Feel

The bulb flickered. The rain smashed against the windowpane, the force, alarming, the noise, deafening. But the silence was worse.

She looked at her flickering shadow on the wall, and realized the temporariness of its company. She hugged her knees tightly to herself as she shivered in a corner on her bed. The bed that sometimes was the most comforting place in her life, and sometimes was nothing more than a plank of wood disguising as comfort.

There was no trace of sleep in her eyes. It wouldn’t come. She didn’t even try to invite it.

She felt a hot sting in her eyes, and inhaled sharply. The noise disturbed the silence, dissolved in the rain.

Her mind rushed to the safe haven it had once known. The place. It knew the place so well. It had been there so long. It had been safe, protected, defensive. Nothing could ever hurt it in that place. Nothing could ever reach her.

She wasn’t sure when she discovered the Place. But she had, and she would visit it often. It was tempting at first, the nice numbness, far away from reality. The lack of emotions. The clear distance from love. The Place looked after her. She trusted it.

But the Place was a prison, one she simply could not escape from. And she didn’t really want to. There was nothing out there in the world to make her want to break out. It was never worth it. People didn’t know about the Place, until it was too late. And all the while, she stayed there, safe, protected like a a little baby protected by her mother.

But life, and fate, eventually caught up with her. She saw a helping hand extended towards her, and she realized how stifling the prison really was.

And she cried.

She cried like she hadn’t cried for years. She cried emotions, feelings, love, and sadness. She let them engulf her, drown her, resurrect her. And she ran. As far away from the prison as she could. Far away to never ever come back, to never let go of her helping hand.

She rocked slightly, as she crouched in one corner of her bed. Back and forth, back and forth. She felt the sting in her eyes. She felt a trail burn down her frozen cheeks, as first one, and then another tear rolled down. She felt the pain cut deep into her. The prison was destroyed, forever.

She smiled.

And waited for the doorbell to ring.