Paradise?

• Daniela Maier, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2009

As she lay on the bed of her tiny, enclosed cell, her hair sat across her face and arranged itself like an intricate web of streets and lanes on a road map. The pallor of her skin matched almost seamlessly with the worn grey bed sheets and the pale, dirty walls. Her dull grey eyes lingered across the low ceiling, and it moved closer and closer towards her as the minutes passed by. Her room in the institution was an entrapment worse than the life she was escaping from.

Staring down and the tiny pinprick scars on her arm, she began to appreciate the falling roof a little more, and the damp, dull walls looked more like a paradise than a prison. The small window transformed into a gap in the canopies of her exotic jungle where sunlight streamed through the leaves and warmed her soft complexion. What were noises of screams and iron doors slamming became the music of birds singing and running streams of water. Her food plates that the guards passed in became glorious banquets of tropical fruit and salads, and fresh seafood that she ate by the water’s edge.

Day by day her jungle expanded – the music became more striking, the sunlight more blissful and the banquets more lavish. Everything she had dreamed of before arriving in her cell became a reality and there was nothing that could make her life better. Her life of destruction, horror and suppression became one of peace and security, where nothing could tear her from her freedom and liberty. Inside her cell, she was free.

Her sleep refreshed her like never before, leaving her hungry and excited for the daily fishing trips, the animals she would discover and the never ending peace she experienced in her personal jungle. She wished time would stand still that, she could remain here forever.

A creaking sound, unfamiliar to her paradise, interrupted her independence. The gaps in her canopy became a single tiny window. The music surrounding her became near silence, with intermittent harsh noises. The banquets were gone altogether leaving an empty space with seemingly no end. She was pulled into the depth of the emptiness and was greeted with unfamiliar faces. She was hugged not by the sunlight, but by people – strong people – who held her sturdily. Sobs filled her ears, instead of the loving sound of the animals she had grown to cherish. Her cell, and her paradise, was gone. She wanted her freedom back.