Dirty water dripped on my head from a moldy wooden basement beam.  Light spilled into the room from the cracks in the ceiling.  I was trapped in a deep stone hole.  My wrist was clasped with a 10 centimeter iron cuff, it rubbed the skin underneath into a blistery rot.  I pulled against in, a 3 meter rusty chain that was bolted into solid rock.  Every time I woke up, in the hideout a man sat across from me.  He looked angry, he wore ratty clothes, and smell like clean water and soap had not hit his body for months.  I waved my hands at him, he would mock my gestures.  I asked when he would let me out of this prison.  He never answered.

I found a loose stone in the floor.  I pushed away the gray dust that shrouded it.  I cracked and broke my fingernails clawing at the buried stone.  When I finally uprooted the rock, warm red blood fell from my fingers into the dry dust.  There was a note, handwritten in ink.  It was on a cut piece of soft tan leather.  It simply read…

Confess to me, all of your wrongs…

Call upon my ear, I want to hear from you…

You can’t see me, buy I am watching you,

I am upstairs.

If you speak, I will hear you.

I will heal you, if you would but simply,

ask

I sat in silence, in my own pile of deification and filth.  I was too proud, and too embarrassed, to try.  I was hungry, and ashamed.  I saw the filthy man return.  He sat there in silence looking at me.  I hated him.  I finally broke.  I looked up to the ceiling, I said, “I don’t know who you are, but I found your note, would you be willing to help me?”

A basement light came on.  I saw the stone room had a large archway, with a giant mirror beside it.  The keys to my chains hung from a rusted nail on the wall.

Copyright © 2017 Zachary W Gilbert