Morning In Prison (standard:other, 487 words)
Author: Dan Tana	Added: Sep 15 2010	Views/Reads: 2851/3	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Another day of torment begins.

She awakes, reluctantly, to another day, feeling betrayed by the
fleeting freedom of last night's dreams.  She has not yet opened her 
eyes, and already the weight of reality is pressing down on her, making 
it hard for her to breathe, like the thick and heavy air of a hot, 
clammy afternoon.  With a weary sigh she opens her eyes, throws off her 
covers, and sits up in bed, hugging her knees to her chest and staring 
off into nothing. 

The door to her cell is open, creating a momentary sense of liberation,
which no longer tempts the prisoner.  She knows that somewhere out 
there, far beyond that deceitful door, are impassable walls, topped 
with razors, guarded by guns, that keep her captive. 

All of the years left in her sentence stretch out in her imagination, a
dull and featureless desert with no signs of life.  The suffocating 
emptiness of the impending day fills her heart until she feels like it 
will be torn in two.  She thinks about what she will do with this day, 
and decides that maybe she will try suicide again.  It would be her 
third time. 

Tears start to fall, leading quickly to fits of uncontrollable sobbing,
as she squeezes her eyes closed against the aching in her chest.  Then 
she is filled with a terrible rage at the absurdity and injustice of it 
all.  And in an instant the anger turns back into despair so powerful 
that it causes her physical pain. 

She thinks of that wonderful, sweet, sensitive man whose embrace once
made her feel... things that she cannot put into words.  She asks 
herself what was so terribly criminal about those things that they did 
with each other on that one magical night when he gave her a gift that 
her heart holds truly precious. 

She remembers how he hesitated when she told him what she wanted from
him, how he asked her if she would mind waiting, and how she had 
persisted. 

As always, these thoughts turn into a tempest of conflicting emotions,
from guilt to gratitude to anger to sadness, and grief and confusion 
and frustration, all overshadowed by the echo of their affection. 

Then comes the memory of her parents finding the two of them together,
and those horrible men in uniform taking her friend away from her.  And 
then there was the screaming, the crying, and the desperate pleading, 
and those futile attempts to have a rational conversation about how 
much their actions were hurting her, which all fell upon deaf ears. 

She collapses back down on her bed, tortured by the sick feeling that
she can do nothing to free someone she loves very much from the cage in 
which he is imprisoned.  Or to free herself from being locked outside 
of that cage, in a prison with walls as wide as the horizon, which to 
the child feels no larger than a coffin.


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