A Forgotten Image

I'll live to see the sunrise tomorrow.

It's not a fact, or an observation. It's a promise to a long forgotten face that blurs and warps the more I try to remember. It's the only thing I can remember without my head hurting.

Maybe it was said to my mother. Or a lover. A friend? There are no friends here. Stranger? That's more plausible. 

But what was a sunrise?

The new ones don't seem to know. I've asked each of them quietly countless times, a soft breath of words whenever one of the handlers sneezed or coughed. 

The only one who seemed to know was an old woman. She was perhaps the oldest of us, both in years and the time spent in the basement. Someone said she was amongst the first sent down, but I can't remember who said that.

She was huddled in the last cell, hidden beneath scraps of burlap and rotting wood. Someone said she couldn't move, and that she refused the pills, no matter how much pain she was in. 

What was her name?

She stared up at me, thin hair hanging limply against her head, teeth crooked and missing and yellow, but her eyes...

Her eyes weren't like the others. It hurts to remember, but I want to. They were sharp, quick, clear, intelligent. They burned into mine, with an intensity greater than flashlights the handlers shone in our faces.

Were my eyes like hers once? 

I asked her if she knew what a sunrise was. And she told me. A sunrise was when dark turned to light. When reds and oranges bleed into a night sky. When the promise of renewal and hope is given to all who see it. A sunrise was life.

I asked her where I could see it, and she extended a crooked finger towards the ceiling.

"Above," she had rasped, "It lies above the ground."

What was I feeling? It was unpleasant, like I ate food that had expired, but hot. Burning hot. What is it called? Disgust? Anger? I don't know what it was, but I felt it directed at her, for she was a fool. Mad, even. Nothing lies above the ground; even the new ones entered knowing that. She knew nothing about what a sunrise was. 

This is why we have pills; they helped to stop such madness from growing among our ranks. 

My handler had nodded at my wisdom, and with the addition of four more blue, diamond shaped tablets, asked me where the old woman was.

There's nothing in the last cell now. Or is there? No, there is nothing there now. It hurts to remember exactly what was once there.

But it's alright.

I'll live to see the sunrise tomorrow.