The Opportunity

I honestly can't remember the outside world - or a life before this one. All I have left is terror, and pain jumbled together to make a sort of adrenaline filled existence - something most people would define as a nightmare. I endure the pain because it's the only thing that feels real anymore - that and the Opportunity is still for the taking, and that is too good to pass up.

I think back to the final days before the Opportunity regularly, they are memories that I dig up when I am curled in a ball in my cell, waiting for my meals to come, moments when I am close to giving up hope.

The memory starts slowly, when I am close to screaming, when I feel as though the white walls that surround me are closing in. My brain conjures them to keep my mind occupied, this I know, but it is always painful to remember how life was back then.

The year is 1979 and I sit on my front porch at home, watching the last traces of the sun disappear behind the snow capped mountains that line the horizon. I lived in a small town in Alaska, a tiny mining village to the north, far from civilization. The name of this town I have long forgotten, but I do remember how difficult life was:

My father lived off of unemployment funds, which came about twice a year. I awaited the day when the money would be given to us only with sort of sadness.

I always knew how the money was spent; not a cent spent on me, the person that needed it. And I always knew it was going to be a long and difficult night when my father came from his study reeking of old dried sweat and dirt and announced that he was going to the pub.

However, while I sat on the porch this particular day, I was only thinking of me, and what I wanted. The truth is that I had been eyeing a silver flute in the pawn shop off of main street for quite some time, and I had finally stolen enough of my father's money to pay for it. I held the silver coins in my shaking hands, waiting for my father to come out on the porch, as he always did.

"Rose?" I heard his gruff voice come from inside the house. "Rose?"

"Out here papa," I said sweetly, smiling deviously. Right on time.

I heard the door bang open and my father lumbered onto the porch, a look of confusion on his face. "What time is it?"

"About four-thirty sir," I answered quickly, hiding the coins in my pocket.

"Bout time to go, I'say," my father reached into his pocket and drew out a silver timepiece that had long stopped working. "Huh, it says 'ere it's 7:17!"

"Father, you are simply mistaken." I said carefully, as if tending to a wounded animal. "That watch stopped working ever since-" I shut up fast, clasping a hand to my mouth.

"What!?" Asked my father angrily. "What? Dammit girl tell me!" He kicked me hard on the side, as was his habit. "Don't you shut up when your pa wants to know something!"

I fell sideways, a coin slipping from my pocket and dropping to the wooden floorboards with a hallow clink. I scrambled upright, grabbing the coin before my father could react and stuffed it deep into my pocket. I stood up and stared into his rage filled eyes.

"Ever since, well, the day when ma left," I rambled my answer.

My father's face grew soft for a second, he remembered it for sure.

He had smashed the timepiece on the table the night when I had told him that ma had left that summer's morning on a train, she couldn't take any more abuse. It filled his cold heart with a sickening pain and I could tell he regretted his actions towards her, perhaps that's why he kept the timepiece. My mother was the only person on planet Earth who could calm my father while he was having an episode.