Solitary Confinement

| December 9, 2014 | 0 Comments

Thomas has never killed anyone, but he was convicted of murder twice.  Both times he was framed because he was the closest one to the scene.  This time he was thrown into a prison-like cell where all he could see was white.

“Maybe this will set him straight,” the guard told the man who was standing with a smug look on his face, “Solitary confinement has always worked.”

Thomas looked up with tears in his eyes, and stared as the guard shut the door.  Thomas sat in complete whiteness and was bored instantly.  He tried to find one color in the whole entire room, but to find nothing.  He started to think about what he would do once he got out.  He started hearing voices in his head.  Am I hallucinating?  He thought to himself, he saw those movies where people go insane when in solitary confinement, he was not intent on becoming like them.  After an hour or two, he heard a slide open, and food hurtled inside his cell.  Most of the food was spoiled and the parts that weren’t had fallen off of the platter.  “At least I know the floor is clean.”  Thomas said to himself, trying to seem optimistic about the situation.  He was getting drowsy, so he walked into the other corner to curl up into a fetal position shut his eyes and started to dream about his family back at home.  He imagined his daughter and his wife, having a dinner, wondering where he was… until they saw the news in the morning, and they would think that he killed another person, but he didn’t kill anyone.

In the middle of a dream of being chased by a man dressed as a hot dog, he heard the squeak of the hinges of a door.  He perked his head up to see the guard at the door, he told him that he found the real person who killed him.

“Really?  So I can get out of this place?”  He exclaimed with so much excitement that he nearly burst out the door to run home.

The guard moved out of the way and allowed him to go free and he saw his family waiting for him as he exited the asylum.  He ran with joy to meet his family who were ordering food from a hot dog stand.  Hey, i had a dream about hot dogs too.  He realized that he must be dreaming, but he didn’t want to wake up.  He approached his family to greet them, but they did not acknowledge him at all.

“Um, hi?  Remember me? Your father, and your husband?”  Thomas was thinking of reasons why they were not noticing him.

“What? We don’t know you.”  The woman said, shielding her child from the mysterious man.

They started walking away from him.  Thomas stood in the middle of the sidewalk befuddled.  He started to walk towards his wife, but tripped over a newspaper.  “Man Found Dead In Solitary Confinement!”  He stared at the headline with disbelief, the picture they showed was him, he was the one who died in solitary confinement.  He started to back away from the spot, and started to run.  While he was running, a black, mysterious hole appeared in the sidewalk and he fell into an abyss.  He hit the ground hard, and yelped in pain.  He didn’t realize that he hit the floor with no injuries, it was just a reflex to yell.  He opened his eyes to see nothing but darkness.  “Well, it’s better than everything white.” he started to realize that he was talking to himself.

He started to walk around only to bump into a huge, slimy object which apparently was moving. Thomas cringed with disgust and saw the silhouette of a big dark mass walking along the walls.  He ducked just as it came into reach of him.  The absurdity of the situation that he was in made him feel like he was in a horror movie, there were no big, slimy creatures that crawled on walls.  He continued walking along the path, thinking about how he was definitely dreaming.  He was determined to find a way out of the cavern that he fell in from that black hole that he fell into that appeared in the street out of nowhere.  Yeah, he was definitely dreaming.  He tried pinching himself to wake up, but it did nothing.  He started to wish that he was back in the room where he was safe, and he wouldn’t be eaten by the creatures down wherever he was.  Thomas sat down to try to comprehend what was happening to him, but felt something like Jello brush up behind him.  His eyes started to adjust to the darkness, and he saw what looked like a ginormous mouse that he only saw in movies where rats were mutated.  He let out a yelp and started running down the tunnel.  After a few minutes of running from the mutated rat, he looked back to see that it wasn’t following him at all.  Frightened, he looked down the tunnel only to see a faint glowing light shining from a minuscule spot from the end.  With all the force his tired legs had left, he dashed toward the exit and opened the door.

His eyes opened wide when he saw where he was.  He was at his house, with his family, friends, and neighbors.  He walked slowly, knowing that a UFO would probably come and abduct him.  But right when he approached his house, he woke up.  Still in the same, white room that he was in the whole time.  He actually was dreaming, and they still had not found the real murderer.  On the bright side, at least he didn’t encounter any slimy creatures or mutated rats.  He waned to doze off again and see what kind of adventure he would go on, but turned around, to see another person standing in the room with him.

“I thought this was solitary confinement,” Thomas said to the man standing stationary in the same room as him.

There was no answer given to him by the man, he just stood there.  Thomas looked at him, he was a slender man, with dark, ash-stained skin.  At least it looked ash stained.  Thomas thought he was staring at him, but it looked like his eyes were pointed straight at him.  Thomas went in for a closer look to see what the man was staring at, but he realized that the man had no eyes.  A shriek burst out of his mouth, and could hear guards behind the door asking him if he was alright.  The door burst open and in came the guards.

“Is everything alright?” said one of the guards “We heard you yelling.”

“Yes, there is a man over there with no eyes, and he is in the room with me.” Thomas tried to explain.

“Yeah, he’s going crazy already, it hasn’t even been in here for a week.  There isn’t anyone in the room with you.”  the guards went back into the hallway to patrol.

Thomas stared back at the man, wondering why he was there.  He tried to touch the person, to see if he was real.  His hand brushed up against him, and he leaped back into the corner.

“Who are you?  What do you want from me?”  He was trying to sound like the people in the horror movies that he has seen where they are right in front of the killer.

No answer, the man just stared at him.  Thomas thought that the man would stand there the whole time while he slept.  Thomas started to doze off into his dreams where something weird would happen to him.

He woke up in a park, where the man that he saw in his room was there also, but he was not standing still.  The mysterious figure was actually chasing him.  Thomas started to run, but he didn’t know where he was going.  The man was to fast.  With alarming speed, the ghostly figure leaped at him and tackled Thomas.  He wanted to wake up, but didn’t know how.  All he knew was that he only woke up only when a good thing was about to happen to him.  On the floor Thomas struggled to get away from his attacker.

“Who are you?” Thomas asked but didn’t expect an answer.

“I’m you, from the future.”  said the man who had finally answered him.

Wide-eyed, Thomas stepped back, knowing that this was going to turn into Inception, as if it already hadn’t.  The future Thomas warned him that the guards were going to let him out, and he was going to do something dumb and something bad was going to happen to him.  He said that he was safer in his cell.  Thomas wanted more than ever to wake up and go back to his cell and be alone.  He told the future him to tell him how to wake up, but he went back to his stationary form, not answering him and not speaking at all.  Frustrated, Thomas started pounding on the ground and yelling at himself with anger.  Reaching out to himself from the future, his arms passed through him and he was transported to a random town.  He saw a newspaper headline that said Man Found Dead In a Tree.  He knew that it was probably him, but he was only dreaming.  That he knew for sure, and whatever happened to him from now on was an illusion.  He woke up in his cell right after he saw the newspaper.  He was filled with so much rapture that he let out a howl of relief.

“So this is the one who actually killed the woman?”  said the warden of the asylum through the walls.

The door squeaked open, and in came the same guard that he had seen before who checked on him before.  They told him that he could go after he signed some paperwork  and was confirmed not-insane and “safe for society.”  When he was released, he wondered what dumb thing that he was going to do.  But then, he saw himself from the future.  Then he started running at him again, and Thomas ran towards a tree, which he climbed up.  The tree was shook violently, or at least it seemed like it was shaking.  To everyone else who was watching the grown man run up a tree it looked like he was rocking himself.  Seeing what he was trying to say to himself, he tried to get down from the tree, and he tripped over a branch.  In a few days a newspaper was published with the headline that said “Man Found Dead In a Tree.”

Category: Creative Writing

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