The Price of Freedom

Nothing

That’s all she can hear, other than the faint hum of the flickering old lights in the hours before dawn comes when the day is only a few hours old.

Nothing

Like her heart right now, but a rising wave of wrath bubbles in the base of her stomach, waiting for the smallest thing to set her off.

She paces, back and forth, back and forth. The slap of her heavy boots the only sound in the derelict station which seems to be miles away from any form of life.

The coward, sadist and the traitors drove her away. Pushed her to breaking point until she snapped. The memory of white hot fury and the satisfaction of returning the pain they had inflicted on her rises from beneath the wave of wrath. Her fingers are clasped around a small golden pendant that hangs from her neck. As those feelings rise and replace the nothingness, she starts to panic. She loses complete control and starts reliving every bad thing that they ever did to her.

Her coward of a mother, standing back and letting the sadistic man she calls a husband inflict a burning pain on her only child as the bruises, marks and cuts appeared on her body. The traitorous girls she called friends lying, manipulating and luring her to believe she could rely on them and trust them.

She can feel her sanity being stretched as each memory surfaces and then a sudden moment of clarity right before the break. The calm before the storm.

SNAP!

A sound of years of pure mental agony erupts from the depths of her, breaking the nothingness that is threatening to suffocate her. The chain of her necklace tightens around her neck like a hangman’s noose. Her slender, shaking fingers claw at the chain and with a faint chink the pendant sails through the air, flying free like her soul wishes it could.

Behind all the pain, emptiness and anger her entire being yearns for freedom.

Happiness.

Love.

The pendant clinks onto the tracks. She missed the last train of the day by twenty metres, Twenty metres too slow to be able to get out of this damned corner of hell and find a new life.

Tears  trickle out the corners of her thunderous blue eyes, trailing black bars down her face as her spidery eyelashes blink each tear out. She doesn’t realise though, and her head is suddenly too hard to hold. Her long coffee caramel tresses hide her from everything, though there is nothing there. Once upon a time she was complimented on angelic beauty, but now she has fallen.

Her body sags with the weight of emotions, forcing her to the ground. Rationality defeated, nothing is making sense to her, other than the pain that is always there now. Her heart and thoughts rage war against each other, the heart wanting to punish those who hurt her. But her thoughts want nothing more than to give up, stop and get away from everything and escape, not increase the already shattering pain.

There is one thing that can rival the pain, one thing that is stronger than the pain. It fills her slowly, while the war rages on inside her. Greyness.

Greyness is what started it all. Greyness is what contained the anger and distrust. Greyness is what made her a shell of her former self. Greyness scares her more than anything in the whole world. More than death.

She sits there, and as the war fades from her thoughts she suddenly thinks of a single word. Trapped. I am trapped. Her hands drop from her face and a sharp pain shoots up her left arm. The thunderous eyes snap down and ruby tracks are tracing from her palm down her arm.

The stars are starting to fade and in the weak light she can see what causes the red. A blade. A grey blade. Almost curiously, she presses the blade down on the soft skin of her right wrist and pain surfaces when she pierces her skin. But this pain is different to the other pain she’s felt. This pain is controlled, almost pleasurable.  She is in control of it, and it gives her a sense of power, of control, though in reality she is really far from any sense of control.

Pain. Pleasure. There is so much she can achieve with just this little blade.

This grey blade is the key to the rest of her life.

Before she makes her choice she thinks. Thinks about what she has to loose and what she could gain. Loose pain, gain freedom. There was never ever really a choice to make. She made it when she came to the station, without ever really realising it.

As she brings the blade back to her arm she thinks one final thought.

‘Matilda Grace Simmons was trapped. But now she will be freed.’

And then she brings the grey blade down hard and carves.

Carves words into her skin that say everything when the police find her body the next morning. A fallen angel frozen in time, someone who never belonged on this earth. Eyes wide and glassy staring at a grey dawn that isn’t there anymore. Skin cold and pale with scarlet droplets and rivulets frozen in place.

Free.

I am free.