<< | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | >>
I close my eyes. My head down into my hands. An impotent anger is building. Inside me, a seething well of frustration. The beating of my heart seems suddenly louder, demanding, as my rage increases. I am almost hyperventilating. The knuckles of my fists are white. Eyes screwed shut, bolted.
I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this. Who the fuck are you to put me here like this? All of this? I was good. I was good and I don’t deserve this. Who the fuck are you to do this to me?
My thoughts are random, a stream of consciousness. It is like two trains of thought have crashed, hurling unconnected cognitions together. My eyes spring open and I open my eyes, and I’m a second from hammering on the door.
Faint noise. Grown so used to the previous silence. Absorbed by morbid thoughts. This growing noise now like a slap in the face. It is approaching. Getting closer and now louder. Scraping towards me. I crouch down in the corner of my cell. Cower away from the noise. It is a hard, heavy sound, stone grinding against stone. The noise goes straight to the pit of my stomach. Seemingly bypassing my ears altogether. A cold blanket of fear gently drapes itself over me, settling like midnight snow until the fear has invaded every part of my body.
The sound of a train pulling into Belsen. Napalm bombers. Hairy-backed hands under pajamas. The sound of the dead, the cold dragging of mortality. Louder now. Crumpling everything in my head. Thoughts flattened under this noise. Half-eaten faces. Bones through flesh shocked to white. Eyes bulging too large for their sockets.
The noise passes and fades. Gone. Over now. My head sinks down to my hands again. Brutal mockery. Head down into hands and trembling. A tidal wave of hopelessness explodes. The tears come down my face.
A large house, a quiet area, the neighbours were safe with primary-school aged children. The crime rate was so low as to be almost non-existent. Expensive. Expensive enough, at any rate, to deter the wrong sort of people from moving in.
Cut. The living room was warm – the central heating had been on for hours by now, and two figures sat close together on the leather sofa in front of the television. A long grey coat was draped over the arm of the settee. The room was decorated well, tastefully. Deep carpet underfoot matching the cream of the walls. A wooden CD rack on the far wall, full, John Coltrane, Brahms, Led Zeppelin, Paul Simon.