‘It’s been 9 months, 14 days and 3 hours since I have been stuck in this place. In this wonderful place where life is simply pulled out of me bit by bit, where my soul is broken into a million pieces, leaving me haunted and empty. I can hear patrolling outside, heavy steps hitting the muddy ground. Rain has been coming down in gallons for the past few days, it is sad and wet, while even time seems to have stopped altogether… seconds into hours, hours into days and days into weeks. This year is the longest of my life, this year is my entire life, because there is no future beyond it and I can’t remember a past before it. Have I ever lived in another time and in another place?!

I don’t remember anymore. I go outside. The cigarette in my hand in tattered and ruined, but I smoke it anyway. It is the only one I have left. The smoke is filling my lungs, killing me little by little, but not fast enough for my liking. I am sitting in the door, trying to avoid the rain. I crush what is left of my fag in the mud bellow my feet. My boots are almost broken, the water is sipping through the holes in the sole and my socks are getting dirtier. Hmm … I don’t care anymore, if it’s cold or warm it is the same to me. I take a few more steps outside; my face now invaded by a thousand small drops of water. It’s cold and clean. I can feel for a split second once again, a difference from everything else around me at this point. It’s gone. It left as soon as it came. But that, I want that back, the ability to feel, the ability to understand things around me once again.

No matter how much pain is inflicted on me, I can’t sense it after so much time, even in the shower I don’t feel anything anymore. I am dead on the inside. My body has stopped responding to the life around it.

I re-enter the room I just vacated. It is damp and the smell of mould is invading my senses. The bed in the corner is wet and the mattress is ruined, while the sprints are digging into my back every time I sit on it. Pointless.

I put the gun on the wooden table. I trace the cold metal with my forefinger. Fascinating. To be able to feel again, to be able to hold her and love her once more. What more could I wish for?!’

From outside the barrack two men sitting for a smoke away from the pouring rain hear a gun shot.
Pity…

[photo: Angel, Falling : Final by *GwenGothIllustration, www.deviantart.com]