EPISODE TWO

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

Like

Share

Comment

Gifts please

Votes (optional)

See you soon lovya~

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***