27 December 2012
~Premise
I am perched atop a window sill. I hug my fragile knees to my hollow body. The glass pane before me is smudged and dirty. I could see only out through it. The lonely old pane did not reflect back an image of myself, as there wasn't enough light coming at it from the inside. Beyond the little windowsill, a world of the unknown, the feared and envied, flourishes through the rest of the world. Everywhere but here. Not here, not in an insane asylum, is there anything to envy. Nor is there enough souls capable of fear here for the building to also posses such a trait. Not here at home. Beyond the glass pane, there was hope. There was family. There was happiness. There was love. Some awful day long ago, I threw all of that away. They think I'm insane. They dub me a creature. Oh, how I'd rather break our old pane into millions of shards. How I'd love to spread my wings and soar out of this window, the only window in my cell, six feet up the wall. I want to see other people. I want to sit in the trees, smell the luscious flowers, taste the refreshing, clear blue crystals of water that collect in the ponds. How I would love to see and touch the stars. If I had my freedom, if my stars were within my grasp, not separated to me by a dirty glass pane, I would be happy. Regret-less. I think I could move on... And live. Who am I? I am Jordan Virginia Masters. I am thirteen years old. My brown hair hung loosely down past my waist. My hair used to be kept short, but it hadn't been cut in years. I wore the tattered white outfit given to me the day of my imprisonment. Shortly after, I went into a coma. That was long ago. I can't remember anything before that first day, nor remember a single face from before the coma. All I really remember is the few things I've learned from an entire conscious year, cooped up in this prison. My cell was boring. There was almost nothing in the room. There was nothing on the walls except the single window, that I had practiced with climbing onto so much that I could now literally jump up onto the window sill. I couldn't escape through the window. It was so far off the ground that treetops looked to be the size of my smallest fingernails. A drop from this height would probably kill me. If it didn't, I would most certainly break every bone in my body and be paralyzed UNTIL I die, which in that case, may take only minutes. In the middle of the room, nailed to the floor, was my old, indented cot. The springy fabric had held my weight every day for a long time. Did I mention that my coma lasted a whole six months? I was fed with a long tube during that time. The employees were instructed to keep my alive. All 'prisoners' were kept alive unless they were worthy of being hanged. I guess I was lucky and hadn't yet committed any crimes, because I was spared. The last feature in my room was the door. It was a sturdy door, one that couldn't be easily broken or opened. The walls were brick. Escape by breaking a wall was next to impossible. The good thing about my door is this - I can eavesdrop. Prisoners at this asylum (the name obviously escapes me) get special privileges. When a new prisoner is brought here, they take a test. If it determines their level of insanity. If they are bad enough, they get much worse cells with even higher windows and soundproof doors. Scoring higher will get you better cells. Finally, if you get the highest or one to the highest scores possible, you are determined as barely insane or not insane at all. Innocents are taken all that time. I'm innocent. Therefore, I got a very good score, and in turn, got a relatively nice room with a great door. I can hear every word spoken outside in the hall or from other nearby rooms. I often listen to the murmurs and noises other prisoners make, as well as listening in on the conversations the guards have. The guards remind me of soldiers. They were always males. They wore blue and white uniforms with big brown boots and big black gloves. They wore thick black caps. Berets, they called them. Over their shoulder was a five and a half foot long musket with a ten inch bayonet snapped onto the end. A supply of bullets was on every guard's belt. Though some guards seemed like robots, programmed to patrol the hallways walking shoulder-to-shoulder, they were real people. The guards didn't act like trained soldiers in any way. Of course, there were oddballs here and there, like the men who also belong to the militia, or the few older men who were veterans of the revolution. However, these guards had character. Some seemed strict, but others were friendly with big hearts. Sometimes, a group of guards may stop in the hallways and lean against the walls on either side just to talk. Occasionally, they would stop during their conversations right outside my cells. Days like these were great. The guard's stories are music to my ears. Also, the guard's harmonicas are literally more music to my ears. As I listened in on more and more conversations, I became somewhat fond of a certain trio of guards: George, Billy, and Ray. These three pass by my cell together every other day. George is an older man. He is called by his last name, Hosmer, by the other guards. He's a veteran of the war, and may be a little strict, but he has a good sense of humor. His hair is grey. He has a bushy beard and mustache on his face. Billy is another guard. He has short brown hair and a short, stocky build. Also, he's pretty chubby. Really chubby. Chubby to the point where he couldn't walk shoulder-to-shoulder with the other guards in the narrow halls. Billy has a big heart and loyal personality. The last guard in the trio is Ray. Ray has bright blonde hair and piercing, icy blue eyes. He's about my age, probably only a few years older, if that. He's a man of few words, but still shows his playful side when joking around with Hosmer and Billy. The three if them have interesting conversations all the time, but some conversations are a bit odd. They usually chat about co-workers, their own experiences, politics, finance, girlfriends, or things of the sort. Last week though, I think I heard those guards say something that I wasn't meant to hear. And, as you can imagine, that's where my story begins.
The Merciless Death of Jordan Virginia Masters • Opuss № I