Freedom

                The mossy grime stuck to my sticky legs as I shifted on the cold cement floor. My wrists hurt from pulling on the chains that held me to the brick walls. I hadn’t seen my captor in almost three days. My throat burned from the lack of water and my stomach growled loudly from lack of food.

                What if I die here?

                The though had been bouncing around in my head for hours now. Never before had he left me for so long without returning for more “entertainment.” When I had first been tossed into this dark, dank hell-hole, I had prayed to never see him again. And now, I just needed his presence. The thought made me sick and bile rose in my throat. As much as I despised him, he was my only hope of human contact- the only contact I had had in the last… god, I cannot even recall how many months I had spent in there.

                Then another torturously dreadful though stormed through my mind: what if he had been caught? What if the police had arrested him? If so, they took their good goddamn time doing it.

                He wouldn’t talk. I knew that. If the police had indeed captured him, I would never see the light of day again. Never hear the birds chirping outside my window on a cool spring morning. Never feel the wind on my face again. Never shiver on my way to work early in the morning after a fresh snowstorm. Hell, I’d never even get to bitch and moan in traffic again.

                “Come back,” I moaned as loudly as my neglected voice would allow as tears began to overflow down my slightly emaciated cheeks.

                Overcome with panic, sobbing in misery, I shakily stood to my feet. The chains restricted my movements, preventing me from stepping more than three or four feet from the wall. They jingled and jangled like Christmas bells in the silence of my prison; heavy, metal Christmas bells.

                I turned back to inspect the brass bindings in the brick and yanked  with all my strength on them, hoping to loosen the already rusted out screws holding the brackets to the wall. At first, I was able to achieve nothing more than digging the restraints deeper into my already wounded wrists, bringing forth blood which flowed freely down my pale wrists and dripped to the floor at my feet. Yet my resolve was strong at that point. I would not die there.

                I gave the chain some slack and wrapped it tightly around my hands, so as not to dig the cuffs into my wrists. I yanked once, twice, and a third time until I fell to the ground gasping for breath.

                My resolve slightly shaken, I took a moment to scrape together whatever energy I have left. The small amount of energy that I exerted pulling on the chain left me nearly empty, and it took almost three minutes of panting to recover. My hands ached, the bones ached, and I just wanted to sleep.

                What use is this anyway? I’ve been trying for months and have had no success yet. My resolve, my hope, was once a burning fire illuminating my future, fending off the darkness, had then become a quickly diminishing flame. But I threw some kerosene on the fire and steeled myself for the potential, even likely, failure and forced myself to stand again.

                I gritted my teeth, fortifying and hardening my resolve. Freedom was within my reach if only I strove for it. What has giving up ever gotten anyone? I was never one to throw in the towel when the situation became grim. I wouldn’t allow myself to succumb to fate, or circumstance, whichever brought me to that prison. We are the masters of our own fate. I would not see myself dying in that cesspit of horrors and torment, only to be discarded like a worthless animal into hole deep in a forest.

                Leaning against the cold, unforgiving cement wall, I wrapped the chain tightly around my hands. I pushed off the wall with all my strength and braced myself as the chain yanked back with almost as much force. I rose and did it again, and again, and again.

                Finally, I rose to my feet a fifth time. My hands were bloody. What little flesh had been left over them had been torn and mangled in my mad, animalist plea for the freedom of which I had been so long denied. I pushed off again, this time with more strength and desperate need than any of the others. The chains jerked back again as I extended them out to the ends of their reach. This time, there was a crack. Soft and low in volume, but definitely there.

                I rose once again and hurried to throw myself again. This time it was louder. I forced out a breathy, strained chortle of glee. But I soon choked it back down. I wasn’t not out of there yet. I couldn’t afford to allow myself happiness until I felt the sun on my face.

                This time, the bracket wrenched the rusted screws out of the cement wall. Debris wafted into the air as I pitched forward and slammed hard into the cement floor. My head hit hard. I hadn’t expected to break free this time, and I lost consciousness from the impact.

                I woke up in the light. Actual sun filtered in through a window over the couch I laid on. Someone had applied bandages to my wrists and hands. Not to mention, I felt a lot cleaner as well. Did someone find me? The police… did they come? Am I home?

             I quickly sat up, excited. But upon examining my surroundings, I found that I was in a small living area or den. The carpet was a crimson red in color, like blood. Definitely not home. There was a small coffee table in front of me, littered with plates of food. Real food. Not that shit I had been fed in my prison. There was a plate of pancakes, bacon, and eggs. Breakfast! Oh, god. I missed you so much. Next to the plate was a tall glass of orange juice.

                I dug in, not caring to be civilized. I hadn’t eaten in over seventy-two hours and I was starving. Fuck being civilized. The food was so good. When you have been deprived of life’s little pleasures for so long, you realize just how much you should appreciate them. But when they’re gone, it’s too late.

                “Hungry, huh?” the voice asked.

                I jerked my head up to see him, my captor. The one who had kept me locked in that room for so long, living off of scraps of bread and dirty water, shitting and pissing in the corner, and sleeping mere feet from it. I recoiled as far back into the burgundy couch as I could.

                “Don’t be frightened,” he said stepping slowly toward me. “You’ve done exceptionally well.”

                “What the fuck are you talking about?” I demanded, moving to stand.

                He halted his advance when I stood and gripped the fork he had provided me in defense. “Like I said: do not be frightened, my love.” His WHAT?

                “You’re a fucking lunatic!” I exclaimed. The words seemed to strike him like punch to the chest.

                He stood just beyond the edge of the sun’s reach. “Come here would you?” he asked.

                I gaped at him. “No fucking way. You come over here, you bastard.”

                He begun saying something but I didn’t listen. Instead, I focused on escape. This is farther than I have ever gotten in all my months in his captivity. Never before have I seen anything outside of that room. My captor stood opposite my side of the room, between two possible exits. There was a door to his right and an archway to his right. Door one or door two?

                Meeting his gaze once again, I noticed that he was waiting for me to say something. Watching me expectantly.

                Eventually, he said, “The sun will soon set, my love. And then you shall be mine.” What the fuck does that even mean? I knew that I wasn’t looking to find out. I then realized that he won’t, or for some reason can’t, enter the sun. Thus is why he waited just out of its reach.

                I smirked and turned toward the window. It opens with little difficulty. My heart plummets when I see that we’re in an apartment, and one on the seventh floor at that.

                “What are you doing?” he asked anxiously.

                I turned back to meet his gaze over my shoulder. “I won’t let you control me.” If I jump, if I fall to my death, it will be of my own accord.

                “No.” He stepped forward and quickly lunged back when the sun burned his flesh. His skin boiled and bubbled at its touch, blackening and singing under the evening light. He let out an inhuman screech of pain, fangs protruding from his open mouth. A vampire.

                “Wonderful, you’re a vampire.”

                My captor watched me apprehensively as I gazed down at the alley below, begging and pleading for me to not jump. Freedom. The option to choose your fate. That is what I was presented with. Vampires are too fast. I would never have made it past him if I had run. We both knew it. I had little choice. He left me little choice.

                I jumped.

                He screeched as I threw myself over the windowsill, I could hear it as I fell. The wind whipped past my face as I plummeted toward the unforgiving cement ground. The sun glistened on my pale white flesh. I was free. If only for those brief few seconds, I had been freed. I had chosen for the first time in months- taken my own fate into my hands, and it felt good. I was happy, content, and ready.

                I hit the ground hard. The sounds of bone shattering and flesh tearing met my ears just before blackness consumed me. As for my captor, he watched from that seventh story window, singeing in the evening sun- helpless, powerless. I had taken my fate from him, and made him powerless. The greatest of triumphs.

                Some of you would call me a coward. Say that I should have tried to live. But I’ll tell you that what I did was the least cowardly thing a person can do. I had won. And I was happy as I slipped away into nothingness.