Crystalline

Frailty

The frail paper of her book slipped beneath her fingers, and she smoothed it gently once she turned the page. Words danced before her eyes but, for the first time, she couldn't follow them. Carefully, she closed the book, tracing a finger across the spine of the frail paperback. She placed it on the shelf beside her bed, a small piece of wood on the wall that could hardly be called a shelf. It wobbled, threatening to spill her books to the floor, before stabilising with a laboured creak. 

She rolled over, facing the wall, and pulled the small slip of paper from where she had hidden it between her mattress and the wall. She unfolded it with shaking hands and traced her fingertip slowly over the messily scrawled words, imagining the hands that had written them with a nervous, uncertain haste. She looked at her hand, at the backwards reflection of the words upon her skin, distorted in the crease of her palm, the words shrinking to nothing at the place where her thumb and finger met. She wondered what had made the boy think he could do anything to help her.

She'd seen the doors, and the locks upon them; despite being only inches thick, they were made of metal, and she knew of no creature that could easily break through inches of metal as she could break through glass.

She frowned contemplatively as she folded the paper, slipped it into the pocket of her new, clean set of clothes. She relished the feeling of the thin fabric against her skin, smooth and not caked with blood, not stiff with the drying rust of her life that had not been able to stay inside of her. She used to like to think that when she bled, seconds, minutes, hours of her life were being drained out of her; it meant that there was less life to live in this place, less time to be tortured, to be forced to open her mouth and shatter glass and then go back to the monotony of her cell. But now, she'd been outside. Now she'd seen what more the world had to offer, even if it was only a glimpse. Now she had a piece of paper and the words of a promise, whispered almost too softly to be heard at all over the sound of the sunlight against her bloodied, shining skin. Now she had a reason.

She sat up as the Whitecoats walked past her cell, their footsteps clamouring on the white tile. She scrambled from her bed and pressed herself to the ground, looking under the gap and seeing feet. She strained to press her finger beneath the door, suddenly glad for the reflection as she saw coats and a stretcher, a hand hanging down from the side, distorted by the curved surface of her finger. But not too distorted to see the slim fingers of a child as sharp claws retreated into bloodstained fingers, turning into chipped nails, dried blood caked beneath them, staining the skin.

She shuddered and sat back on her bed as they retreated from sight, into the cell beside hers; she'd never seen anyone else here but herself, and now the child. And he was right beside her. He was obviously new, because she'd never seen him before. She'd thought she was the only one they had.

Pulling the piece of paper from her pocket, curling up against the wall, she pulled a shard of glass from her hiding place between the mattress and the wall and steeled herself, pressing the point of it against her skin til a bright bead of red pushed itself to the surface. Then she began the slow process of tracing the tip over the back of the paper in smooth, even letters identical to the type of her books, pressing the tip of the glass to her skin for more blood when she ran out, the only ink she had. When she was finished, she blew on the paper til it dried and then folded it around the shard of glass, slipping it into her pocket; she had a feeling she would need it. The week was almost up.