#EscapeFromCaptivity

[chardaearchive]

Shadows of Redemption Short Story By Chardae Hilson

6. Kairos 

It felt like the walls had eyes that were burning holes into her skin at various angles through-out the day. She could feel them move over her body the same way the doctor’s did, her reactions were being gauged. Her paranoid mind jumped between a multitude of scenarios to explain the feeling of eyes. She’d stopped telling the doctor about the odd occurrences in her room, the more they continued the more she enjoyed them. This was a place where joy became extinguished and she refused to return back to her usual suffering by revealing what she experienced. Instead Kairos continued her appointments like normal, feeding the doctor lies about progress and medicines working. Beneath her cot amassed hundreds of tiny pills of varying colors, she hid them in her gums beneath her large lips that way when she lifted her tongue they found nothing. Kairos was good at hiding things and avoiding “help.”

There was a level of trust Kairos knew she could never have with another human, not that she wanted to anyway. She would never trust taking their pills or talking to their doctors, there was nothing wrong with her. Kairos was not insane, she was simply a victim to many of life's evils. To name a few, she was a victim of abuse, molestation, the legal system, and now this facility. They held her hostage, starved her, and froze her nearly to death but expected her trust. If she could, Kairos would spit in the face of the doctor and tell him to eat shit. She couldn’t though, not without consequences, and so she didn’t. Instead she did things like debate with herself on if she imagined the changes in her room or the eyes following her.

At this point she had narrowed things down to three possibilities: a ghost, a hidden camera, and her own insanity. She easily scrapped the idea of a hidden camera, the eyes she felt often shifted positions, a hidden camera couldn’t do that. She bit her nails as she thought, sometimes the eyes felt like multiple, camera’s don’t do that. 

Alright so it’s not a camera, it was made up in her mind that the only two other possibilities were that of a ghost or that all this was simply a reflection of her own declining mental health. 

“Fuck!” She cursed, slamming a fist into the cot beneath her. The shitty mattress had grown softer by the day, so much so that her fist did not even meet the metal beneath it. She felt no pain at the force of her hit and barely any sound came as a result of it, this only pissed her off more. 

“Ugh!” Kairos screamed, pulling at her hair as the sound rolled out of her chest.

She felt frantic, she felt trapped, and most of all she felt confused. Tears welled in her eyes as she pulled harder at her curls, slowly she began to heave. The breaths of air she tried to take began to allude her, as her heaving became more intense. Her tears escaped in hurds and her breaths ran from her, the feeling of entrapment consumed her. She felt herself falling, spiraling into a wave of emotions she was sure would drown her.

“Stop!” Commanded a voice from the shadows, and her anxiety quickly dissipated.