literature

Blank Prison

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tintedslightly's avatar
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Literature Text

    All is red.  Red and red and red then black for just as long.  This repeats for what he soon assumes to be days.  Beginning as a soft humming to random pounding noises, his hearing began to resurface.  Now and then he would hear familiar voices dancing just beyond comprehension.  There is still no vision.  Just red then black, red then black.   But he does begin to feel warmth.  Hot red, cool black.  This confirms his earlier suspicion of night and day.  
   Memories float to the surface gently and silently like drift wood after being pushed below.  They bob up and down, difficult to fully grasp once they have been touched, for they are just as slippery.
    Eventually he has lost any sense of time.  It could've been a week or four years.  There were no walls of chalk lines (to keep track of such a thing) where he was, imprisoned in his own consciousness.  He feels no pain but he is in agony.  He remembers.  He remembers, almost all.  Faces flash through his mind and he begins to pair them with the voices that have been becoming clearer and clearer.  

       "Ugh, those dumb lions won't finish eating those nasty old carcasses."  Says a sweet shrill voice in disgust.
      "What?  But there's hardly anything else to eat here.  I know they haven't been eating our picnics so… what the heck?"  Puzzles a boy.  His mouth is full of food so the words are muffled and distorted.
     "How do you know they aren't eating our food?"
     "'Cause I turned off those things that make the nursery animals and stuff able to directly interact with the user.  I forgot what it was called.  I lost the book when they shut off the automatic library."
    The girl pauses for a moment, most likely scowling, and then giggles.  "You're so smart."
He remembers who this girl and this boy are.  They are his children.  But he still couldn't quite figure out what they might've been conversing about.  What carcass?  What…. Nursery?  
    More red and more black.  The red is becoming hotter than before and the black cooler.  The voices are becoming far too clear.  Each syllable hitting him like shards of broken glass.  He hears them talking one day and as shards rain down upon him, one hits.  One hits, perhaps in just the right place, and it suddenly all comes back.  He should be dead.  He should be dead and gone yet he is still there.  His own children, murderers.  His own children, murderers.  His own children, murderers, of their own parents.    If he had eyes left to cry…  But no such rain will fall.  
      He knows what he is now.  He knows what is left of him.  If he could open his eyes, he would not.  He would never, not now.  You don't know what you have until it's gone.  If only he had opened his eyes when he still could.
For a school project ^^ We had to write a short sequel to one of the Science Fiction stories we read in class. ^^

This is a sequel to a short story in Ray Bradbury's Illustrated Man called The Veldt.
© 2012 - 2024 tintedslightly
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XxRaexAnnexX's avatar
I should post what I wrote...