Temptation

• Sam Brown, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2013

Temptation; it’s a predator that stalks the weak in every shadowed corner. But if not for temptation, opportunity would be a broken door, hanging useless on its hinges, leading to nothing but an empty void of what could be life. But with it, the door is still cracked; cracked with the doubts of that unknown voice, the one that lurks and clings to our minds, always whispering its caution. But now my little voice screams, grown too impatient, too desperate to only whisper its pleas. The bars surround me, cold and menacing, always so motivated to close in on me, with the silence groaning in my ears. The distress in the atmosphere does not give me the chance to determine whether the air is clear or not. To me it feels like it is ready to choke me. Whether out of spite or self-pity, I almost beg aloud for it to make up its mind.
A maelstrom drowns my mind’s racing thoughts, a cold abyss swallows the pit of my heart, the ache in my chest that never goes but never strengthens. No senses reach me. Despite my awareness of the prison walls caging me, I cannot percept any detail. Despite my awareness of the smell that lingers in the musk of the air, I cannot comprehend its scent. Despite my physical feeling of the icy metal bunk I never leave, its touch is alien.
The crushing reality of my crime is the only true thing I feel now. My captors did not care for my reasoning. No amount of pledging my love for the man I brutally murdered for would not halt their actions in chaining me, dragging me away to this atramentous cell, now the only piece of existence I have left granted to me.
Here everything is and isn’t. I have given up and yet in some part of my lost mind, I can feel the energy, the urge to fight. Some voices are louder than others. Temptation now bellows its commands. Yet always it is killed; over and over by that doubting voice, always moaning ‘what’s the use?’
But yet overtaken again, another twisted voice will taunt. A voice I should have listened to before… You have brought this upon yourself. It jeers. You should have suppressed your urges. You would not have innocent blood on your hands otherwise. What had she done but taken first what you so desperately desired? The heart of a man. And now for your greed, you are trapped here. And like every time, the anger flares blistering hot inside. And like every time, I bask in it. I let it render my eyes clean of any mercy, I let it destroy any reason that still tries to seize hold of my darkened mind, and like every time, it only lasts a few seconds. Again that doubting, solemn voice knows ‘what’s the use?’
I am here; paying for my crime. And like every time, I drown again in black, empty hopelessness.