In the white of the room, a pale girl sat in the middle, with her nails torn down to the cuticle and blood dripping down her bony hands. She traced her body with a red fingertip, blood staining her clothes that were as bright and white as her surroundings. Her knuckles were purple with dark bruises, hair torn out of her scalp and leaking dark red down her forehead, dripping down her nose.
Starving, she was. The warden didn’t feed inmates nearly enough; there wasn’t enough food that came around, she heard. She was told by a precious roommate she had lived with years ago that it was a lie to keep them from turning against the security and higher staff. Despite predictions, nobody was aware of what could possibly be outside their forever home.
Before, she was able to leave and roam the halls with no limits to her freedom. Then she was locked away. She remembered only fragments of memories. Crimson stains, splitting skin, screams of agony. Her cell had been one of a jail; bars and lumpy cushions that they used for mattresses. After the incident, as she liked to describe it, she was locked in the white room.
In the corners, she saw bugs scurry around her. They longed for the padding of her bones. They longed for more than that. They whispered to her; told her stories of ancient times: in the green grass of the jungle they once lived, then they were locked away, just like her.
They’d get close, read her bedtime stories and sing her to sleep. Then they’d bite and take her covers until she could see the white that laid under her fleshy blanket. It became cold when the white was exposed.
Shrill screams echoed through the white room, and each time she awoke to find more and more of the white visible to the world. Visible to the bugs. Under her skin, she felt the movement as they made their way underneath her blanket. Her mind no longer comprehended the bleeding vocal cords that the bugs chewed through each time she’d scream for help. She coughed until she passed out and was left for the parasites; tearing through her body and feeding on her like a dead animal.
They were as attracted to her as maggots were to rotten bodies. She wasn’t rotten. She wasn’t rotten, no. At least not yet. Even so, she felt she was rotting away. Her skin slowly tore apart under the bites of the parasites. They made their way through to her organs, until her stomach lining was infested with creatures exploring the darkness inside of her.
As her body flooded, the more she used her voice, the more she hurled and the more bugs came right back out of her throat, digging their way back into her body. Eternal suffering she was damned to for the crimes she no longer remembered. The bugs knew though. They knew of her sins and they knew the terror she reaped each moment she was free.
Gracie Gail Ahmels | 14 | Montana, USA | @punksontheplaylist on TikTok
