by Mitch Goth
As morning came through the large, dust caked windows of the old factory, Michael was working on another day of his morning routine. While he poked and prodded at Megan with his electrical pole, she hopped, jolted, and cried out as she always did. When it was over, he walked away from the cell, whistling with his steps.
After Michael left every day, Megan was alone, with only her whimpers as company. Throughout every hour of the day and night, she had nothing more than her mind and her slumber to take up time. Sleep was hardly enjoyable. The concrete made her whole body ache, but the cage wasn't tall enough to stand in. The dreams she had ripped apart her mentality. If she wasn't suffering from this man's brutality in real life, Megan was subject to far worse horrors within her subconscious. And sleeping always risked being woken up by the body-shaking feeling of that prod stabbing into her and sending its hateful energy through her whole being.
However horrid sleeping was, lying down and thinking wasn't much of an improvement. Everything she could think about brought her pain and sadness. The thought of the room that contained her brought claustrophobia, and the last time it crossed her mind she nearly had a complete breakdown. Nothing was pleasant about where she was. Besides the tight space, the whole building stank of rat poison and severe water damage.
Every attempt at thinking of anything other than her predicament failed. As hard as Megan tried, everything in her mind led right back to the horrific life she was living. Thoughts of family always brought her to tears if not full-fledged weeping. They must have been searching tirelessly for her and cried themselves to sleep just like she did. All she wanted was to see them again, to hold them again, to speak with them. Her family, her friends, even people she had only spoken to fleetingly once or twice, she'd kill to hold in that moment and let them know just how much she appreciated them. But she couldn't. Megan was trapped in that room, in everlasting pain, and it seemed like there was no escape.
Throughout the tremendous amount of woe and dread, there was one thing that kept Megan's melancholic mind melded in reality. Despite all the darkness and hell in which she found herself, there was a single spot of light to be seen through all of it. In her cell, there sat a tiny pin hole in the wall. From what she could tell, it didn't lead to any other portion of the factory, or whatever the building was. It lead outside. The slim hole was no wider than a pencil, but everyday it shed a whole life's worth of light onto Megan's bleak and bottomless world.
The hole was at crouching height for Megan, and whenever her mind overwhelmed her and she was still too afraid or too uncomfortable to fall asleep, she would get herself up and peek out of it. With her malnourishment and aching joints, muscles, and bones, it caused Megan great pain. But for the light it was worth it. Sometimes it was blinding, but she never looked away. It was best on cloudy days when the sun was beneath a thin haze or two. On those days she could almost make out certain aspects of the surrounding nature if she tried hard enough. Trees were in the distance, and if she angled right she could catch glimpses of the ground. It was like a dream, looking through that hole, only far better than the kind that plagued her mind every time her eyes shut.
The pain in her body made looking through the hole possible for only a few moments at a time before she had to collapse back to the floor. It wouldn't be long before she would get back up again. The light rejuvenated her. Every day, whenever she could, Megan would stare out into the world, waiting for her chance to be free again, to see the world through more than just a pencil-sized hole. It was a pinhole of optimism in her otherwise miserable and unforgiving reality.
As Megan sat in her cell, shifting between staring out into the world and lying back down to regain energy, she could feel her mind charging. Hope bubbled up, that somehow she would make it out alive; all the horrors in her brain melted away while they had a chance to, and her mind cleared. She wanted to see her family again, she wanted to see her friends, and she wanted to see the piece of shit who put her in a cage put in prison. While she was in the darkness, that was her only focus, but once the light came all the hope came with it. For hours Megan stared through the hole and into the light of the world, hungry for the hope she might survive. It was desperate and far-fetched, she knew it, but it wasn't something she would ever be willing to let go of.
21