5,110 days. 730 weeks. 168 months. 14 years trapped in darkness.

Day 5,110:
Today they stole my window. A lock dangles down from the thick chain that strangles the window, my window; it’s a lock that I will never have the key to. The keyless lock is like a dangling piece of meat in front of a starving dog. I stare at the lock with cowering eyes drowning in desperation. Unlike a ravenous dog, I suppress the hunger, but this does little to silence the angry growls and rumbles of my heart, screaming for light, for sunshine, for friendship, but mainly for love.
***
I resign to the inevitable fact that I will probably never see the daylight again. I try to lift my foot to take a step, but the chain that connects my ankles to each other snaps me back instantly. Its tight grasp on my ankle and the tender skin surrounding the metal remind me that I am a slave to the darkness. Defeated, I pathetically shuffle back to my corner, dragging the heavy chain weighed down by pounds of regret behind me. 

I look for someone to blame for my suffering, someone to direct my anger towards, but submissively I give into the darkness, and realize that there is no one to blame but myself. The hole I have dug is of my own doing. I put myself in this position but none of that matters now, for the shovel is no longer in my hands. It remains in the hands of them, and they will stop at nothing and show me no mercy. I feel as if I’m suffocating; the ground is caving in on top of me. I’m being buried alive by the darkness. The demons of my past are towering over me and are shoveling dirt upon me. And I’m consumed by the darkness. Completely underground, the dirt has piled upon me, pressing against my chest, the place where my heart should be, but is only now an empty shell of what it once was.
    ***
I killed my mother.  But this was when I had a heart, when I was capable of reciprocating love, when my heart was not submerged in ice. My mother was diagnosed with cancer when I was ten years old. Everyday for her was a battle that she could never win, and she constantly suffered excruciating pain. Her cries are burned into my ears, her screams replay in my mind like a broken record. When she asked me to end her suffering to make the pain stop, I knew what I had to do. As I looked into her eyes, they were bloodshot, her bones were fragile, not one ounce of her body was fat, just skin and bones. She was deteriorating both mentally and physically in front of my eyes, and I was powerless to do anything. On this day fourteen years ago, I, a ten-year-old human, barely even a being, just a weak, innocent and terrified child, realized that the woman sitting before me was a stranger. The one person in my life that I truly loved, I could not even recognize. Her disease stole everything from her and morphed her into a weak frame of her once strong self.  So, I ended it. I had to make the pain stop. That day when my mother died a piece of me died with her. She was the light in my world of darkness, and for the rest of my life I will have to suffer with the guilt that I extinguished that flame of love.

The world thinks I’m a monster… and I’m starting to believe them.

    ****
5,500 days. 786 weeks. 180 months. 15 years still trapped in the darkness.

Day 5,500:
A year has passed and little has changed. I refuse to accept that I am a monster. I don’t want this darkness to define me. Deep down I feel there is still a shred of humanity within me that I can resuscitate. My frozen heart can be thawed, and all I need is a glimmer of light, even just one spark to reassure my sanity. I can be saved. I can be saved. I am not a monster. I am not monster. The more I repeat it the more I believe that some hope resides in the darkness. I stare at the door urging it with some magical power, as if the door that has been locked for fifteen years will suddenly open now. A wave of light floods into the room like a Tsunami crashing into the shore, destroying the darkness in every crack and corner of my cell.  I have carried a dark storm cloud above my head for fifteen years. Finally the storm has cleared, and the darkness has been terminated. The rays of sunshine like swords have cut through the dark clouds and won the ultimate battle. The light so foreign to my eyes has blinded me. Yet the moment I thought I would be saved is really the moment I die…

Amanda Collins
June 24th 2040- April 1st 2065
Collins, of 25 years of age, died in the Home of the Evil prison early yesterday morning. She died alone, with no possessions aside from a small black notebook, which was confiscated by officers. She was executed by government officials for her heinous crime against society and, she shall be remembered as a monster.