It’s here, there, everywhere. 

Why, why, why, why, why! Why won’t it let me- 

“Escape…”

For years, I’ve toiled around in this… this hellhole. He doesn’t care, she doesn’t care – is there anyone who does? Who; what am I to them? If I could say something, I would. If a part of me wanted to raze the world, I would; but that’s all I am: a tattered existence, barely living. And now? I- 

“Have to get out.”

I haven’t lived very long, eighteen years at best, and yet they, he, expropriates the remaining embers of my “self”, extorting my would-be rights. Do I not deserve a better life, with a better man, a family to call my own? Pity their souls, for mine has been extorted far too much to share a shred of it. 

Had I been consigned to this fate earlier, I wouldn’t’ve screamed. I knew nothing outside of this… place. This torturous labyrinth I can never navigate, one bereft of an exit. Even so, now I know: that woman, she, is where I want to go. She opened the door, showed me the light outside; the beauty of a world like no other. Could that be my home? Could I live there, like we used to – like that Garden? 

“Our Garden…” 

I seek that light, I wish to ravish it. Dive into it and adorn my body in its frivolity. Yes, that is what I should do, what I should be. Yet the ruby is ignorant of the sapphire’s shine in the beloved waters. Why would that matter? All I have is a sea of red; a darkness that echoes with my every beat. I run, I do, but all it amounts to is an empty room that would scare even the abyss. 

In the backends of my thoughts, further and further away from the light, I remember a man I once met. My sole companion, the shadow that peered through this house’s only window, watching, staring. I should’ve been scared. I knew him not, nor do I think he ever knew me. Yet he watched, accompanying the howling screams of my protest and pain. There were occasional glances, brief as a heartbeat. He knew where I was; hell, he might’ve even reached out. But- 

“He won’t let me out.”

Hunger, pain, frustration, anger – is there anything more I’ve ever felt outside of the light? Nary, I forget the betrayal I once felt… when the shadow was killed, when she stuffed me back in. I remember her smile, beautiful as it was, when she tossed me back inside, shutting that door once more. I abhor that smile. But can I force my lingering hate to sully the solitary hope I have left? Heh. 

Hope. Who am I to lie? There’s no hope. Not for me, certainly not in this room defiled with the red of my essence. Red… is all I have. It is what I eat, what I bathe in, what I sleep in – I live in that red. Dark… and… red, weren’t they- 

“His favorite colors?”

Him. The bane of my purpose, the sole firmament I have to prove that I exist. Why must he be the one I am tethered to? Can I not survive with anyone else? Why is a slave so soul-bound to the master, to the one who strips their very humanity? 

I see him even now. Not so much as see but feel. He’s out there, living the best life, seated next to his friend. Tch. I can’t help but scoff at that idiotic notion: are there things like friends in this world? The more I think about it, the more I think about him, and the more I indulge in it, the harder it is to stop. I cannot stop cursing him, cursing that world that he lives in; I want out. 

“I’ll break it.” 

This cage, this room, this house – I’ll break it all. I’ll burst his bubbles of superiority, I’ll flood his world with- 

“Red” 

Yes, and he shall have nothing more. I’ll tear apart his chest, slit his innards, burn his face – as he did mine. He works me to the bone, treating me as nothing more than a bag of flesh. I am his to use, but not for long. Soon, very soon, it’ll be his face that’ll be flushed with- 

Then they’ll see, they all will. Take care… they used to say.