3.3.10

Understandable. I didn’t even remember the last thing that I had seen. It was so long ago. They were going to eat me. I was going to die, and to be honest, I was kind of okay with that. Who needed to live? Life was pain. Get up in the morning, eat something, school, work, go home. It was all one endless cycle that could only be stopped by the ending of a life. The ending of my life. I hated to live. But still, a part of me wanted to live. To survive and get away from this horrible place. I didn’t want to die anymore. I wanted to see my parents, my sister, my dog. I loved my dog. He was really cute. But most of all, I wanted to see the sun again before I died. I wanted to see what it looked like, after all of these years. Would I remember it? Would it remember me? Would my parents remember me? I doubted they would recognize me… I doubted I looked the same. Ten years in a prison cell with no windows would do that to you. I figured that I had gone blind in processing, but I doubted that I even cared. I didn’t really care. I didn’t care at all. They had taken me at the age of five. I didn’t know how long they had me, but they had me for a while. Long enough for me to become a woman. I didn’t speak anymore. I didn’t need to. They said everything for me. “Alice is hungry. Alice would like some water.” All I had to do was nod, and I didn’t even do that too often now. What did they want from me? I had no clue. But I hadn’t moved in days. I stretched my fingers, allowing the blood to soak back into them. I bent my knees, my elbows, moved my neck, opened and closed my jaw, remind myself how each individual muscle of my being worked. I stretched my shoulders, and then used them to push myself up onto my knees, and then my feet. I stretched again and tried to notice something about my surroundings. It was all black. I felt the sarcasm on my tongue. That was new. I hadn’t felt that in a while. I felt around for the wall where they usually entered. I couldn’t see a door. I felt around for a crack, and finally found one. I dug my fingers into it, felt the rocks give away. There was light. I could see it. I could see. I pulled more of the rocks out of the way, letting more of the light hit my skin. It was filthy. I didn’t recognize myself. I pulled more and more away. Why had I never seen this light before? I crawled out of the cell. My dress tore on a nail on the side of the tunnel. I stood up, and noticed that it was blue. I walked away from the cell, noticing hundreds more lining the walls. Were there more people in here? I walked over to one opposite mine and pulled the rocks away. “Hello?” I asked. There was nothing. “Hello?” I asked again. “Hello?” came a response. I pulled more rocks away, letting the light hit the face of a boy, around my age, or what I guessed my age to be. He crawled out to meet me. “Are you… one of them?” He asked me. I shook my head and pointed to my cell. “I lived in there.” I told him. “Where are we?” He asked me. I shook my head again. He grabbed my hand and we walked down the hallway, afraid of where we were going. There was a large steel door at the end of the hallway. He pulled me closer to it and opened it. Sunlight glorified where I stood. I was overjoyed at the feeling of sun on my skin. I just wanted to stand here, but the boy made me move. “They’re coming!” He said. How did he know? I ran with him, down the street. It looked different. There were more buildings, stretching out higher and higher. I didn’t recognize this place. I wasn’t even sure that it was Earth. We kept running, ducking into an alleyway and behind what we later found out was a dumpster. They didn’t follow us down the alleyway. We were free. “What’s your name?” I asked him. “William.” He answered. “What’s yours?” He asked. “Alice.” I told him. William and I spent the next two years trying to find out what had happened. He had gotten a job in a bank, and I worked in a restaurant. I didn’t mind. I liked being able to use my hands, and I was afraid that if I stayed still too long, I would end up back in that cell. William and I have broken into the place with the cells four times. We’ve rescued twelve children all together. But it seems like they keep bringing in more. The children live with us, on the corner of Madison Avenue and Broadway in New York City. I’m still looking for my parents. They have yet to turn up, or call. No phone book can tell me of my mother, sister or brother. I doubt that my dog is still alive, though I do miss him greatly. William and I plan to break into that place again tomorrow. I’ll rescue more kids, he’ll go and find out more about it. They don’t chase us anymore. They just let us go. But they bring in more kids every time. Some of the kids live with William and I, because they have no other place to go. The older ones, around our age, choose to get apartments close by. We all stick together. We’re the only friends we have. William and I seem to be getting more romantic lately. But we’ll never have children. They might get trapped as we were.