Frozen

I am in the cold. I am in the dark. Wrapping my arms around myself will do nothing, nor will opening the dust-caked shutters which I know sit firmly over the only window in the room, blocking out almost all light from the outside world. All I can hear is the dry patter and snuffle of mice, the dull roar of life beyond my frozen prison, and the scrape and rattle of the chains that keep me there: I am resigned to this fate. To a cruel, intolerable existence, feeling no hunger, no thirst, no fear, not even pain - just the bone-deep chill of many decades of being dead; of being trapped in non-corporeal form and left to languish forevermore.

It’d be foolish to say I hadn’t tried escaping when the details of my situation became apparent to me. The fact that I possessed no body of flesh should’ve meant that I could just pass through a wall and be free, however upon testing this theory I was met time and again with an unyielding barrier; it was as if my captor had allowed me to retain that simple shred of humanity. And so it was that eventually I surrendered, knowing a lost cause when I saw, or rather felt, one. From then on it became my task to learn what I could about myself, to map out my surroundings blindly using no more than the almost imperceptible change in temperature which I experienced when passing through various solid objects. Some felt warmer or colder than others, indicating that they had to be of different materials; as a result, when the chill of the room proved too much for me, I’d often hold myself inside one of these ‘warm’ objects, pretending for a moment that I was being held by another person. If I concentrated hard enough, I could almost imagine the beat of my long dormant heart was audible, that I could feel its pulse in my veins. Then I’d have to pull away, reluctant as a girl from a goodbye kiss, because an unexplainable pressure would begin to press down on me, as if the substance of the object, much like the walls, had an effect on me. Back I would go into the icy atmosphere of the room to glide aimlessly.

This was yet another new sensation I had to become accustomed to: moving about without the use of my legs. At first I had tripped when trying to walk, confused by how I couldn’t feel my feet making contact with the ground. Slowly, though, I found that by imagining myself walking I could feel my toes grazing the floor beneath me as I moved through the space; in time, I overcame my confusion and was soon able to rise further off the floor �" until my accursed chains brought my joyful ascent to a halt. Even then, suspended as I was like a balloon snagged on a tree branch, I considered the sense of space in which I was enclosed to be a small comfort to me; I could’ve, after all, been incarcerated for eternity in a store cupboard with barely an inch to move either side of me. It’s thoughts like these that, for a time, keep me contented. I don’t care much for how long it has been since my last breath was spent in the world of the living, since I was condemned to this ghostly oblivion. The only subtle changes I can note which gives any indication as to the passage of time are a rise and fall in temperature (no doubt due to night and day, and slowly, the seasons) and the transformation of sounds outside of the walls.

In time the light levels too started to shift faintly as my eyes, curiously blinded in the near pitch black attic to begin with, grew accustomed to the gloom, and so from a combination of warmth and light I can now approximate how far my period of solitude had stretched. Unaffectedly, I note that the number of times the chill of winter has come around exceeds fifty.

What did, and still does, concern me, however, was the fact that no one during the days following my death had entered the attic in search of me. Not even my mother, to whose heart I was especially endeared owing to the many days we spent tending a small flower garden and sharing books from our private library. True, the attic was a little-frequented and forsaken part of our house where old pieces of furniture were stored, never to see the light of day again, but the thought that she, of all people, hadn't scoured the house to its very foundations made me ill. Even now I feel the remnants of a tear slide down my cheek; a self-pitying tear for my lost and lonely soul. Since that day, the door has not opened once. 

Reviews

[Robbie~xoxo~]

This is eerie...truly haunting!! The thought gives me chills, (little spaces are a suffocating thought indeed!) This purgatory state is heartbreaking, and very lonely. You have written and intriguing chapter. Well done, my friend!