Page 31 of Us Dark Few

With that, he pressed a button on the screen and the bars started to close with a low hum. Their eyes didn’t leave one another as the metal slowly slammed home. The firm barrier represented the opposite halves of their world. She was the prisoner in a house of bars, and he held the key.

Takeshi let out a harsh breath and walked away, disappearing from her line of sight. Khalani wondered if Takeshi felt like a prisoner too in that moment.

Sometimes, despite holding all the power, one could still feel trapped.

She regretted using the space on the back of her parents’ picture to write about it. Then, suddenly, she remembered.

Khalani reached into her pocket and produced the pencil and sheets of paper Winnie gave her to count the guard’s cells. She carefully folded the notes and put them back in her pocket. Winnie would need them.

She fell to her knees and placed the blank sheet on solid ground.

She gripped the pencil, and words began to flow from her like a stream of water. Spilling and cascading until a whole sea of her mind poured out.

I am not a singular object or definition

Infinite variations of my soul exist

The great manifestations of the world we live in

Human hearts written on a mental list

No one person will view me the same

Love comes in the same intensity as hate

Judgment from strangers, fickle as paper planes

Unable to know your story, we suffer the same fate

Clear mirrors won’t display your desires

Outer shells are no reflection of the inner core

Dreams inevitably crumble as they ascend higher

Consequences turn into coveting more

This recurring reflection whispers to be free

I can see my darkened image in the hue

And then I realized, it wasn’t me

What I was staring at was you

10

My truths don’t speak, they bleed.

Number 65:How much something hurts.

Khalani had a running list of things she had no control over. What she ate, what she wore, what time she woke, and where she slept.

Hair growing in weird places, like her chin. That one sucked.

But the list slowly turned grittier, like the inability to control being born. Or how each morning Khalani woke up, she was twenty-four hours closer to death. Inescapable truths that grew heavier with each passing day.

Last night, a chilling rendering of Guard Barron forcefully grabbing her from behind and slicing her throat played on a feedback loop. The knife sliced and her blood sprayed across the stone walls. Over and over.

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