Nightmare

The darkness was pressing in on her. It was cold. So cold she barely noticed the chill in the rough stone beneath her hips. The kind of cold that leaves a deep, everlasting ache inside your joints. The stone walls of the cell stayed cold most of the year. The walls had no windows, nowhere for the sunlight to enter and warm them. Nowhere for warm air to creep in. It was just cold.

Huddling against the corner of the cell the girl curled in on herself, protecting her chest and her fingers from the frigid darkness surrounding her. Almost fearfully she shivered. Fear wasn’t something the girl was used to. It had become so normal in her life that she simply didn’t register it anymore. Instead, she registered small changes. Changes in her cell. Changes in her routine. Changes in him. Outside the stone walls, she could just make out the sound of the wind clattering against the walls. The sound was new. She knew it was the wind. Wind, she had heard before, whispering around her cell in the hot months. It was the clattering sound she had never heard. She could not begin to picture what could have possibly made that sound. She assumed it was something striking the stone but it sounded nothing like the dull thud of flesh hitting stone. Or the crack of glass breaking against it. Nor the soft jangle of her steel chain as it skittered across the floor. The girl knew in some way, that there had to be an outside of her cell. The man came and went daily so there must be something out there. She had never seen it. If she had then she didn’t remember it. All she could remember was the walls of this room. Its stone edges and rough walls. The floor was worn smooth in some parts, the roughness ground down over the years. He never let her settle in those parts for too long. Didn’t want you to get soft he said, Dont want you getting comfortable. She didn’t know what comfortable was. Other than feeling cold, or sore the only other feeling the girl experienced was hungry. Lately, she had felt more hungry than usual. She knew he was giving her less food than normal. He had today told her she was eating too much, getting soft around the middle. His words were less kind but she understood his meaning. She was no use to him if she was overweight.

Tonight the hunger and the cold were working against her mind, trying to shut her down in fear. Huddling in tighter at a particularly loud sound outside the girl tried to put all awareness aside in favour of keeping warm. It was dangerous to think too long about outside. She learnt that lesson long ago after the man failed to latch her cell door properly. She didn’t go far. In truth she was not looking for a way out, only hoping to find something to drink in the outer room, hoping he had left something after he took her there that night. The room was even still a part of her cell but it didn’t matter. She was chained every night after that. First by wrist and ankles, trapping her in place. Over time, showing she had learnt her place allowed her more freedom within the cell. Now there was only a single chain, snapped tight around her in a different place every night. She was grateful he had only chained one ankle tonight. It made it easier to huddle her fingers against her chest to keep the warm. Squeezing her eyes shut she began counting her breaths. In the past, it lulled her into at least a light doze. No matter how cold or hot it became in that tiny room the girl could count on the stillness of her own mind to bring her peace. As long as everything remained the same she was safe. The girl understood that safe was not something she really had any claim to feel, but it is the small things that made her this way. The locked door to her cell, with the grate closed over and a chain locking her to the floor meant nothing was coming for her. This was her time to simply be alone. Her time to try to piece together fragments of her mind and memories and hope to find some peace amongst it all. She was, in the silence and darkness, able to breathe for herself. In here she was herself. Out there, in another room so like her own only much larger she was his. She was Girl.

Counting her own breaths again she could feel her mind sliding into a haze, moving away from the hardness of the day. Away from the frozen room and stone. Away even from the strangeness of the new noises coming from Outside. Just before the girl dropped into unconsciousness for the night she felt something else new. Without understanding it fully she had the feeling that this was the biggest change. She felt an awareness inside of her. Something moved.