Damsel

I Know it's Today?

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Picking up the chalk, Virgil sighed.  He made another mark on the small wall where countless other marks lined the wood.  He groaned and banged his head on the wall, quickly pulling back to prevent smudging the marks.  He double, then triple checked to ensure that they weren't smudged before calming down and leaving the small corner where he counted the days of his imprisonment.

Virgil walked slowly onto the tiny balcony that was his only window to the outside world. He leaned over the rail and looked down. The fall was far enough to definitely kill him if he jumped and it was too far for him to make a rope to climb down. He'd tried that once, using his bed sheets and clothes as rope material. It reached to about 20 meters off the ground, which was still too far for him to jump safely. That was a pain climbing back up to safety.

Virgil quickly leaned back, visions of him dying if he fell flashing through his mind. His heartbeat quickened and he stumbled back to sit down. He tried to calm down by slowing his breaths but the only thing that did was make him feel like he couldn't breathe. He quickly searched for something to distract himself and found it in the shelves of books he had along half of one wall. He practically launched himself at the books and grabbed the first one his hand landed on. He groaned inwardly as he realized it was a fairytale but was panicking too much to look for another. He opened it and flipped to a random page, quickly reading it. It was another tale of the princess in a tower waiting to be rescued by her 'one true love'. He skipped that part and went to the end, where the prince and princess rode off together to live 'Happily Ever After'.

Virgil always enjoyed these, not because they seemed cheery or loving or relatable or even realistic. He mostly like it because he enjoyed imagining what happened next. The books always wrote it like that was it. Nothing else, end chapter, close curtain, that's The End. He did enjoy the idea that things would most likely fall apart after their marriage because they'd never actually bonded, or they just weren't meant for each other.

He enjoyed overthinking about stories because it kept him from overthinking his own life. Unfortunately he'd long since read and reread every book in the tower. The tower itself consisted of three rooms, one for sleeping and had the only window, another he spent most of his time in doing many different random things, the second he used as a small kitchen, and the third was both his bathroom and washing room to clean his clothes and bed sheets. The fourth room had a small well that went into the tower so there was no escape that way. He'd already tried.

Virgil sighed and dropped the book, leaving it on the ground to pick up later. He stepped around the other numerous books scattered across the floor and stepped into the room he'd, unimaginably, named the random room. He picked up the homemade paintbrush, created out of a twig and some hair, and dipped it into the paint he'd made from some berries.

His food was provided by these strange hooded figures, as were his clothes. Once a week they came and called to him. And he came out onto the balcony to catch and secure the rope they threw. They would then attach a basket of food and, once every other month, clothing. He'd pull up the basket and then return the basket and rope to them.

Once, in a fit of fury, he'd decided to keep the rope so he could climb down. For the next week and a half the hooded figures had stayed outside his tower throwing things at him. The thrown items ranged from food to rocks. One even fired arrows at him. When a week had passed and he was out of food he realized he'd probably starve before they'd leave him alone. It still took three more days before he worked up the courage to crawl onto the balcony and throw the rope and basket down to them. They'd left then and only came back when it was time for food the next week.

Virgil sighed once more and painted a small broken heart in the middle of a piece of wood, as he'd long since run out of both paper and wall to paint on, he expanded outward covering the wood in bright paint in a flurry of color, imitating clouds, stars, dancing, fish, and trees, using the natural ridges of the wood as texture. He finished by painting a wall around the heart, blocking it off from the colorful world. He stopped and set it on the wall to dry.

Virgil had long since stopped hoping for someone to save him. Nobody knew of him, nobody cared about him, the only people he'd ever seen were the hooded figures and the paintings in his books. The wall with the marks numbered 5,472. Only six days until the fifteenth year of his imprisonment here. He knew no one would come. Yet that didn't stop the small voice in his heart from hoping that today would finally be the day. The day the stories wrote about. The day his prince would come.

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Ok, first things first; I'm really sorry but I haven't ever had a full panic attack so I can't quite say what it's like so I'm sorry if i misrepresented it. Second thing: anyone got the reference?
Thanks and see ya later somebody, anybody, and everybody!