The Glass Cage

The room was dark. Barely visible out of where I sit, alone in the middle of a room I can't tell if there's an end to its vast darkness, no matter how hard I squinted or tilted my head to make out shadows and imaginative images. Like birds outside a bedroom window, or tooth fairy money beneath a sleeping childs head. Perhaps, even salt on lips from chips, or a teenagers first shot of liquor followed by disgustingly sweet candy in the form of water. I was like a shrouded veil of death all around me. Thick, suffocating. It had been succumbing me to nothing but the uncomfortable ticking of my internal clock for years. And all I could do was listen to its hand-grenade rythym, in silent plea it would not burst from my slightest movement.

I wasn't a formidable child. Not one that was especially gifted in arts, science, or music. I was god awful at anything academic. But I enjoyed the fine arts, anyway. Sound engineering, when able to in senior years, band. I loved English class but I wasn't good with words. I got C's because where I live, that's the lowest grade possible. I could not fail, though it always felt as if I would.

And I lived all those years; my school-age, working age, innocence and rebellion and subsequent illness I fostered just to end up in a cage of someone else's creation. No blanket, or pillow. Nothing to relieve myself in, or to hide away beneath, besides the thin cloth you would find on someone in hospital. It was itchy; stained with sweat and regret. Regret, I allowed my morbid fixation to set on a woman who seemed ever charismatic, with teeth charming as a flank of knives and eyes like those of a shark. Iris' polluted with passive ghosts of loves long, long gone. Ones who probably faced the same captivity I do.

My captor is sickengingly sweet in appearance. But as soon as they step down into the shroud of screaming and thrashing, they become violence. Silent sedation. Something disgusting yet elegant enough to appear as a born again virgin.

Ive been called a lot of things. A liar, an abuser, a manipulator. Terrible. Disgusting. And far, far worse I cannot utter in fear of what would become of me. But my captor's tongue is soft in its lashings-- promising if I don't talk, I will be good. Good, good good. How do I be good?

I went through a lot. Although, no one seemed to care.

Perhaps if they had bared witness to the words thrown at me, they would hurt for me. Or perhaps it would start creating horns and a tail and fangs on my frame. I am not quite sure. But I never run out of time to think. Although, it is certainly warbled in its comprehension.

The first time I thought I was loved, it was a morbid fixation. Someones sick obsession to fix me. As though I was broken. I was not. I was just terrified. Hurt. And she took that, and ran.

She had been my best friend. Brunette with streaks of red in her hair, brilliant blue eyes and a love of equestrian animals. But she changed. Perhaps it was who she had always been, anyway. If I think hard enough, I get flashes like a heat stroke of me eating a sweaty cheese sandwich my mother had packed hastily- caring for three children with a  full time job- and this pyro in flesh had thrown books at me. Those hardcover science books that would creak like the bones of a undisturbed body if I attempted to open one. My neck would snap to the right, as tens of people watched on, unsure as to what to do. I loved her despite.

She broke her knee later in the month, an equestrian she had raised who had bucked up against her. I held the door open to the bathroom. She told me to go fuck myself. Not in jester. Her words were thick with venom. I cowered against the door, as I stood dutifully as she did what she needed. Later, she would press a kiss to my forehead and tell me I am so good to her.I loved her because.

She shoved me against the lockers after class. I had tears on my cheeks and she laughed. I was bruised, and she was amused.

I tried to kill myself. She got a restraining order and I was nearly sent to a school for the criminally insane. Her mother was a lawyer on the school board. My elementary salaried mother could not do anything. I was stuck.

I then fell for a shadow of a nobody. A girl who lived in squalor. I loved her despite her broken down home. The child who was only 3 in a diaper and nothing else wondering the street as my father picked me up.

I missed New Years- the last my entire family would spend together to be with her. I claimed her as my own flesh and blood-- I cleaned up the mess the 3 year old made in the bathroom when she was busy cleaning up the mess her drunkered of a mother was preoccupied with.

Two months later, she raped me. Ate McDonalds as I sobbed in her shit-stained wall bathroom, trying to clear the blood.

I fell in love with the girl I took to my high school graduation event. She liked frozen, organic blueberries. They had to be organic. because they were small and sour. She cheated on me with my best friend for months, then him with me although I did not realize. He knew. He said I shouldn't be angry at him. But I was. he asked me for beers. I poured it down the front of his trousers and then skulled a bitters.

I had several flings. Another girl- rich and two years younger. A lovely family and many things I could only hope to own, like a VR set with a game of the open deep sea. She was the deep sea. A girl that cheated and attempted to harm herself due to me leaving. It was sick.

Then a girl with dark hair, dark liner and a foot taller than me. She was never kind. But I was drawn. In the span of three months, she cheated on me twice, and assaulted a minor. She claimed the minor assaulted her, so she changed her name and fled the town. Disgusting, woman.

But I met her best friend. The love of my life, I think. She asked me to finish a beer she stole from her father. It was completely full, an hour into the party. She hated beer. She didn't look at me except when eating chicken nuggets- so my best friend said. This girl looked at me like I hung the sun.

I kissed her on a windy rooftop beneath the moon and coddled by stars.

That loving girl who hated beer began to hate me, and threw things. Punched things near me. She claimed I cheated when I was assaulted, again, because I was a body with a heart on the outside of my chest cavity.

I found rebounds. Then met a woman I truly was infatuated with. She was gorgeous, a makeup artist with a confident personality. So confident, she strung me along for months, and on my birthday my father paid for our hotel stay and dinner. That dinner, she told me how she had sex with all of her friends and did not understand why I would be upset. It wasn't her sexual experience, rather the fact it was my birthday she chose to tell tales of scorned lovers and steamed car windows.

Several hours later, she asked me to be hers.

I didn't realize she raped me the first time we met until the month we broke up.

I met a friend. She told everyone I lied about every disease I ever had. Health problems, mental health, familial abuse.I cried.. She did not care. I remained her friend for months. And she introduced me to two other friends.

I was raped twice at one of my new friends homes. She did not care. She wanted attention and to hangout. Did not care I was assaulted.

The girl I cared for for so long, who hurt me neverendingly, left me day after I was assaulted. She said I cheated. She wanted to get back together a few days later, but my grandma had died In that time. First death in my life. I told her i couldn't. She cried and told me I was awful.

I told her I was ready two weeks later. She had already slept and started falling for someone new.  I saw it on her lockscreen as we remained friends. I cried, panicked as she was in the shower. Another love, starlit girl, told me to leave. I couldn't. I still loved this awful woman.

I had a new friend. Or old. I knew her since high school. Defended her as people made fun of her although I did not know her. Invited her into my life. Introduced her to my girlfriend. She chose that girl despite my trauma.

And so she began to suicide-threatening me. On, and on. For days and hours. Called me endlessly. Made fake accounts to contact me if i didn't respond. When I blocked her, she messaged me from a texting app to bypass the block. I felt deeply sick. I didn't have time to file a police report. She had said i threatened her life.

Murders of murders, living in fear. Perhaps I deserved this. But i never threatened her. i was stuck. Lost. My first love has returned.

The shadows gave way. Deep blue walls-- they are there--, empty liquor cans on an oak tablestand my brother had built me. I could nearly hear a sonneta being played on a piano nearby. I was drunk. So late, or so early. Nothing, or nothing at all, became my life.

I had not been kidnapped by a person. Only, ever, my own mind. Forever just that.

I pushed my worn down notebook away-- illegible even to me, as if i wrote it with a backward hand to be proofread by eyes not my own

My body felt raw, skinned. I just want to  be human. But i live within my own imprisonment of ghostly remnants, replaying and replaying ever endly.

"juliette? Time for lunch!' My dear, overworked mother yelled from upsitars.

And came the infinite near. Twilight. Finally, the night and day remembered i existed.