The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Green is the Colour of Release
by Bailey Hunter

Millie eased herself down into the hard wooden chair and stared out at the world before her. The green was really vibrant today. Her thin fingers absently traced the names of those who came before her etched in the old desk and she closed her eyes to remember the feel of the breeze caressing her cheek, and the tickles of grass between her toes.

How long had it been since she’d been outside? She didn’t know anymore. A child ran across her view, and Millie stifled a scream.  She learned it was pointless.  The window nothing more than another way to torment her. Nothing but a screen.  She didn’t even know if it was real. The images could just as easily be recordings, or live feed from the outside that forgot about her.

What she did know was that she hadn’t had food in a long time. She was still given water, but food was becoming less frequent, the stretches in between the rancid gruel spanning days. At least as far as she could ascertain based on the day and night cycle shown in the faux window.

Perhaps the drugging and torture was becoming boring.  Now they, whoever “they” were, just wanted to watch her die.

Millie tore off another piece of the rag she wore, and pulled the makeshift quill from under a pile of bones they left. Her predecessors, she imagined.  She sharpened its edge on the stone floor before unwrapping the filthy cloth from her wrist.  She wasn’t going to let them finish her.  She opened the wound and dripped enough blood into the ink well to write her last letter. She dipped the bone quill into the blood and scribbled out the words “the window is a lie. I’m sorry you are here. Maybe you can escape, but maybe death is the only real escape.”  She wadded up the scrap of fabric and shoved it into the pile of bones for the next one to find before scratching her name into the desk.

Millie took a ragged breath, and looked out at the world one last time. 

“I wonder if my family missed me,” she whispered to no one, then plunged the bone quill deep into her temple, her final seconds surrounding her in cooling green.

Fiction © Copyright Bailey Hunter
Image courtesy of Rie Sheridan Rose.

More about Bailey Hunter:
Bailey is a publisher with Dark Recesses Press.

Dark Recesses Press is a publishing house dedicated to providing high quality dark fiction in its many forms to the reader. Our end goal is to impress and entertain, no matter what dark recesses we dare shine our light on.

DarkRecessesPress.com