A rose to grind

-39-

I found myself in a long, inescapable sequence of nightmares, one layered on top of each other like plateaus. It was of my first life as Seanel Manguolio. Years spent chained inside of this fictional book, I was beginning to forget bits and pieces of whom I was. This was the first time in a while that I had a dream tailored to my past life. It was the time when I was free-falling from the top of the roof.

My body, like a piece of plastic, floated in the air. Because of the intensity of gravity that yanked me to the lowest floor, both of my arms were outstretched, and through the gaps of my fingers, rays of light glimmered, piercing my eyes. The draft that resisted against the air, cut all sides of my body. My hair whipped onto my face. Diving through the air, in the midst of it all, I had remembered thinking how peaceful it was, with the wind blowing into my ear, bereft of nonsensical chatter surrounding me. The vicious sunlight beat down on my accelerating body, casting me in some sort of white shade, that made me indecipherable from a falling piece of paper.

It all felt so real. Like I had returned back to that exact moment.

But, then, as I opened my eyes, the grim reality dawned on me. Greeted with a clean, white ceiling, I had never had a passion so great for the colour 'white' until now. My eyelashes fluttered open, and as I clenched my fist, I realized the sheets under me were soaked with my own sweat. Any longer, and I might as well have drowned.

My heart was thumping drearily in the cavity of my chest, having mistaken my dream as a real-time occurring incident. With the adrenaline rushing fervently through my veins, I couldn't afford to simply roll over and hypnotize myself into sleep. So, there was no other option for me but to wake up. I roused from my deadman position with strenuous difficulty—that bastard, Jacklin Rogue, even whilst professing towards me his unchanged and permanent tearful confessions of love, the dosages in which he had fed to me muscle relaxants were as big as his overwhelming 'love.'

One some days, I would be completely numb. It was as if my body had shut down, and this slab of meat that I called 'body' wasn't even under my own control. I felt like an outsider, watching through the peripheral lens of a spectator. Jacklin Rogue was as rare as a Blue Moon. Perhaps, unable to bear the guilt of having put me under this impression of a dumb, deaf, and blind fool, he would go cower somewhere. Lying in that bastard's own bed, I was the living proof of his immorality that he was too ashamed to face. But, what was this ounce of shame that he felt? It paled in comparison to what I had suffered at his hands! I had hoped that he would drop dead by the guilt and shame, but that would probably leave me ridden to this bed forever.

Ah, right, I should introduce you to my next set of routine. A personal little talk-show of mine.

When I wasn't sleeping, or being high off my rocks, I would stare at the wall opposite the bed. If before, I would've at least been able to watch the television, but as of now, my muscles were too limp, like they had been swapped out for wet noodles instead of limbs. Unable to move, only to breathe, eat, and sleep well, this was my life as the guinea pig of that motherfucker.

Today would be no different from the rest. I would awake, and in my dumb trance, transfix my gaze onto the wall, watching the long handle of the clock rotate in an agonizingly slow pace. Tock, Tock, Tock, it always went, and it was amazing, really, my self-restraint was, at the amount of willpower I had inside of me not to smash that piece of gadget into a million fragmented pieces, but as vexing as it was, it was my only source of entertainment, and my one piece of sanity in this spacious mundane room. Did there ever exist a canary who lived as lavishly as me?

Just as I resigned myself to silently observing the clock for the entirety of the day, the door to the bedroom creaked open. I did not need to tilt my head to greet the newcomer to know that it was Jacklin. He was the only one who had access to this room, really, the only one who ever knew of a life that existed beyond the expensive teak door. This time, he was dressed differently.