Hallelujah

Time - Unknown

There had been no indication of time, or how slow the sun passed over the sky, or even if the moon was up in the air. I started counting the amount of food given and at what times when I was first thrown down here, but after the 156th meal, times and dates started to shift. The guards wouldn't feed me until someone came to wash me, which would take until I was debating on eating the hay on the ground from lack of food and inability to sleep.

It was clear that I would be rotting down here for a very long time. Any guards that showed the slightest compassion, whether it was acknowledging me or giving me a cup of water, would be gone from the next shift...then the next one...and the next one. Only one ever returned. The first guard that brought me an entire loaf of bread instead of the normal moldy square they gave me. He didn't return until I reached seven-hundred twenty-six thousand, two-hundred and forty six in the amount of days I assumed it was. Then, his eyes were more dull, his entire body more zombie-like. It was that man that gave me the lashings, that man that continued to give me lashings whenever I had received food.

My nails, chipped and cracked and broken, slowly indented one more line in the stone wall next to the iron bars. One more day. Maybe it was hopeless to count anymore. At one point, I assumed I would look back on these days and know I made it through, but that point had long since passed. It was merely the routine that kept me carving in one more tally. Routine and wall space and nail dust that kept the lines there. If I truly wished to forget, all I would need to do was apply just the smallest amount of pressure to wipe off the days I counted, all of this was useless, pointless. But it kept me waking me everyday, to apply that one line with whatever nail I had left on whatever finger.

-

It had been another few days of endless cycles of food, being washed.

Food.

Being Washed.

Food.

Food.

Food.

Washed.

Being presentable must be a big deal to her. Even when she hadn't ever come to visit. She hasn't shown her face down here since the beginning. Since my sentencing began.

"You are strong," I heard my mother whisper, a cold draft gently caressing my cheek. "You are brave," my father chimed in. Both of their voices breathless and out of focus. When I tried to listen harder, their voices drifted further away. They sounded the same from my memory. If I squinted, I could almost make out my mother's dress flowing in the glow of the lanterns and torch light, clinging to an invisible form. It was pointless answering back to them, pointless to let them know that I could hear them. But the cold truth was, I wasn't strong, and bravery would've helped me out of here a long time ago.

The door creaking open jerked me from my dreaming, fresh tears making tracks down my cheeks. I quietly wiped them away, the visions of my mother gone, never being there in the first place.

"Food," the guard grunted, dropping the tray down in front of the cell, then kicking it in.

-

This was a new one.

The scraps of food now being laced with a sleeping agent. If I was confused at first, this was a whole different meaning. Where I at least relied on the telling of days by the meals or guards or shifts, it was impossible to do that now. Some days I would wake up and food would already be delivered. Other days, I would be starved until I devoured my food like a pack of wolves to a deer carcass. I couldn't care if there was medicine in the moldy bread or half eaten biscuit anymore. Maybe it was in the cup of water that barely held any liquid.