Deck of Cards

Day 19- Hannah

Three of clubs- cleaning for 7 hrs

Hannah's POV

Another cleaning day, I was going insane. I had lost track of the days, they were stitched together with intervals of darkness in between them where my mind was left to rest. I didn't know how I would cope with another day in a room that smelled of garbage and human waste. It was so humid in there, so humid that it made me feel even more sick than I did with just the smell to comprehend.

My guard dragged me away but I felt like he was dragging someone else- I didn't feel like I was in my body. It was like my body and I had different lives. The room this time was just grubby, moss and dirt were piled high and I had to sweep it into bags. It was a repetitive task, my arms moving in the same motion for the whole time. I wasn't looking for accuracy, I was looking for peace in my mind.

But I got no peace, constant voices rang through my head; they buzzed and talked over each other in a choir of noise. Insane was never something I wanted to label myself but I was pretty close to breaking point. The constant isolation, the constant verbal abuse, the constant thoughts they planted in my head.

Some of the voices in my head spoke of reason and I just wished that they could speak louder than the voices which spoke more violently.

Some of the voices in my head talked about suicide a lot, the different ways I could kill myself. The ways I could die most painfully. The ways I could die most peacefully. It was difficult to ignore these voices when I was surrounded by silence and all I could do was focus on their shouting. I thought I was schizophrenic but later I decided that I was just going mad. Purely crazy.

Trying to calm my thoughts down, I tried to sing songs and hum but the noise seemed to sound inhuman in the air- it was almost an annoying sound like a bee's buzz. I stopped when it hurt my ears till I thought they were going to bleed. I never thought that I was that tone deaf.

Looking down at the floor all I could think about was how nice it would be to lie on the moss and pretend that it was a mattress. To cover myself in dirt and pretend like it was a blanket.

The hours trickled by like a dripping tap, but finally I was allowed to sit with the voices alone in the solitude of my cell.

They spoke to me in raspy voices.

"You're all alone," one said menacingly. The voice echoed around me, fading and waning as it disappeared.

"Try and break the bars," another joined in.

It sounded so plausible at the time, like it was really something I could do. Staring at the bars, they seemed to be weaker than I remembered. They didn't look so permanent any more. Bracing myself, I ran up towards them, pushing my body into them.

"Try again," said a voice in my head. It taunted me, aggravated me to the point where I began to see red. I was the bull and the bars were my red flag.

Trying harder, I threw my whole body against the metal bars hoping that they would give way. I hit them with a sickening crunch and I fell to the floor. I fell hard. If I was in a clearer head space maybe I would have felt the pain I was subjecting my body to. The voices still calling in my head, I kept on throwing myself against the bars but they stayed up like soldiers.

Giving up eventually I heard the voices telling me off, telling me to keep on going but I was tired. Falling asleep, I forgot about the pain in my arm- it almost wasn't there. Something was controlling me. Something ran through me other than my blood. It was insanity.

Pure and utter insanity. And it was perfect because for once I wasn't thinking about the pain of my life. I wasn't thinking about loss. Or the family I had.

It distracted me from everything that was important.