Wrapped in Bandages

Seeming to Live in a Cage

Pink hats, pink masks, pink shirts, pink pants, and pink shoes, a flurry of pink always zoomed by as she walked the halls of her home. She never really could distinguish one from another; she could, but she didn't understand the worth of doing so. It seemed so pointless to recognize the distinct differences. One may have blue eyes and another green, but what was the significance? Most likely, she would forget the characteristics within a few moments. They all may have their own special features, but they all wore the same face, the same air.

Eyes peered down at her, all possessing some hidden knowledge that she would never quite understand. None of them ever seemed satisfied, only hungering for more of something. Hate and fear misted their eyes, but she never knew why. Did it matter, though? No, to her it didn't. To her they were nothing but flies buzzing around her head noisily. Their whispers and quiet musings were but a small breeze passing her every now and then.

It was always a curious matter, though, concerning the nature of the buzzing pink workers. They worked in her home, but she was never able to see what they were working on. White doors always blocked her view, and they were always locked, except for the ones leading to her room, the kitchen, dining hall and her mother's office; those were painted in a mixture of pastel colors and marked the places she could enter. With regards to the kitchen and dining hall, though, those doors were metal. Regardless, she was curious as to why she wasn't permitted to those other rooms. At times when she was little, she would attempt to enter one of the rooms, hoping that the lock was no longer in working order. This never happened. She always experienced the same result, her staring at a white wooden rectangle. None of the workers tried to stop her. All of them would just watch with amusement that hid behind their pink masks, but was distinguishable in their eyes.

Her determination to find an unlocked door may have faltered over the years, but her curiosity didn't. It remained in the back of her mind, and she would occasionally glance at one of the white doors, imagining what lay beyond. Maybe the workers were the cause of her lacking eagerness to see what lay past the threshold. There was no sense of doing something daring or forbidden, since they just watched like a stone statue, which never altered its gaze. They never yelled at her to stop; they stayed completely silent.

Turning her grey eyes towards her right, she stopped in the middle of the hallway. Polished beige tile reflected the old factory styled pendant lights that hung above. The light bulb in the light a few feet away from her flickered on and off, indicating its need for a replacement. She only noticed this out of the corner of her eyes. Pushing a strand of her short black hair behind her left ear, she kept staring at the window that didn't permit a view to the outside. Off-white horizontal blinds covered the paned glass, and even if one were to hoist the blinds up, the glass would be tinted so dark that one couldn't see the outside.

She desired to see beyond that glass, but once again her determination atrophied over time. Only curiosity remained, but it wasn't strong enough to completely fill the void that determination had left. Knowing her gaze wouldn't incinerate the blinds and shatter the glass; she turned her gaze back to the front of her and continued walking.

When she stopped her movement the next time, she glanced up at the name on the door: Deziree. It was a strange name she thought, and it felt foreign to her, as though it didn't belong. She questioned her name almost every day, wondering why it sounded so odd and not fitting. Personally, she liked shortening her name to Dez, but her mother refused to call her by that name. Her mother's refusal was not really taken into consideration, though. In her mind she was Dez.