Short Stories

Creative Writing Peice - Locked Away

A/N- So I've been working on this for a while now and I don't know if it sounds weird or not but I guess it is meant to slightly. Anyway, I'd really like to know what you thought of this as I've had to keep coming back to it continuously. Enjoy!

Sometimes my mind gets locked away, like a bird in a cage, my thoughts move freely yet are kept inside by steel walls that don't break. The walls sometimes get cracked, perhaps a new person appears, or someone gets closer to the mayhem of the maze that's on the other side. Either way nobody wins. If I let you, if you scale those walls you get lost in the maze, the endless feelings twist and turn, entwining you as part of it until you can't move forward any more and you become a part of the maze. I won't stop you from fighting through, if you got this far you probably heard my cry for help. Although you do only get one chance to reach the heart of it all. I sometimes imagine my mind as a ship in a glass bottle. It's sealed in and cannot get out without it, or the bottle being broken somehow. The non-existent winds in the glass bottle would be the small sigh of relief I feel when I tell you my thoughts.

My anxiety and insecurity are the bulky, metal chains that hold me in place, trapping me against my will. I'm held in my mind, forced to try swim through the inky stream of thoughts that was a constant flow daily. Some days I would survive, my head just staying above the water allowing me to breathe, some days I would sink into the darkness, my silence filled by the trauma of drowning myself. The chains never broke, they grew stronger the more I survived, and as they got stronger my breath got smaller and survival was only seen as a miracle.

In times like this, hope washes away like pen on your hand. Sometimes it's there, then gone the next minute, sometimes it's there and fades over time until it's invisible. Sometimes it can be bright like the moon against the dark sky, sometimes it's the grey storm clouds that tear you down, piece by piece. It's unstable and uncontrollable, taken away so easily by time and thoughts.

But when hope is stolen so easily in the tenebrous caverns of your mind, hope is also given back generously by the minds of others, the love and support of those you love was the sole provider of the much-valued hope we used to survive. Unfortunately for me, those who loved me had left me here alone, their betrayal and imprisonment was what caged me so. Like a solemn songbird, I sat in my cage and quietly sang, the words of madness that rose from my mouth combined with the endless insanity of my own mind.

I'd been sent to this asylum only a year ago, when my mind was stable, when my smile was real, when the emotions I had were easily distinguished and they didn't dare contaminate each other like my rage so happily did to my fear now. The constant rattling. The cold metal chains that chained my head also chained me to the wall. I couldn't leave this place. I couldn't leave. I couldn't. Red drops fell. Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop. The liquid swam from my punctured wrists to the stone floor. Like gumdrops of sugar rain to the rats which crawled around my feet. Tap, tap, tap, tap... footsteps became easy to recognise when you're tied up in silence, the weight of the steps could only imply that it was meal time, yet I still wasn't given the human interaction which could so greatly save me. The stone walls echoed, laughing at me as they carried the sound of sanity from room to room, carrying the life I would never have. Admittedly I am mad and I'm a trained elite in my field. Just imagining how long a rookie would last sickens my stomach, it reminds me of my humanity again as my survival instincts constantly run hot adrenaline through my body.

I patiently waited for the familiar hissing of gas from the vent and the clanging of large metal padlocks. The drowsy haze I had called mealtime clouded my thoughts briefly and offered me the silent mind I'd waited for. Each day grew even longer. 3 seconds, 2 seconds, 1 second... gone. The drowsiness fell away and seeped into the shadowy walls. My pupils stop widening as my eyeballs squirmed in their sockets to see the dull and grubby, metal tray at my feet. I moved my arms and stretched them outwards. The only time I lost the leash was when I ate. Well, when I was supposed to eat. I'd tried starving myself to death, but then they just force fed me through a tube, desperate to torture me ever longer and prolong the death I desired. Nowadays I ate a small mouthful, which by now, was enough to keep me going, and instead I lounged around my cold cell, I etched drawings and words into the walls of my prison, I stretched my body and allowed my blood to circulate properly. The free movement of blood flowing through my body made me giddy and cheerful as I felt the steady rhythmic beat of veins pulsating. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

Repeating my words over and over again I began my daily ritual. I pulled a toothy grin with what teeth I had left and stared intently at the wall.
'The night crawler will come, and take you all away, for the trouble you have caused, he will make you pay'. I giggled slightly.
'The night crawler will come, he'll come for you today, for the pain you have caused, he will make you pay'. Another giggle escaped my insane lips.
'The night crawler will come, my friend in the night, he'll grant me my death, save me from my very dark night'. I was silenced by the hissing again. The nightcrawler will come, the night crawler will come.
Eyes filled with black, the emptiness of the soul, a pain inside the chest, and nothing to fill the hole. While death is my lover, my kind sweet friend, he sits and watches as my living torture never ends.