The Cell

​He had been sitting inside his cell for so many years that he had lost track of time and his reason. He used to count the days by scratching then into the wall, but his nails had long ago been worn off and his fingers were worn to the bone. They were so raw that he couldn't even touch his fingers to his mouth without a surge of pain. Where was he and how long had he been there?

​There he sat nude on the floor with pools of urine and feces swirling around him. The only light he had came through a little rectangle that permitted the sun, but days of sunlight were minimal, almost nonexistent. The dominate color of his life was always grey. He would look at the sun and then wonder what the world looked like outside as he hadn't seen it for years. He tried to remember the earth but the only thought that came to his head was the four walls that surrounded him. Those four cold concrete walls. So grey, so bleak, so unforgiving, never showing any mercy. 

He stood up and examined the walls once again. He had done this exercise thousands of times during the decades he had been in the cell. And every time he thought maybe there was a way out that he had not seen over the previous years he soon realized his fate remained unchanged. He felt the concrete walls that used to be so smooth but now were so rough with decay. He looked for a crack or anything that would reveal a door or a handle or some way out. But there was no door. There was no way out. His cell was just a giant concrete block. Dropping to his knees he started to run his hands across the floor looking for a trap door to get out. Nothing.

He attempted to leap up to grab the ledge of the small rectangular hole that emitted both light and darkness, but he was too weak from malnutrition, his bones were so brittle, his muscles had atrophied to nothing. Even so, he attempted to jump to reach the ledge but he barely made it off the ground. He slumped against the wall and started to bang his head into a raw pulp. Soon he passed out from the pain and fell onto the cold concrete floor. When he became conscious he crawled on the floor searching for something, searching for answers, searching with his hands on the floor and on the walls. 

Then a pair of hikers came out of the bush and saw the bloody man crawling on the concrete. They watched him as he appeared to be acting like a mime; pressing on invisible walls and ceilings, the whole time shouting voicelessly to the heavens. They walked over to help him but by the time they got there he was lying on his back dead. 

The female hiker asked her boyfriend, "What is he doing all the way out here in the middle of a field crawling on the remnants of concrete rubble and acting like he is putting on a mime show?"

The boyfriend then responded, "There was a notorious prison here for political prisoners about 75 years ago. It was knocked down long ago and carted away when the communist system fell. Maybe he came back to see it?"

"Or maybe he never left," she said.