The room

into the future as he could dream. These four walls told a story, a story that he would rather forget. Everywhere he turned he could see the past. As he looked at the filthy stone floor he could envisage the bodies of prior fallen slaves who died tortured in captivity. A fate which would certainty await him! The endless dream of freedom filled his thoughts. There was nothing more he longed for, yet he was imprisoned in this forsaken pit of despair and solitude, and the last vestige of hope was long but forgotten. All he has to gaze at is the tiny slit high in the ceiling, a hope for liberty stolen by the steel bars crossing it. The remains of the room hold little relevance to him anymore, the teasing door, sturdy and wooden, the barren floor, sandy and damp, and the forever closing walls scratched with the days gone by, a calendar of his solitude and torment. His bed nothing more than a sprawl of soiled hay, alive with spiders and lice.  His toilet nothing more than a bucket, festering with faeces. Dusk now starts to creep on the room. The scene is set for a twilight nightmare like so many before. Darkness sets, the moon and stars cast tiny speckles of light, where many nights has he spent gazing upon on the heavens from his confine, but tonight his   desperation to be free catches up with him, he starts to lose control, a blind rage seizes him, he begins to howl, a last cry for help. He begins to beat the wall with his shackled arms. The blood smeared sandstone wall begins to crumble. He suddenly becomes peaceful, all is quiet and still. He strikes the wall again, more begins to crumble. He strikes it again and again, his arms become bloodied and bruised but still he strives on in complete desperation. The hope of freedom now fills his thoughts. The one thing he has wished for more than anything in all his years of captivity could be on the other side of these decaying walls he has been bound inside for so long. The wall starts to become thinner and so does his strength, but his will and determination remain strong. He now beats the wall to a rhythm, a song of his impending emancipation from slavery, fuelled by his dreams and desperation.  At last he breaks through, a tiny hole he can stare through into the outside world, all is dark and all he can see is an eternal gloom. He carries on with the wall. The hole, now big enough, he sticks his head into the unknown, a thunderous howl now lingers on the air. All hope is lost, all will to live is lost and all thought of freedom became futile. His cell is many floors up and any attempt at escape has become impossible. Christian Vickerman