Kris Platt
Stories (2/0)
Paradiso
The plan had been to die there, in paradise. It had been two years and six months to the day according to the etchings Polly had made on the walls inside her concrete box. One small line with every new sun. Inside of her tomb she had a small mattress that was nailed to the floor, a toilet, a tiny slit at the bottom of the wall where once a day one orb of something edible slid through and an aluminium vase that contained one stem of what she supposed was once a bouquet of orchids. The stem hadn't been watered in the time that she'd been there yet was as alive and living as it was the first day she woke up in the box. There was no door but one wall had a large convex window made of some reinforced material that had been heavily tinted so as nothing apart from the light of the sun and the moon could be seen from inside. In times of desperation she had tried to smash it with her hands and her head to no avail other than leaving a few tiny scrapes that could be wiped away with saliva. Above the window there was an ornate inscription in the concrete that read, 'Paradiso'. This, she assumed, was some sort of feeble attempt at humour by her captors. She'd imagined so many times whoever it was laughing as they hammered a chisel into the wall with extreme and delicate precision. Two years and six months, a long enough period of time that Polly had lost all hope of ever escaping her grey prison. On that 913th day as she sat against the back wall nibbling on the tasteless round thing that had slid through into her box she was surrounded by a great light so magnificent that it blinded her. Her brain fizzed and her ears rang with a screech of a thousand pigs at the slaughterhouse. She curled up in a ball and fumbled her way to the corner, scratching at the mattress praying for it to absorb her like some dried up bed bug. There she lay waiting for the sickness to pass. The screeching in her ears dissipated to a low hum and the fire balls that were her eyes began to cool as her brain began to recognise true sunshine again. She pulled herself upright with the help of the wall and rubbed at her eyes seeing the concrete room for what felt like the first time. The convex window was glowing a bright white as if the dark tint that had been there for two and a half years was suddenly ripped of like a band aid. She took slow steps toward the glow and saw tiny shapes starting to form as she got closer, tiny shapes turning into big shapes turning into buildings and trees. Her stomach flipped with vertigo as she realised that her concrete box was so high off the ground that the street below looked like a penciled line on a piece of paper. She fell back onto the cold ground and hugged her legs, shaking with fear and confusion. She didn't recognise the city in front of her. Was it her city? Was it where she once worked? Where she loved and played? She tried so hard to locate the memories of the alien place but found nothing. She cried and in a fury threw herself at the window, yelling and screaming and scratching hoping for someone out there to see her, to look up and see a woman trapped in a concrete box and call the police or rouse the cavalry. Anything would do, she just wanted saved. With energy depleted she slipped back down to the floor. Her filthy clothes soaked with a salty lament she saw movement from each side of the plastic bubble. She pressed her wet face against the curvature of the reinforced material and saw that there were hundreds of windows on a concrete wall. Bubbles in rows like hives and behind each an insect like her, all simultaneously coming to the same realisation.
By Kris Platt3 years ago in Fiction