He often found himself drifting back to the memories of his childhood, to the days when he had wings. Not real wings, of course—but the kind that mattered more. The kind that let a boy believe he could become anything, go anywhere, outrun every shadow cast before him. Back then, he had not been a monster. Not a sinner. Not a captive.
He had been free.
Perhaps that was why this place tormented him so deeply. His prison forced him to remember those days. Elliot had once been bright—sharp-minded, quick to laugh, the kind of boy whose smile could part clouds. People had looked at him and seen promise. A future. Something worth believing in.
Now, there was only this prison, its walls merciless. Tall, suffocating, endless in their silence. They offered no cracks, no weakness, no mercy. He had searched for all three. His fingers had restlessly mapped every inch of their surface, desperate for an escape that never heeded his call. The ceiling loomed low, oppressive, as though the sky itself had collapsed and chosen him to hold it up, to keep it from crushing everything and everyone. The burden was his, and his alone.
Time did not move properly here. It warped, stretched, snapped. Some moments dissolved before he could grasp them, while others lingered, festering like wounds that refused to heal. He could not recall exactly when he had been brought here. His memories arrived in fragments. Voices without faces. Accusations without truth.
But one memory remained clear, a constant amidst his stream of consciousness.
“I will make sure this comes back to you a thousand-fold,” she had whispered. Her voice had been calm, almost calculated. She had looked down at him with a sour expression, as though he were something beneath her, something unworthy of respect.
The words had not struck immediately. They had settled instead, seeping into him like something venomous, already rooted deep within him, embedded into his very soul.
After that, everything blurred. They said he had done something unforgivable. And perhaps, in time, he had begun to believe them. So he was placed here. Or at least, that was how it felt. There were no guards. No clanging doors or jangling keys. No footsteps echoing through corridors. Yet he was never alone.
Something watched him.
No—someone.
“I didn’t do it,” He said, his voice steady and decisive. Or at least trying to be.
A cold voice came almost instantly. “Yes, you did,”.
“I don’t deserve this—let me out, I can’t breathe in here!” His voice began shaking against the force of his own tears. “I can’t breathe. Let me out. I can’t breathe,”
“You will never know what it means to fly again,” The voice told him, and he accepted.
He had tried to escape, once.
He had thrown himself against the walls, over and over, until pain became meaningless. He had clawed at the surface until his hands bruised and failed him. He had screamed until his throat bled. No one came. No one ever came.
But then, one day, something changed. At the far edge of his prison, a door appeared. It had not been built. It had not been placed. It had simply… come into existence. He did not trust it. Hope, in a place like this, was dangerous. It hollowed a person out, left them weaker, more exposed than before. It took away what little they had left, greedy as it was.
But the door remained.
And slowly, against his better judgement, something within him stirred. What if this was his chance to escape? He began to return to it, again and again, drawn by something he could not name. There was no handle. No lock. Only a faint outline where it might open.
Sometimes, on the darkest of nights, a faint light snuck through the gaps. It called his name.
Freedom?
There is a way out. The walls seemed closer now. He could not endure it any longer. So he made his choice. He stood before the door, his hands trembling, his heart beating with a force that almost enveloped his senses whole. For a moment, doubt bubbled within him.
He closed his eyes. He thought of the boy he had been—the one with wings, with laughter, with a future untouched by shadows. In a distant haze, he wondered if that boy would recognise him now.
“I just want to be free,” he whispered to no one but himself.
And then, he pushed. The door opened without resistance. For a moment, there was nothing. Just an endless, quiet stillness. It was gentle. Almost kind.
And then—
Everything was gone.
They would find him later, his body cold.
Not behind bars, but alone in a silent room where no walls had ever truly held him. There were no guards to blame. No doors to break open. No visible chains to unfasten.
Because the prison had never existed outside of him; it had lived in the quiet corners of his mind, in the relentless weight of his thoughts, in the doubts that sharpened into weapons and turned slowly inward.
A prisoner of his own mind—of battles no one else could hear, of wounds no one else could see.
And in the end, the only escape Elliot found was the one that took his life.
Freedom?
