My head rolls side to side, finding the surface under me soft.
No. Not just a cell.
A padded room.
Solitary confinement.
What the hell happened?
I blink once, twice, my brows pinching. My eyes scan the room, and sure enough, the walls are padded, but they aren’t white. Not really. Not anymore. They’re yellowed and tinged with dirt and decay. I run my fingers over the ground, finding deep nail marks gouged into the floor, and my heart rate kicks up.
“No. No.Fuck no.”
Panic clings to me like a second skin, a relentless shadow, as I scramble to my feet. The world spins in a disorienting whirlpool, and I clutch at my head, trying to hold onto the fraying threads of reality. My shoulder hits a wall, and I stumble over my feet.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
No more cells. No more prisons. No more cages.
I promised myself. IsworeI’d never be held again, not like this.
Blackness dots the edges of my vision, and I try to shake it off, but I can’t.
I can’t.
I can’t.
There’s a growing sense of dread, an undeniable truth that wraps its icy fingers around my heart—I can’t get out. Every surface, every inch of this cell is cushioned with madness, a cruel mockery of comfort. My fingers scrape across the padded walls as I beat my fists against them. I suck in a sharp breath, my eyes burning against my will.
“Let me out! Please, someone, anyone! Let me out!” I shout, my words reverberating in the oppressive silence, bouncing off the walls like desperate echoes. I haven’t begged since I was a child, but I’m begging now, already inherently knowing it’s useless. “Please!”
But there’s no response, no comforting voice, no soothing touch. I’m alone in another nightmare.
Memories surge forward without my permission like a torrential flood, threatening to drown me.
“No!” I shout, my voice cracking. I shake my head, panting, gasping desperately. “Never again,” I choke out.
I hunch over, clawing at my throat, forcing my breaths to come, but they won’t. With every second that passes, the familiar feeling of a panic attack forces me deeper into darkness.
Against my will, I start to see it all over. The fucked up time of my life, better known as my childhood, or lack thereof. I never got to be a kid, not really, only in brief, fleeting moments with a family that was chosen, not designed.
I remember being locked away in a small, dark room as a kid, the stifling confinement suffocating my very soul. The walls had seemed to close in on me then, too, crushing my spirit while my cries for salvation fell on deaf ears.
Again and again.
I cried. I screamed. I begged.
And just like now, no one came.
Until one day, they did. The two people who were supposed to love me above all else came and took me away. I’d been so fucking happy. I’d smiled at my dad. Clung to my mom.
And then…
Tears sting my eyes as I crumple to the padded floor, my breaths coming in ragged gasps of desperation. The room continues to spin, a maddening carousel of torment. I clutch at the memories, unable to escape their grip. The past and present blur together, the lines between reality and nightmare tangling into a chaotic mess of pain and heartache.
The cage.
Faces from my past loom before me, distorted and grotesque, their voices echoing with laughter and taunts. I curl into a ball, my eyes squeezed shut, trying to shut out the madness, the relentless assault on my sanity.
