KATE:

My body shudders, aching as the deep cold permeates my body and chills me to the bone. This room in which I currently reside is so vast, so cavernous I feel comparably little more than an ant. The atmosphere is primarily dependant on lighting. When the sun is feeling particularly generous, it will share its rays, warming my soul and creating a striking ambience throughout the room; fleeting moments of bliss that wash over me like summer rain. But bereft of sunlight, the room is dank and controlled by an energy that saps all the strength out of me. Sometimes I fight it and bargain with the sun for more warmth, but mostly the tenebrosity devours me.
Clumps of sticky words evoked by darkness, string together and stretch into giant webs across the length of the room. Highly adhesive and magnetising, it’s all too easy to become the victim of the web. Threatening words blare from the sticky ropes of letters. They ooze out of the webs and circle my body like tendrils of smoke.
Failure.

Disappointment.

Worthless.

Nobody.


Sometimes I get so trapped that the words embed themselves on my chest, scars that have not yet healed; red letters stark against the translucent white of my skin. Exhausted, I slump against the wall, stained with colours of the past and etched with dreams long forgotten.
Opposite the room, I catch my reflection in a fractured mirror, cracks running through the glass like veins. Next to it, sits a television set resonating with garbled static. I make my way closer to the mirror, a hypnotic beat pounding in my head. Somewhere, an invisible clock ticks incessantly, contrasting with obscured frequencies emitted from the television. I stop half a metre away from the mirror, shards of glass underfoot, and carefully study the many fragments of myself. One part of my face glows luminescent with ethereal quality. My eyes skim over my chest where my heart lies, scarred and mutated, bleeding profusely. A shudder runs the length of my body and the connection is broken. I find myself strangely empty and the pounding in my head fades away.
It takes all my strength to drag my desiccated bones to the edge of an unfathomably deep body of water. The ceiling is reflective in the glassy surface, allowing me to see the harsh black cages that hang from the ceiling, wielded from twisted metal and slightly distorted by the ripples.
The water is shot through with subtle rainbows and stars that shimmer and sparkle with mystery and breathtaking beauty. It is the one thing in this place that rejuvenates my energy, which is then just as quickly drained like colours seeping from a canvas. I straighten my slender frame and neatly dive into the water, slicing through the lucid surface, spreading thousands of glittering stars from my point of entry. Here, I finally feel alive, like a breath of new life. I revel in the peace that the water brings. Still, I am alone, but now I bask in the solitude rather than draw detachment from it. I glide seamlessly through the liquid, a Piscean creature of spirit, until I have reached the bottom.
I trick my mind and tell myself I don’t have to return. I lay on the sandy floor, the grains pleasantly rough against my skin, my hair floating boundlessly in wisps around my face, and I wish that I could stay here forever more.

But the ticking clock and the broken mirror and the luring webs of words and the callous taloned cages beckon to my body.



Never forever more.