[WP] You are trapped in a prison with no bars... but its security is much more frightening.

Curled up in this prison of my own making, I am never alone but forever in miserable solitude. The walls are smeared with my own shit and blood, unseen to everybody except for me. I can barely stand the stench, much less bear to live another day in this hell. It wasn't supposed to be like this...

This kind of prison doesn't have bars keeping me in or guards making their rounds. It just has whatever it is I've built, ready to come crumbling down at the first sign of weakness. I didn't build this overnight. It crept up on me, the way a predator stalks its prey, waiting patiently until the moment is right. I'm my predator and I'm my prey, and I live each day knowing I don't have long left before I snap. It wasn't supposed to be like this...

I stare into the darkness each night, her presence beside me but invisible and untouchable. The weight of everything I have yet to do and everything I haven't done drowns me, and I grasp at imaginary ropes and helping hands, begging them to pull me up. But I'm just met with that mocking laugh, as the world looks on but doesn't see me; it just barrels right on, trampling me. It wasn't supposed to be like this...

Every morning it's the same routine, I go through the motions like a robot, trying to ignore the searing pain that threatens to tear me from the inside out. It's just a matter of time as I live each day knowing it can't be long before I snap. A third of each day I sit and work, building the walls to my prison just a little higher, just so the fall can be a little more spectacular. It can't be long now. The seconds tick by and they turn into minutes and hours and years flash by, and still I sit. It can't be long now. It wasn't supposed to be like this...

It finally comes without a warning, just like any other day. Something inside just changes, and a decision is made, and it isn't long now. Each turn is an opportunity, a hope that I'll get trampled one last time. Halfway home, as I drive over that bridge, I look down, and something just snaps. And as I step off the edge, I realize that it wasn't supposed to be any other way than this.


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