Detained
Today’s post is based on a writing prompt I shared in a previous Daily Drafts & Dialogues post. Keep reading to see what I wrote, and to access more writing prompts.
What I wrote below is based on the following writing prompt: Write a fictional journal entry written by someone, real or imagined, who is being detained.
Detained
Hello? Anyone? Everyone? Are you there?
To whomever has the heart to hear me:
I think I’m starting to feel the pale walls around me closing in, like they’re mimicking the motions of the outer layer of my stomach, as if the blandness of this space is at equal fault for starving me. My body. My mind. My spirit. But not yet my soul. As the walls will have to literally bury me before that's vanquished too, or remotely possible. Don’t ask me why. I just know it’s true. Otherwise, I would be dead, because what else would I have left to give them?
I have lost count of the days and minutes in this place. They all meld together, a metronome of one consistent never-ending memory that holds all the moments I used to think I owned, which is the real torture. The monotonous passing of time, being forgotten, all alone, full of regrets and longing. Until they open the locked door and say it's time for questions again. Questions I won't answer. Mostly because I can't. But also due to a force I can't name. An innate force that has already pierced my bones, preventing me to bow. As long as I hang onto my words, my soul. Which I must still own.
You might think the rusty nails, the splintered wood, the pervasive and mysterious sand, the onslaught of drowning water they pour over my head as I suffer from thirst— that all of that would be what undoes me time and again. But no. It’s the obsequious elements of their bureaucracy that unravels my hope. One day I can walk around the barbed cement yard, while the next day I can’t. One week I receive stacks of letters from the outside world where you are, while the next week I don’t. One month I am permitted a lumpy mattress to rest atop whenever I want, while the following month I am only offered a heap of straw with a strict sleep schedule. With no rhyme or reason. No remorse. And no forewarnings.
I am imprisoned in a living paradox. You see? This is a petty, lawless place with arbitrarily cruel rules that constantly fluctuate. Yet I am supposed to believe that there is some sort of legal code consistently applied to keep me here, a code that’s intended to keep people safe? Based on nothing more than what, faith? In whom? In what? A rogue system designed and implemented by greedy people who profit off my confinement? My freedom? My life? A system of gluttons who say I am less than? A system who codifies my existence based on nothing more than immature stereotypes and spite?
How do I convince those who unofficially indict my mere existence on this planet as a crime that my breathing is not a criminal act? How do I prove I have a right to roam freely when my agency is deemed a threat and prevented before I take a single step? How do I disprove a fictitious perception of me that is not real, that’s completely imagined? And that they are the ones who need to prove I’m guilty of something as I rot away in here, not the other way around? Because there is no way to prove innocence for something that doesn’t exist, that can’t be tangibly found.
…
[What would you add to this letter? Feel free to share what you come up with in a comment or chat thread below.]
I might revise, edit, or add to this draft in the future. Stay tuned.
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© All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC. The above work is a piece of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Today’s Writing Prompt
Writing Prompt: When the candle went out…
Complete this sentence for today’s writing prompt: “When the candle went out…” Then try to write a few paragraphs after that sentence, if not more. Be as creative as possible by writing something that might be unexpected in such a setting.
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