The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Too Big 
by Rie Sheridan Rose 

I was too big to fit through the window. That was the first thing I noticed when I came to. My head was spinning, and I didn’t know where I was. I remembered the bar. I remembered dancing. I remembered drinking way more than I should have. That was all I remembered.

Looking around the room where I found myself, I saw a bucket in the corner, the army cot I lay upon, and nothing else. A chain just long enough to reach the bucket shackled my wrist to the wall. The metal door across the way sported a slot about a foot above the floor. A lump of bread and a bottle of water lay beneath the slot. The bottle had leaked, and the bread lay in a puddle of mud on the dirt floor.

I didn’t care. I was starving. Diving to the floor, I reached for the bread. My fingertips barely touched it. Luckily, I had done my nails the week before, and I managed to hook it and drag it through the mud until I could reach it. Wolfing it down, I almost gagged on the grit. It proved slightly better than nothing.

Once I had slaked my thirst with the dregs left in the bottle, I stretched the chain to its limits and looked out the window. Standing on my tiptoes, I craned my neck and glimpsed the outdoors. All I could see was dead stalks and dirt. And the iron bars on the window.

That was six months ago.

I would have expected to be smaller by now…one chunk of bread a day, usually half a bottle of water. But I am still too big.

I found a rock in the corner last night. Not a big rock. I guess we can’t all be too big. But big enough. I threw it against the window.

The glass shattered in one corner of one pane. I managed to pry one piece out of the frame. It’s so sharp, it cut my hand. That’s good. I need it to be sharp.

My body may be too big to fit through the hole, but my soul is non-corporeal. It’s not too big.

.

Fiction © Copyright Rie Sheridan Rose
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Author Rie Sheridan Rose:

Overheard in Hell:
Dark Poetry

Poems exploring hell and damnation. Tales of sorrow, vengeance, betrayal, and redemption. Ghosts, ghouls, and demons stalk these pages. Don’t read in a lonely house…in a darkened room by a single candle…

…unless you like the touch of an icy finger up your spine.

Available on Amazon!