C. 05

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It's Joanne. There's a dimple on both sides of her cheeks when she smiles. She wants to deny that it wasn't a true, kind smile but can't.

This woman does not give up. Her persistence was clearly made known to Y/N. And she hates it.

***

"Y/N-"

Y/N flips over on her bed, facing the window.

Joanne groaned, irritated."If you don't at least listen to me, I'll-"

"You'll what? Lock me in a padded room for a day? Won't feed me for a week? You can't do anything. Now stop running your mouth and beat it."Y/N snapped, her eyes looking at the window where rain freckled the glass. Raindrops reflecting the greens and blues and browns of the world outside.

The sun is away, buried in piles and piles of gray today. Kinda like yesterday.

Just when she thinks Joanne was going to make a remark back, she doesn't. She hears her sigh and the door shut.

Y/N waits only a minute before pulling out her notebook and pen.

She pauses, flips back to the beginning of her notebook. The first page. It was stained with tears, as well as many other pages. Her earliest entries are from the days she couldn't find the effort to stop crying. Though it has gotten better, sometimes even she can't help but break down, as time and reality weather her down.

'Entry 1

Trapped in a wrecked cell, it wasn't only my body, it wasn't my soul. It was my whole world. The world in which that took everything from me. My family, my friends...my home. I'm never to leave this room, they had told me. You're crazy, is what they would be thinking.

My head is trying to reason and I know I am breaking so, so slowly and painfully. I didn't have a clue where to go. It hurts.

This cell, this dark, cramp cell is suffocating me and I don't know what to do anymore. I feel so helpless and just useless. I just want to die.

I want to claw at these walls that surround me, yet I just misled an image of potential into fear and hurt that I would too, someday crumble apart.

I still wait patiently for that day...but my patience is running low. Very low.

Family and friendship... happiness and love have lost to reality and this gripping, heart-wrenching feeling in me, it lost its meaning to through these disillusioned eyes of mine. I don't see it, the purpose of living while being stuck here.

There is no reason, everyone who I have ever loved is dead or doesn't care anymore.

So why am I hesitating?'

She would have cried. She would have punched the stone surrounding her, pulled her hair and screamed. But all she did was a sigh, running the pads of her fingers against the white paper stained with so many tears. Stained with tears that held every meaning to everything she has known now and then.

Stuffing it back in her pillowcase, Y/N leans forward against the window. Stares at the forest, the single willow tree... only to realize the once beautiful tree was dying. Turning brown and yellow. It looked sad, yet weak by the way the branches hung lower than before. It was giving up.

Lucky tree, she almost laughed in jealousy over a tree. She really is losing her mind. Maybe she will start talking to her pillow next.

She folds her arms on her knees. And waits for the man. She rocks back and forth. She waits too long and falls asleep.

***

When you have nothing to do in a small room, you start to find things so small to think about. Something, anything to dwell on for any ounce entertainment.

Counting fingers, toes or braiding hair.

Counting dents on the wall or how many feet to one side to another.

Making her bed hundreds of times.

Seeing how long she can hold her breath, or how many trees she can see outside the window. Even the birds flying by or the deer that pop their heads out behind bushes before scurrying off.

Counting the stone blocks in the walls. Even turning off and on the sink, the shower.

Counting seconds and minutes that go by.

Anything, she will do anything to get rid of her aching boredom or to quiet down her rushing river of thoughts filling up her head, ready to overflow out her ears and mouth and nose.

She finds counting the best ways to focus on something other than where she is.

88... 89...

She rocks, back and forth, back and forth...

90... 91...

Her eyes glued to the window, frosted by the cold.

92... 93...

She didn't sleep very well last night. Under her eyes were dark circles, showing her exhausted expression. She was tired. Tired of everything.

94... 95...

There is a bird flying towards her direction. Towards the window.

96... 97...

The bird is flying fast, not stopping as it approaches.

98... 99...

The bird hits the window, Y/N flinches only slightly. Breaking its neck at impact, it falls limp on the outside window sill, its black eyes staring up at space.

... 100

She stares at the dead bird, studying its feathers to the color of its beak.

A Blackbird with jet plumage and short, stubby beak of polished amber, bright eyes like black onyx beads, dainty neck at a right angle. It's body completely still. Where its puffed out chest should have been rising rapidly, instead, it was frozen half a breath in.

Y/N, with stiff movements, held her hand to the window. Her eyes not once leaving the dead creature in front of her. So close yet so far because of the wall, the window.

She fears she will never be set free, even by death.

Touch; Ticci Toby X ReaderWhere stories live. Discover now