Jailbreak

The boy had only two visitors in his prison.

The first was the moonlight pouring through the window. During the long, long day the sunlight also shone, of course, but it didn't seem real to the boy. It shone so brightly that it only made the walls of his vision even whiter and blurrier, as if he was on the verge of losing what passed for consciousness inside him, and maybe he was. How could he know?

The second was the woman...

She was the main reason the nights felt more real. After the accident he had been surrounded by ghostly faces covered in tears, but as time passed they were gone. Life went on for everyone except the boy in prison.

But the woman was always there.

She only appeared at night, but she never skipped a night. Oh, during the day the doctors and nurses came and went, of course, but it wasn't the same.

She didn't do much. She would just sit by his bedside and move her mouth like she was trying to say something. However, her words never reached his ears. It wasn't that the boy had lost the ability to hear with the accident. It was something special about her.

It wasn't the only thing.

It was the least important thing of all, but she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. Hair as dark as the night sky and porcelain skin so white and pure it almost seemed transparent.

It frustrated the boy.

Not his condition, not his imprisonment. At this point, they were just facts of life. What frustrated him was not being able to talk to her, not being able to even understand what she was trying to tell him night after night.

She was the only person who visited him regularly, after all.

She was his world. The only real thing in this prison where he couldn't even lift a finger.

Maybe the stars had aligned or something, maybe the time had come. Something changed in this eternal prison of time.

The woman extended a hand toward him. She had never once touched him. She had always sat on his bedside, talking patiently, not realizing (apparently) that he couldn't hear her. Just that.

Her hand reached up to his chest and passed across it.

He felt pain immediately.

The boy was grateful for even that. His body was so broken, it was the first time he had felt pain in years.

The woman pulled back, pulled at something. What, what could it be? Was she here to rip his heart out? Was she the angel that would put him out of his misery?

If so, he didn't know why he had waited so long, but he didn't care. Peace, at last.

But it wasn't so.

She took... him out. Pulled his soul out of his broken, worn body.

The boy looked down at his hands as he spun them around, unable to believe it. He was semi-transparent like a ghost, while on the bed there was only an empty shell.

"What's going on? Who are you?"

And he could speak again. His eyes filled with tears, not when he realized that fact, but when he wondered if his voice had really always sounded like that. No one knew what they had until they lost it forever.

The woman answered him only with a smile.

Even now they couldn't communicate?

Maybe this was just a dream, but it still felt more real than the hospital room and the prison of his broken body. So he accepted the madness that had just happened as if it were natural.

"What do you want from me? I'll go with you wherever it takes. There is nothing here for me."

The woman got up and left the room. She always left before dawn, but he would fall asleep or something, so this was the first time he had seen her leave.

She opened the door to leave, instead of just walking through the wall.

He wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't a being of this world, but apparently she was real enough. Though not verbally, she had given him an answer, so he followed her, walking through the wall like it was nothing. He was more dead than alive. His soul, free from the chains of his body, walked free.

Though he wasn't quite dead yet, he was a ghost.

They wandered through the corridors. Dark, empty. Dead.

They went into a room with nobody getting in their way. It was as if the hospital was empty. Except, of course, for the damned souls. Like the man in that room.

His eyes were closed. But what he slept was an eternal sleep from which he wouldn’t wake up even when his time came.

He recognized him. He had been in the newspapers.

A man who had been in a coma for two decades, but was still tied to the bed, forced to live when he was obviously dead; even though the lights were still on, the building was empty. Yet his family was unable to admit it.

Something like what was happening to him.

Was that what it was all about, was the woman basically telling him that this was what was in store for him?

No.

No.

He had been suffering too long. Waiting. But at some point they would pull the plug. He wouldn't be in the prison of his body for so long. At least that man felt nothing, knew nothing of the world. The boy saw and heard everything. Only he couldn't even piss under his own power.

That would be too cruel.

"They have already left me for dead. That's why they visit me less and less. They don't even pretend there's hope, so, at any moment, one of these days... Any moment now..."

The woman still didn't say anything.

There was no need to answer him, he had already realized that his words were powerless. After all, he knew that this man hardly received any visitors as well.

And yet, his hell never ended.

"Do you want to help him?"

The boy shuddered. That voice. He had longed to hear the woman's voice for so many long nights, and at last...

"If you want to release him from his suffering, you only have to pull."

"What?"

"You know."

Yes, he knew. It was as if the woman could read his mind. The boy approached the machine. It wasn't even difficult.

Instead of going through the wires, his hands grabbed them.

He pulled at the wires, yanking them out.

The line on the monitor went flat. The boy didn't feel like a killer, that man had been dead for twenty long years. Nor did he feel like some kind of hero, mind you. He was just frustrated that he had to be the one to do this.

It should have happened much sooner.

His family should have had the courage to accept things as they were and move forward into the future. What, as long as they had him strapped to a hospital bed, there was no need to say goodbye? What a joke.

What a sad joke.

The boy and the woman left the room before the medical staff arrived. No matter how much they hurried, it was already too late. He knew it in his heart of hearts. That they wouldn't be able to resuscitate him.

Peace, at last. Even if it wasn't for him.

He followed the woman blindly, no questions asked. That's why it took him several seconds to realize that she had taken him back to his own room.

"You asked me what I want. But that's not the point. What do you want?"

"You." He didn't even have to think about it. His world had shrunk to the point where it had almost disappeared, and she was like a torch shining in the midst of that darkness. "You're the only person who always visits me. The only one who thinks of me. The days are endless because you are far away."

"If you pull those cables, we'll be together forever. Night and day. We will finally live in the same world."

He wanted to be free from his prison. And he wanted to be with her.

So he could take it all, so easily?

"Yeah? You say that as if I had any reason not to."

"So what are you waiting for?"

It was a good question.

The boy looked away from the woman for the first time.

He looked at the monitor that showed the beating of his weak heart. A whole life vulgarly summarized in a line that went up and down. He looked at the wires that connected him to the machine. That life was more the machine's than his.

He looked at it all, immersed in his thoughts.

He had been a normal boy. Even the accident had been normal. Wrong place, wrong time. Just bad luck.

When morning came, the mother came to visit the boy.

THE END