I’ve been locked up for 264 days.

I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and

the numbers in my head to keep me company. 1 window. 4

walls. 144 square feet of space. 26 letters in an alphabet I

haven’t spoken in 264 days of isolation.

6,336 hours since I’ve touched another human being.

“You’re getting a cellmate roommate they said to me.

“We hope you rot to death in this place For good behavior,” they said to me.

“Another psycho just like you No more isolation,” they said

to me.

They are the minions of The Reestablishment. The initiative

that was supposed to help our dying society. The same people

who pulled me out of my parents’ home and locked me in an

asylum for something outside of my control. No one cares that

I didn’t know what I was capable of. That I didn’t know what I

was doing.

I have no idea where I am.

I only know that I was transported by someone in a white

van who drove 6 hours and 37 minutes to get me here. I know

I was handcuffed to my seat. I know I was strapped to my

chair. I know my parents never bothered to say good-bye. I

know I didn’t cry as I was taken away.

I know the sky falls down every day.

The sun drops into the ocean and splashes browns and reds

and yellows and oranges into the world outside my window. A

million leaves from a hundred different branches dip in the

wind, fluttering with the false promise of flight. The gust

catches their withered wings only to force them downward,

forgotten, left to be trampled by the soldiers stationed just

below.

There aren’t as many trees as there were before, is what the

scientists say. They say our world used to be green. Our clouds used to be white. Our sun was always the right kind of light......

But I have very faint memories of that world. I don’t

remember much from before. The only existence I know now

is the one I was given. An echo of what used to be.

I press my palm to the small pane of glass and feel the cold

clasp my hand in a familiar embrace. We are both alone, both

existing as the absence of something else.

I grab my nearly useless pen with the very little ink I’ve

learned to ration each day and stare at it. Change my mind.

Abandon the effort it takes to write things down. Having a

cellmate might be okay. Talking to a real human being might

make things easier. I practice using my voice, shaping my lips

around the familiar words unfamiliar to my mouth. I practice

all day.......

I’m surprised I remember how to speak.

I roll my little notebook into a ball I shove into the wall. I sit

up on the cloth-covered springs I’m forced to sleep on. I wait.

I rock back and forth and wait.

I wait too long and fall asleep.......

My eyes open to 2 eyes 2 lips 2 ears 2 eyebrows.

I stifle my scream my urgency to run the crippling horror

gripping my limbs.

“You’re a b-b-b-b—”

“And you’re a girl.” He cocks an eyebrow. He leans away

from my face. He grins but he’s not smiling and I want to cry,

my eyes desperate, terrified, darting toward the door I’d tried

to open so many times I’d lost count. They locked me up with

a boy. A boy.

Dear God.

They’re trying to kill me.

They’ve done it on purpose.

To torture me, to torment me, to keep me from sleeping

through the night ever again.

His arms are tatted up, half

sleeves to his elbows. His eyebrow is missing a ring theymust’ve confiscated. Dark blue eyes dark brown hair sharp

jawline strong lean frame. Gorgeous Dangerous. Terrifying.

Horrible.

He laughs and I fall off my bed and scuttle into the corner.

He sizes up the meager pillow on the spare bed they shoved

into the empty space this morning, the skimpy mattress and

threadbare blanket hardly big enough to support his upper half.

He glances at my bed. Glances at his bed.

Shoves them both together with one hand. Uses his foot to

push the two metal frames to his side of the room. Stretches

out across the two mattresses, grabbing my pillow to fluff up

under his neck. I’ve begun to shake.

I bite my lip and try to bury myself in the dark corner.

He’s stolen my bed my blanket my pillow.

I have nothing but the floor.

I will have nothing but the floor.

I will never fight back because I’m too petrified......too

paralyzed....too paranoid.

“So you’re—what? Insane? Is that why you’re here?”

I’m not insane.

He props himself up enough to see my face. He laughs

again. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

I want to believe him I don’t believe him.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

None of your business. What’s your name?

I hear his irritated exhalation of breath. I hear him turn over

on the bed that used to be half mine. I stay awake all night. My

knees curled up to my chin, my arms wrapped tight around my

small frame, my long brown hair the only curtain between us.

I will not sleep.

I cannot sleep.

I cannot hear those screams again.

I hope u will like it......

Bye see u allin next episode

Stay tuned

Sorry for the interruption in between the flow guys, but there is a little announcement I need to make and that is----- you need to re-read the first chapter again actually I have highlighted the female lead's thoughts in bold in EPISODE ONE and from EPISODE TWO I will highlighted it with italics and from now onwards I will continue highlighting it in italics only now let's continue.....

It smells like rain in the morning.

The room is heavy with the scent of wet stone, upturned

soil; the air is dank and earthy. I take a deep breath and tiptoe

to the window only to press my nose against the cool surface.

Feel my breath fog up the glass. Close my eyes to the sound of

a soft pitter-patter rushing through the wind. Raindrops are my

only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one,

too.

I always wonder about raindrops.

I wonder about how they’re always falling down, tripping

over their own feet, breaking their legs and forgetting their

parachutes as they tumble right out of the sky toward an

uncertain end. It’s like someone is emptying their pockets over

the earth and doesn’t seem to care where the contents fall,

doesn’t seem to care that the raindrops burst when they hit the

ground, that they shatter when they fall to the floor, that

people curse the days the drops dare to tap on their doors.

I am a raindrop.

My parents emptied their pockets of me and left me to

evaporate on a concrete slab.

The window tells me we’re not far from the mountains and

definitely near the water, but everything is near the water these

days. I just don’t know which side we’re on. Which direction

we’re facing. I squint up at the early morning light. Someone

picked up the sun and pinned it to the sky again, but every day

it hangs a little lower than the day before. It’s like a negligent

parent who only knows one half of who you are. It never sees

how its absence changes people. How different we are in the

dark.

A sudden rustle means my cellmate is awake.

I spin around like I’ve been caught stealing food again. That

only happened once and my parents didn’t believe me when I

said it wasn’t for me. I said I was just trying to save the stray

cats living around the corner but they didn’t think I was human enough to care about a cat. Not me. Not something someone

like me. But then, they never believed anything I said. That’s

exactly why I’m here.

Cellmate is studying me.

He fell asleep fully clothed. He’s wearing a navy blue T-

shirt and khaki cargo pants tucked into shin-high black boots.

I’m wearing dead cotton on my limbs and a blush of roses

on my face.

His eyes scan the silhouette of my structure and the slow

motion makes my heart race. I catch the rose petals as they fall

from my cheeks, as they float around the frame of my body, as

they cover me in something that feels like the absence of

courage.

Stop looking at me, is what I want to say.

Stop touching me with your eyes and keep your hands to

your sides and please and please and please—

“What’s your name?” The tilt of his head cracks gravity in

half.

I’m suspended in the moment. I blink and bottle my breaths.

He shifts and my eyes shatter into thousands of pieces that

ricochet around the room, capturing a million snapshots, a

million moments in time. Flickering images faded with age,

frozen thoughts hovering precariously in dead space, a

whirlwind of memories that slice through my soul. He reminds

me of someone I used to know.

One sharp breath and I’m shocked back to reality.

No more daydreams.

“Why are you here?” I ask the cracks in the concrete wall.

14 cracks in 4 walls a thousand shades of gray. The floor, the

ceiling: all the same slab of stone. The pathetically constructed

bed frames: built from old water pipes. The small square of a

window: too thick to shatter. My hope is exhausted. My eyes

are unfocused and aching. My finger is tracing a lazy path

across the cold floor. I’m sitting on the ground where it smells like ice and metal

and dirt. Cellmate sits across from me, his legs folded

underneath him, his boots just a little too shiny for this place.

“You’re afraid of me.” His voice has no shape.

My fingers find their way to a fist. “I’m afraid you’re

wrong.”

I might be lying, but that’s none of his business.

He snorts and the sound echoes in the dead air between us. I

don’t lift my head. I don’t meet the eyes he’s drilling in my

direction. I taste the stale, wasted oxygen and sigh. My throat

is tight with something familiar to me, something I’ve learned

to swallow.

2 knocks at the door startle my emotions back into place.

He’s upright in an instant.

“No one is there,” I tell him.

“It’s just our breakfast.”

264

breakfasts and I still don’t know what it’s made of. It smells

like too many chemicals; an amorphous lump always delivered

in extremes. Sometimes too sweet, sometimes too salty,

always disgusting. Most of the time I’m too starved to notice

the difference.

I hear him hesitate for only an instant before edging toward

the door. He slides open a small slot and peers through to a

world that no longer exists.

“Shit!”

He practically flings the tray through the opening,

pausing only to slap his palm against his shirt.

“Shit, shit.”

He curls his fingers into a tight fist and clenches his jaw. He’s

burned his hand. I would’ve warned him if he would’ve

listened.

“You should wait at least three minutes before touching the

tray,” I tell the wall.

I don’t look at the faint scars gracing my

small hands, at the burn marks no one could’ve taught me to

avoid.

“I think they do it on purpose,” I add quietly.

“Oh, so you’re talking to me today?”

He’s angry. His eyes

flash before he looks away and I realize he’s more

embarrassed than anything else. He’s a tough guy. Too tough to make stupid mistakes in front of a girl. Too tough to show

pain.

I press my lips together and stare out the small square of

glass they call a window. There aren’t many animals left, but

I’ve heard stories of birds that fly. Maybe one day I’ll get to

see one. The stories are so wildly woven these days there’s

very little to believe, but I’ve heard more than one person say

they’ve actually seen a flying bird within the past few years.

So I watch the window.

There will be a bird today. It will be white with streaks of

gold like a crown atop its head. It will fly. There will be a bird

today. It will be white with streaks of gold like a crown atop

its head. It will fly. There will be a—

His hand.

On me.

2 tips

of 2 fingers graze my cloth-covered shoulder for less than a

second and every muscle every tendon in my body is fraught

with tension and tied into knots that clench my spine. I stay

very still. I don’t move. I don’t breathe. Maybe if I don’t

move, this feeling will last forever.

No one has touched me in 264 days.

Sometimes I think the loneliness inside of me is going to

explode through my skin and sometimes I’m not sure if crying

or screaming or laughing through the hysteria will solve

anything at all. Sometimes I’m so desperate to touch to be

touched to feel that I’m almost certain I’m going to fall off a

cliff in an alternate universe where no one will ever be able to

find me.

It doesn’t seem impossible.

I’ve been screaming for years and no one has ever heard

me.

“Aren’t you hungry?” His voice is lower now, a little

worried now.

I’ve been starving for 264 days.

“No.”

The word is little

more than a broken breath as it escapes my lips and I turn and

I shouldn’t but I do and he’s staring at me. Studying me. His

lips are only barely parted, his limbs limp at his side, his

lashes blinking back confusion.

Something punches me in the stomach.

His eyes. Something about his eyes.

It’s not him not him not him not him not him.

I close the world away. Lock it up. Turn the key so tight.

Blackness buries me in its folds.

“Hey—”

My eyes break open. 2 shattered windows filling my mouth

with glass.

“What is it?” His voice is a failed attempt at flatness, an

anxious attempt at apathy.

Nothing.

I focus on the transparent square wedged between me and

my freedom. I want to smash this concrete world into oblivion.

I want to be bigger, better, stronger.

I want to be angry angry angry.

I want to be the bird that flies away.

“What are you writing?” Cellmate speaks again.

These words are vomit.

This shaky pen is my esophagus.

This sheet of paper is my porcelain bowl.

“Why won’t you answer me?” He’s too close too close too

close.....

No one is ever close enough.

I suck in my breath and wait for him to walk away like

everyone else in my life. My eyes are focused on the window

and the promise of what could be. The promise of something

grander, something greater, some reason for the madness building in my bones, some explanation for my inability to do

anything without ruining everything. There will be a bird. It

will be white with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head. It

will fly. There will be a bird. It will be—

“Hey—”

“You can’t touch me,” I whisper.

I’m lying, is what I don’t

tell him. He can touch me, is what I’ll never tell him.

Please touch me, is what I want to tell him.

But things happen when people touch me. Strange things.

Bad things.

Dead things.

I can’t remember the warmth of any kind of embrace. My

arms ache from the inescapable ice of isolation. My own

mother couldn’t hold me in her arms. My father couldn’t warm

my frozen hands. I live in a world of nothing.

Hello.

World.

You will forget me.

Knock knock.

Cellmate jumps to his feet.

It’s time to shower.

Bye I hope you will

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The door opens to an abyss.

There’s no color, no light, no promise of anything but horror

on the other side. No words. No direction. Just an open door

that means the same thing every time.

Cellmate has questions.

“What the hell?” He looks from me to the illusion of escape.

“They’re letting us out?”

They’ll never let us out. “It’s time to shower.”

“Shower?” His voice loses inflection but it’s still threaded

with curiosity.

“We don’t have much time,” I tell him. “We have to hurry.”

“Wait, what?” He reaches for my arm but I pull away.

“But there’s no light—we can’t even see where we’re going——”

“Quickly.” I focus my eyes on the floor. “Take the hem of

my shirt.”

“What are you talking about—”

An alarm sounds in the distance. A buzzing hums closer by

the second. Soon the entire cell is vibrating with the warning

and the door is slipping back into place. I grab his shirt and

pull him into the blackness beside me. “Don’t. Say. Anything.”

“Bu—”

“Nothing,” I hiss. I tug on his shirt and command him to

follow me as I feel my way through the maze of the mental

institution. It’s a home, a center for troubled youth, for

neglected children from broken families, a safe house for the

psychologically disturbed. It’s a prison. They feed us nothing

and our eyes never see each other except in the rare bursts of

light that steal their way through cracks of glass they pretend

are windows. Nights are punctured by screams and heaving

sobs, wails and tortured cries, the sounds of flesh and bone

breaking by force or choice I’ll never know. I spent the first 3 months in the company of my own stench. No one ever told

me where the bathrooms and showers were located. No one

ever told me how the system worked. No one speaks to you

unless they’re delivering bad news. No one touches you ever

at all. Boys and girls never find each other.

Never but yesterday.

It can’t be coincidence.

My eyes begin to readjust in the artificial cloak of night. My

fingers feel their way through the rough corridors, and

Cellmate doesn’t say a word. I’m almost proud of him. He’s

nearly a foot taller than me, his body hard and solid with the

muscle and strength of someone close to my age. The world

has not yet broken him. Such freedom in ignorance.

“Wha—”

I tug on his shirt a little harder to keep him from speaking.

We’ve not yet cleared the corridors. I feel oddly protective of

him, this person who could probably break me with 2 fingers.

He doesn’t realize how his ignorance makes him vulnerable.

He doesn’t realize that they might kill him for no reason at all.

I’ve decided not to be afraid of him. I’ve decided his actions

are more immature than genuinely threatening. He looks so

familiar so familiar so familiar to me. I once knew a boy with

the same blue eyes and my memories won’t let me hate him.

Perhaps I’d like a friend.

6 more feet until the wall goes from rough to smooth and

then we make a right. 2 feet of empty space before we reach a

wooden door with a broken handle and a handful of splinters.

3 heartbeats to make certain we’re alone. 1 foot forward to

edge the door inward. 1 soft creak and the crack widens to

reveal nothing but what I imagine this space to look like. “This

way,” I whisper.

I tug him toward the row of showers and scavenge the floor

for any bits of soap lodged in the drain. I find 2 pieces, one

twice as big as the other. “Open your hand,” I tell the darkness.

“It’s slimy. But don’t drop it. There isn’t much soap and we

got lucky today.”

He says nothing for a few seconds and I begin to worry.

“Are you still there?” I wonder if this was the trap. If this

was the plan. If perhaps he was sent to kill me under the cover

of darkness in this small space. I never really knew what they

were going to do to me in the asylum, I never knew if they

thought locking me up would be good enough but I always

thought they might kill me. It always seemed like a viable

option.

I can’t say I wouldn’t deserve it.

But I’m in here for something I never meant to do and no

one seems to care that it was an accident.

My parents never tried to help me.

I hear no showers running, and my heart stops in place. This

particular room is rarely full, but there are usually others, if

only 1 or 2. I’ve come to realize that the asylum’s residents are

either legitimately insane and can’t find their way to the

showers, or they simply don’t care.

I swallow hard.

“What’s your name?” His voice splits the air and my stream

of consciousness in one movement. I can feel him breathing

much closer than he was before. My heart is racing, and I don’t

know why, but I can’t control it. “Why won’t you tell me your

name?”

“Is your hand open?” I ask, my mouth dry, my voice hoarse.

He inches forward, and I’m almost scared to breathe. His

fingers graze the starchy fabric of the only outfit I’ll ever own, and I manage to exhale. As long as he’s not touching my skin.

As long as he’s not touching my skin. As long as he’s not

touching my skin. This seems to be the secret.

My thin T-shirt has been washed in the harsh water of this

building so many times it feels like a burlap sack against my

skin. I drop the bigger piece of soap into his hand and tiptoe

backward. “I’m going to turn the shower on for you,” I

explain, anxious not to raise my voice lest others should hear

me.

“What do I do with my clothes?” His body is still too close

to mine.

I blink 1,000 times in the blackness. “You have to take them

off.”

He laughs something that sounds like an amused breath.

“No, I know. I meant what do I do with them while I shower?”

“Try not to get them wet.”

He takes a deep breath. “How much time do we have?”

“Two minutes.”

“Jesus, why didn’t you say somethi—”

I turn on his shower at the same time I turn on my own and

his complaints drown under the broken bullets of the barely

functioning spigots.

My movements are mechanical. I’ve done this so many

times I’ve already memorized the most efficient methods of

scrubbing, rinsing, and rationing soap for my body as well as

my hair. There are no towels, so the trick is trying not to soak

any part of your body with too much water. If you do you’ll

never dry properly and you’ll spend the next week nearly

dying of pneumonia. I would know.

In exactly 90 seconds I’ve wrung my hair and I’m slipping

back into my tattered outfit. My tennis shoes are the only

things I own that are still in fairly good condition. We don’t do

much walking around here.

Cellmate follows suit almost immediately. I’m pleased that

he learns quickly.

“Take the hem of my shirt,” I instruct him. “We have to

hurry.”

His fingers skim the small of my back for a slow moment

and I have to bite my lip to stifle the intensity. I nearly stop in

place. No one ever puts their hands anywhere near my body.

I have to hurry forward so his fingers will fall back. He

stumbles to catch up.

When we’re finally trapped in the familiar 4 walls of

claustrophobia, Cellmate won’t stop staring at me.

I curl into myself in the corner. He still has my bed, my

blanket, my pillow. I forgive him his ignorance, but perhaps

it’s too soon to be friends. Perhaps I was too hasty in helping

him. Perhaps he really is only here to make me miserable. But

if I don’t stay warm I will get sick. My hair is too wet, and the

blanket I usually wrap it in is still on his side of the room.

Maybe I’m still afraid of him.

I breathe in too sharply, look up too quickly in the dull light

of the day. Cellmate has draped 2 blankets over my shoulders.

1 mine.

1 his.

“I’m sorry I’m such an asshole,” he whispers to the wall. He

doesn’t touch me and I’m disappointed happy he doesn’t. I

wish he would. He shouldn’t. No one should ever touch me.

“I’m Adam,” he says slowly. He backs away from me until

he’s cleared the room. He uses one hand to push my bed frame

back to my side of the space.

Adam.

Such a nice name. Cellmate has a nice name.

It’s a name I’ve always liked, but I can’t remember why.

I waste no time climbing onto the barely concealed springs

of my mattress, and I’m so exhausted I can hardly feel the

metal coils threatening to puncture my skin.

I haven’t slept in more than 24 hours. Adam is a nice name

is the only thing I can think of before exhaustion cripples my

body.

I noticed one thing.....and that is......NOVELS TAKE LONGER PERIOD TO GET THE GREEN CARD THAN CHAT STORIES!!!!.....UGHHHH

Well bye then

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