Caged

If you don't like blood, don't read this

I'm surrounded by bars. Thick, rusty, previously black, bars. They are covered in massive, fist sized, blood red thorns. I don't know how I haven't stood on any yet, the bars are after all the only things I have to stand on, a thin, not particularly warm white fleece blanket is the only thing that was provided to me inside this cage.

The cage is floating, no, the cage is weightless. We are in space, yet I am not weightless in myself. I stand on the bars as if in a cage that is merely over a chasm on Earth.

The stars spin around me before they vanish. They vanish because I am not in space. I don't know where I am, but I am definitely not in space.

Faces appear faintly all around me. They get clearer and closer, closer and clearer. The faces are of many people, all of whom I don't think that I have ever seen before, yet I do not know. I know nothing, no, I remember nothing of my past, cannot predict my unpredictable future. I know and will only ever know my present.

The faces close in. They have a creepy and off putting smile that is an attempt at a sneer. They all wear the same expression. Exactly the same face surrounds me, then they all return to being different faces with different expressions, getting ever nearer, ever clearer. Ever clearer, ever nearer. They begin to laugh a manic laughter. An evil laugh. They all laugh. They all laugh at me. At me. They are all laughing at me, then they to each other. They laugh at me with each other. They will not stop. They refuse to stop. 

I scream. It surprises me just how loud it was, but I screamed. I did didn't I? Or did I? I did. I must have. I know this because the faces have all stopped laughing. They are now all facing me. They are now all clear as crystal. They are now all stopped right by the bars, their noses almost touching the blood red, fist sized thorns on the previously black, rusty, not in space, bars. Their eyes are empty. 

My knees become weak.

I turn all around and look at all of the faces. I never move my feet for fear of the thorns. I turn left in panic and look at the faces, I turn right in panic and look at the faces. I count the faces. There are 100. No, 500. No, 60. No, 300. The number keeps changing. I continue to turn all about. I keep panicking. I can't stop panicking. My knees get weaker as my fear rises. I begin to sink. I must stop myself from falling. I fall in slow motion, but I must stop myself.

Just before my knees hit the bars, hit the thorns, my right hand reaches out. It lands hard and fast, fast and hard. My and lands solidly, my hand, not my bones, upon the largest thorn, blood red, shard like, solid metal, rust covered, previously black, cold, frozen, space like yet not actually space, part of the not actually floating or even weightless cage.

I'm panting. My hand feels fine but is bleeding copious amounts of blood.

My knees are now shaking so much that they are barely holding up off of the thorns. The thorns are my doom. If I continue to collapse, I shall be impaled on the thorns. I shall die on the thorns. I am dead on the thorns. 

I live. I never died.

My arm is now shaking from the effort of trying to keep my knees off of the thorns. No. My arm is now shaking from the wound to my hand. No. I am shaking from blood loss. No. 

My mind fogs. I see nothing. I hear nothing.

My mind clears.

My knees give way at long last. At long last my knees give way, but they too land on thorns. Small thorns, my knees are now held together, no, pushed apart by the vicious, razor sharp frozen, fist sized, blood red, rusty, previously black metal that are the thorns of the bars that are holding me captive in this god forsaken place. They must bleed. They are sore, no, only grazed, no, they are agony. That is the word. Agony. Pure, terrifying, mortal, true and right, proper and actual, agony.

I shake all over. I begin to get lower. I shake. I am uncontrollable. 

Water of some kind, no salt water of the pouring out of your eyes in times of emotion, pain, fear, remorse, loss, kind of salty water that doesn't taste too good. That runs down my face.

My head gets lower and closer, closer and lower, down, down, down towards the spikes. 

I shake so much.

Just before my nose touches the massive thorn in front of my face, my left hand flies out. It flies further than my right did. It happens, by some miracle, mercy, miraculous and merciful coincidence, land in a gap between two spikes. This is also by some merciful, miraculous, coincidental happening, exactly where the corner of the small, not very warm, hand towel sized, thin, whitey, creamy, vanilla ice creamy, fleece of a blanket that is the only thing that in was provided in this cage, lies.

I shake uncontrollably.

My nose now rests upon the tip of the thorn.

I look up one last time. The faces greet me. The faces all wear a similar expression of excited anticipation. They are eager for my death.

I become suddenly defiant. I become suddenly stronger. I do not want them to see me suffer. They will not see me suffer. I will defy them. I will win! I will win, for when they kill me there will surely be an afterlife! I will have my reward! I will WIN!

My left hand moves forward ever so slightly. I grip the fleece between my first and middle fingers before raising my head still further. My weight now shifted back onto the balls of my feet allows my knees to be agonisingly lifted, with a sick and gut wrenching, gut wrenching and sickening kind of almost slurp as the blood is released from the knees and the knees released from the thorns. Feet now flat, left hand raised a little and heading back to my side, slightly crouched, my right hand too is removed from it's metallic and spikey prison.

Now fully crouched, I transfer the fleece from left hand to right. Blood seeps into the fleece, fleece sticks into the wound.

Slowly raising my right arm, I begin to stand at the same speed as the arm raises. When stood fully upright, my arm is at a 90 degree angle, forearm to upper arm, upper arm straight out to the right from the shoulder. 

I shake, but finally catch my balance and remain steady enough to continue the fleece raising. 

So much blood has now seeped into the fleece that a line of the sticky stuff is beginning to form and trail down the crinkled and scrunched up material.

The fleece is now raised as high as my arm will allow. My face becomes set. I feel my eyes burning with defiance, bravery, courage, reason, purpose.

The faces are now shocked. The faces then set too. The faces know what to do. I know what they will do.

I shout at the faces. 

"You have caged me! You have entrapped me, enslaved me, starved me, tortured me! You have done what you have done and no more, yet no less. You cannot change the past. I know only the present, yet I know too enough to understand that I shall know no future!"

The eyes that I stared into showed no mercy, only flame.

"You have had your time! You have seen your day! You shall never again see the light! Neither shall I for that matter, for I too have had my time, only my time has come at your hand, no one else's! Your time has too come at your own hand, you just don't know it yet!

We are all gone!"

I drop the blood streaked fleece.

...

the darkness sets in. 

All that continues now, all that ever will continue now, is the darkness.

The black and bleak, the bleak and black. 

They are all that are, were, all that ever was and ever will be.

We are one.