behind every summer

Chapter 46

Chapter 46

Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, and with each passing moment, I felt myself slipping further away from whatever hope I once had. At first, I thought maybe someone would step in. Maybe someone would believe me, see through the lies, and help me get out of this nightmare. But that hope faded quickly, like a dying flame that flickers for the last time before being consumed by darkness.

Now, there was nothing left.

I lay on the cold, hard floor of the cell, my body bruised and battered. Every inch of me ached, but the pain didn't even register anymore—it had become a constant companion, so familiar that I barely noticed it. My feet were so damaged from the repeated assaults that I could no longer stand up properly. Walking was a distant memory, something I couldn't imagine myself doing again. Even shifting positions brought a wave of pain so intense that it made my vision blur. Most of the time, I just lay there, motionless, staring blankly at the cracks in the ceiling.

My body had wasted away to almost nothing. I hadn't been eating properly for weeks—maybe months—and it showed. My clothes hung loosely on my frail frame, and when I looked at myself in the tiny mirror by the sink, I barely recognized the person staring back at me. Sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, and skin that clung tightly to my bones. I looked like a ghost, like someone who had already died but hadn't quite realized it yet.

But maybe that's exactly what I was—a living ghost. Trapped in this purgatory, waiting for the inevitable end. And honestly, I welcomed it.

I wanted to die.

It was a thought that had crossed my mind many times before, but now it was more than just a passing wish. It was a burning desire, a desperate need to escape this unbearable existence. I had nothing left to live for. No one cared about me, no one believed in me. The people I had once trusted, the ones who might have come to my defense—they were gone. I was completely and utterly alone.

Alone with my pain. Alone with my thoughts. Alone with the endless, crushing weight of hopelessness that pressed down on me, suffocating me from the inside out.

I hadn't spoken to anyone in days, maybe longer. There was no point. The guards ignored me, the other prisoners tormented me, and any attempt I made to defend myself was met with violence. My voice had become a distant echo, a whisper in a world that had long since stopped listening. I didn't even cry anymore. The tears had dried up weeks ago, leaving only a dull ache in my chest where my heart used to be.

How did I get here?

That was the question I kept asking myself, over and over again, even though I knew the answer. I had been set up. Framed for something I didn't do. And now, because of someone else's lies, I was rotting away in this cell, paying the price for a crime I never committed. It was unfair—beyond unfair—but there was nothing I could do to change it. Nothing I could say to make anyone believe me.

I was guilty in their eyes, and that was all that mattered.

I tried to remember what life was like before all of this. Before the accusations, before the beatings, before the world turned its back on me. But those memories were so far away now, like a dream I could barely recall. I remembered faces—Apollo, Holland, Edevane—but even their images were starting to blur, fading into the background as the days passed by. Did they still think about me? Did they believe what people were saying about me, or did they know the truth?

It didn't matter. None of it mattered anymore.

The truth was, I was dying. Slowly, painfully, but surely. My body was wasting away, my mind was unraveling, and there was no escape. Death seemed like the only mercy left to me. The only way out of this endless suffering.