Welcome to your prison cell. You were asked to love. You were asked to remain meek. You were asked to protect the weak and be chivalrous. What you did was hunt with the glee of a demon pack. So, take a look around you. If you can't see the walls closing in, you soon will.
I hear the sound of breaking glass, yet this time it is a music that vanishes deep scars; for I am the one escaping a prison invisible to others. Wounds heal as if my blood were liquid magic. Then I watch the shards shrink in moments as if the waters of the ages had weathered them to friendly gem-like pebbles, soft to my soles.
These walls cannot hold a prayer, nor a spirit. And so I call to the universe, I promise all the good things I will do when I am released, and at first it appears that nothing happens. Yet when she does, it'll be some random occurrence of happenstance, something I could never predict. So, though this wait is tough and I long for the sunshine and the grass, the passing is a little easier for knowing I have my invisible friend.
Baby, come as close as you can to the prison walls and whisper love songs into the tiny cracks. I can forgo the golden beams of light, I can suffer nothing but bleak walls for company, but love I cannot live without. Tell me of the days to come, the ones where we walk in meadows, a feast of colour for eyes that have seen nothing but grey for so long. Tell me of how we walk hand in hand to the river and wash our weary feet. Tell me of how we will feel the warm light of the sun on our skin and hug like our love is eternal. Tell me of how we'll watch the fish make their way through cool waters before heading home to rest in each other's arms, always knowing a fresh dawn will come.
There were no such things as material prisons anymore, only prisons of the mind. It wasn't difficult to plant enough phobias in a person that they were rendered incapable of leaving their home. Food arrived by delivery van and the inmate would have to pluck up enough courage to open the door and drag it in. No guards, no fuss, just conditioning for severe agoraphobia ...
Prison cells had become simple beds with cranium caps and electrodes. Once under the influence of the simulator the prisoner was sent to relive their crimes from the perspective of the victim, over and over. Everything was simulated perfectly, right down to the correct levels of pain. The prisoner could change gender and age in the simulation, not know who they were before... Sometimes waking them up killed them outright, the shock of who they really were, the killer rather than the killed, the rapist rather than the raped. But if they survived they were changed...
The prison cell was more of an open air holding pen, containment with no protection from the elements. The walls were metal rods laid in a criss cross pattern. The stench of sewage was ever-present and the inmates were crammed in so tight they were constantly touching one another. When food came the strongest ones ate every bite, no thought of sharing. Crying or wailing was the quickest way to die, a heavy would ram the person's skull into a pole and lie them next to the doorway for removal. It wasn't so much of a tool of a justice system, more or a place to put inconveniently rebellious people. The prison itself was on the way to the market for most towns folk and the trail went right through the middle. As a law enforcing spectacle it worked for generations, the worse the prisoners suffered the better.
I've got to give it to 'em. Our enemies don't just build prison cells they pour pure hatred into the design. This box is more like a coffin with headroom and the only light is what creeps in under the door. The floor is five feet by two, enough to lie down at night with raised knees. The only sound other than inmates banging rhythmically on the walls is the audio they pipe in from the torture rooms, of which there are many. Ten minutes after the morning shift has begun the screams are layered one on top of the other, a gruesome choir of pain.
The prison cell was more like a room in a five star hotel. It was where the corrupt businessmen where held while their charges were fixed higher up the food chain. Everything about it was sumptuous. The bed was king sized and soft, made up with the finest Egyptian cotton sheets. There were leather armchairs and recliners. There were computers and plasma screen TV's. There were telephones and vases of fresh flowers. The only thing that gave away the rooms true purpose was the heavy wooden door with bars at the window, and a guard stationed outside 24/7. Although truth be known, the guard was actually more of a waiter providing room service around the clock, attending to the whims of the 'guests.'
The prison cell was a hollow cube of concrete, one way in, no windows. In there you could have no idea how much time had passed or even if it was night or day. It was totally disorientating by design. Given enough time a person could forget their own name in there. The isolation was total and the stimulation was zero. No sound, no light, no furniture or cloth of any kind. It was all an inmate could do to feel the cool walls, but even they were smooth.
The prison cell was barely six feet by four. The walls were the same thick grey stone as the dwellings of the region, but instead of a wide window with a flower box there was a mean barred opening with thick metal bars and no glass. In the summer the fresher air was a relief, helping to alleviate the stench of festering sewage but in the cold seasons it let in a wicked draft and reduced the temperature to near freezing. It was no brighter inside than the gathering gloom of dusk, even at midday. The bed was a plank of wood on legs, there was no mattress, no cushioning and only one thin blanket. It was either suffocatingly quiet or pierced with the screams of tortured inmates.
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