The Cell

Steven Rekstad

ENGL 050

                Thrust facedown into the cell, teeth grinding the grit of the dirt floor, I lay nursing a festering bitterness.  I could almost see the noxious fumes drift past my face, a testament to the centuries of mental and physical torture that have been endured within these walls.  Overwhelmed, I stumbled to my feet and wedged my face in between the coarse rusty bars. 

“I’m innocent! I would never kill my own wife, I was framed!”

Lumbering up, beady eyes barely visible under his dark brow, the guard looked curious.  Suspicious, I backed into my cave.

“Why don’t you come over here and we’ll have a chat?”

Cautiously I crept up.  “Closer now, don’t be shy.”  On high alert, I saw his hand constrict around his baton before violently swinging in a low arc, narrowly missing my face.  He swaggered off, his booming laugh echoing along the torch-lined catacomb. 

I reasoned with myself, “I was just trying to make a case for myself.” 

Weeks passed with no hope for freedom.  I ate my weevil lined bread and chicken broth when my stomach wasn’t in knots from the hopelessness and decimation I felt.  Days and nights blurred into one, with only the scarce meal to divide the time into segments.  Change came suddenly and unexpectedly when I awoke to the figure of another standing over me.  Clutching my wooden spoon as a shiv I backed into the corner in a defensive position.

Squinting through the darkness I made out the distinct lines of my childhood rival.  Ten years of school yard torment tarnished my younger years, yet he envy and hatred I felt for him seemed so trivial now that my life had fallen to shambles.  Still, fate had played a cruel trick on me.  Weeks of unanswered prayers for companionship and this is who answers?

He spoke, “I heard you were taken to justice just last Friday.  I didn’t believe it.  It was too good to be true, I needed to see it for myself.  Lo and behold, you stand before me emaciated and haggard, a murderer”.  Meaningless hatred rose again in my chest, renewed with purpose.  I lunged for his throat, giving him his just desserts after a lifetime of unanswered cruelty.  The guard burst through the cell door to separate us, “Visiting hour’s over!”  Barely audibly, I heard him whisper, “It was me” just as the guard turned a deaf ear.  I lashed out once more, answered by a heavy club to the head.

I awoke shackled to the wall, defeated.  My feet dangled limply.  Accepting my fate, I found a stone on which I could gain some upward force, I saw my chains slacken for a second.  On my second attempt I forced my wrist around my neck.  It tightened and I could feel the air in my lungs struggle to escape, starving my body of life.