Original fiction - just a teeny, tiny short story
The hallway is dank, narrow, dark, extending for miles in either direction. The pinpricks of light at either end are lies. No matter how long or desperately you chase them, they will always fall just beyond your reach.
She knows this.
She has walked these halls for days and weeks and months and years, her tiny hands tracing the decaying walls, her fingertips picking at the mildewed wallpaper in a desperate search for some trapdoor, some hole, some escape.
But it makes no difference.
There is no escape.
She knows this.
She curls herself against the wall. The damp carpet rubs against her exposed lower back, chafing the skin, but she doesn't move away. Her arms cling to her bony legs, and she rests her forehead on trembling knees. She digs her nails deep into the flesh of her calves until the rivulets of blood well up and flow over her fingers. She needs to feel the pain.
She needs to feel.
She doesn't know how long she has been here. Since yesterday. Since eternity. Time lost its meaning forever ago. The only way she knows that she is still alive is the pain. It connects her, and it tortures her. It tells her that she is a prisoner, whispers that there is no escape. Yet still she chooses to plunge her nails deep into her skin, grateful for every second of burning agony it brings.
Because it means she is still here.
She is still alive.
And as long as she is alive, she will not give up.
She knows this.
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ortizmj12/2500687341