The Glory of Gore

THREE

THREE

SHE WAS A GIRL TRAPPED WITHIN GLASS. Quite literally trapped in a cage of glass, something so easily shattered yet impossible to break out of. Her breaths were fast and choppy, the girl desperately gasping for a breath of air.

She was having a panic attack, and she knew it. Her hands ran along the glass panels surrounding her desperately, fear keeping her in a choke hold. Its grip tightened around her throat, fingers squeezing more and more as the seconds pass. It was as if there was an hourglass within her head, and she could hear every grain of sand fall.

It was as if it was counting down to something, but she didn't know what. All she knew was that something was coming, the feeling deep in her gut promising her so. That, and the fact that whatever it was, was lethal.

Her panic grew.

Her chest felt like it was going to collapse; ribs breaking and cutting into lungs, a sternum piercing her heart. Her death from within a prison of glass. The tips of her fingers ran along the smooth glass, leaving a sweaty residue - her hands had grown clammy with panic. She struggled, desperately trying to control her breathing.

She tried to take air in through her nose, and release it through her mouth, but her body refused to work with her brain. She kept repeating the directions, neurons sending pulses, but falling upon deaf nerves. With a small box of glass, a girl hyperventilated. She watched as the steam from her breath clouded onto the glass, fogging her vision of the outside world. Not that there way anything to really view. She was surrounded in darkness, draped over her like a veil. A light seemed to thrum from within the glass, like a spotlight that confined her. As if she were on display, and this was all some large, inhumane joke. As if she were a puppet on display, and the game of terror was only about to begin. She could feel it in her bones, a taunting that made her panic only grow.

There was no way she could control herself. She wracked her brain for the various methods her therapist had given her in hopes to calm down. Tricks to help her control her breathing and diminish her panic. Anxiety had plagued her for years, and she had, for the most part, learned tips to keep herself calm. Like counting down in her head; picking out five things she could hear, see, smell, and touch; and using her pony tail holder around her wrist, pulling it back and allowing the small sting to remind her where she was and to stay level headed.

Except for right now, none of these would work. There was nothing she could see or hear, and she couldn't keep herself focused on counting down. Her mind swirled, thoughts and fears firing as rapidly as breaths came and left.

It was almost as if she was living a life style of pure self destruction. She knew that she mentally couldn't handle situations like this, yet she managed to toss herself into them without thinking. She was carelessly impulsive, never thinking about the consequences of her actions. The main problem with that was the fact that she could not handle the outcome of her choices.

She didn't think them through, and they ended with her trapped within this glass castle. She realized all the ways that this was like a confinement she figuratively created for herself. She was a vessel trapped inside a cage, a girl with wind for skin and rain for blood. She was a storm in every way, a category four hurricane. The strength and passion that was buried deep within her was hidden away from the world as she built walls around herself, bricks of fear and self loathing. Of nerves and destruction.

Once, a long time ago, she was in a confinement of her own making; now, her reckless actions had confined her in a cage that was much more real. A solid piece that was not of her making, now a doll in someone else's mind games.