watery eggs, the guard announced,

    “You have a visitor!”

    She looked at her for a few moments of dumbness in which she was not able to comprehend what it actually meant. Not only had the guard said something to her, but also she had announced that she had visitors. Someone she could talk to. Most probably and highly appreciated, her parents or her best friend. “I- I have a v-visi-visitor? I have a visitor?” Quite frankly, she’d thought that they had forgotten about her. That was not wise of her to think, but what was a girl with literally nothing to do but reflect on everything supposed to do?

    The guard put handcuffs on her and guided her outside of the cell. Granted everything was grey and dim, but it was still an improvement from her cell. She was aware that she was put in one of high maintenance cells where everything was at least clean, but no one can expect her to be grateful of that.

    She was taken to the parloir where apart from her, two other prisoners were present talking to the freemen in the receivers, as a sound-proof glass was present between them to prevent any physical contact.

    The guard left her and she took a few steps until she saw a familiar face.

    And all her happiness was gone.

    What the fuck was he doing here?

    She forced her face to be impassive, refusing to show any of her problems to him. He didn’t deserve to know them now. There once was a time when she used to tell him every single detail of her life but not now. He was the reason she was sitting here behind a sound-proof glass looking and feeling like absolute shit. On the other hand, he looked like a model from Vogue in his grey suit, his pale blue eyes standing out as usual.