The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

On The Inside
by Melissa R. Mendelson 

My grandfather did fifteen years in prison.  My father never told me what crime he committed.  When I asked my grandfather about it, he pressed his lips together, his eyes narrowed, and his hands twitched.  Only years later when he was an old man, and he was an older man when he got out, he began to spill a little here and a little there, enough for me to figure out why my father was the way that he was.  But I was more like my grandfather.

The green steps stretched out before me.  I wanted to turn around and go back up, but my body would not respond.  Instead, I chased an invisible white rabbit down its hole, descending further and further into darkness.  My hand wrapped around the metal railing, and again, I tried to pull myself back.  It was no use.  Down I go.

Why couldn’t I have dreamt of a beach or a hotel room?  It was like my mind knew that I was being punished, and all I saw was a sea of green steps stretching out and downward.  What is at the bottom?  Death, my mind answered.

There were times, at least I think there were times, when I was just able to sit on a sharp metal green step and not move.  My feet rested on the step below me, itching to continue.  Why the urge to go down when all I was doing was going down?  I don’t want to reach the bottom, I thought.  I just want to sit here and not move.

Sometimes, not too often, but sometimes, I would hear a voice.  Someone was talking to me.  I couldn’t make out all that they were saying.  Their words were like coins dropping on each step and falling into the abyss below.  Sorry.  Love.  Deserved.  Punished.  Crime.  These were only but a few words that I was able to catch before they disappeared into nothing.

I’m headed back down again, my feet slamming on each and every step.  I thought of my grandfather.  I would rather be in a cell like his with a cot and bars on the window, walks in the yard with other inmates, watch the drama and fights unfold, and listen to the guards.  In here, it was only me.

Fifteen years.  That’s how long my grandfather served.  I did not commit a crime such as his, but mine still carried weight, one that led to this sentence, but how much time would I lose?  I don’t remember.  Would I come out like my grandfather did as an older man, or would I wander endlessly around and around and down?

I was all for the end of the prison system and the jails that took my grandfather’s time, my grandfather’s life away, but they found an alternative, a more cost-effective way.  Make them comfortable, they said.  They’ll stay in their homes.  They just won’t live there.

Why did I have to kill someone?

“Let me out,” I screamed.  “Please, I’m sorry!  Please, get me out of my head!”

But it was just me in here, and no one would hear me scream.

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Fiction © Copyright Melissa R. Mendelson
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com.

About Author Melissa R. Mendelson:

Melissa R. Mendelson is the author of the Sci-Fi Novella, Waken.  She also has a prose poetry collection called, This Will Remain With Us published by Wild Ink Publishing.  Her short story collections, Better Off Here and Name’s Keeper can be found on Amazon/Amazon Kindle.

If you’d like to learn more about Melissa, you can visit her accounts here: www.MelissaMendelson.com