The walls. The walls—they’re closing in on me, like icy black fingers reaching, reaching for me. I can’t breathe, I can’t think, not in this cell of a room. It’s too dark, too quiet. The only sound is my breath, coming fast and shallow, and my heart thump-thumping inside of me. Outside of the ever-locked, ever-closed, bolted steel door comes noises, faint, but still there. Shufflings of quiet feet, unclear words, and distant screams of insanity. Those feet, those words, those screams, they are a red apple on a tree of freedom. It’s the very last apple, and I keep trying, trying, trying to get it, but it’s impossible. They are out there, and I’m in here. But I can’t reach them, I can’t reach the freedom. I can’t get out of this room. Escape is futile.




The room. Dark, dimly lit, grey walls and sadness. Sadness all around, all around me, smothering me, drawing me to the depths of itself. It’s only sadness inside me now—no more happiness. At least, not since I came here and the Voices left me. The Voices who once filled me, making me happy, encouraging me to do…bad things. The Voices made me content, they made me important. They told me I was like the title of the book of the world, important and bold. Now, they have left me empty, and I’ve become just a curled up little comma on an insignificant page of that same book. I’m nothing without the Voices.




The Voices. They made me whole, showing me crazy things, fun things, things that filled me with cold adrenaline. But now, when they’re gone, I am a shell of a girl, insane and lonely in a cramped cell, thinking about how maybe I shouldn’t have done those bad things. Thinking I shouldn’t have listened to the Voices, and listened to something else.




I listened to the beautiful, cunning, manipulative Voices when I really should’ve listened to my heart.