Echoes Off The Walls

• Angela Beal, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2008

With a swift move of the old gum tree’s branches, the sun peeks through the cracks, creating a blinding light on the window that I am staring through so intently. When forced to be somewhere against your will, activities and the space you are enclosed in seem to contract. My only friend: my music. How badly I want to be as free as these lyrics and climb through the restricting glass panes and engage in some sort of human contact. Minutes seem like hours and the cabin fever begins to increase with every tap of my fingers.

The song changes, “this is the sound of freedom” echoes off the walls that seem to continue creeping inwards. How wrong the lyrics feel. With anger and an overwhelming sense of rage, I lunge across the room to get rid of the lies that bellow from the ever-mocking speakers. A snap in tempo reveals the next track in line: “don’t hold back”. Little do my speakers know that it is not I that is holding back, but it is the impenetrable forces of my room that grip me with indestructible tethers.

A room that was originally filled with sorrow has now transformed into one filled with angst and a fiery desire for freedom. In the pit of my stomach, a strange feeling begins to develop: a very unfamiliar and curious feeling. I close my eyes, count to ten, take the deepest breath ever drawn and open my eyes. The teddy bear that once looked at me with the happiest of looks now stirs anger in me. I grab its neck and hurl it across the room until the big black nose of his once comforting face hit the opposing wall with such a thud that it felt like all the childhood memories in him drifted away like sand granules carried away in an oceanic breeze. Time seems to stand still. The only sound audible is my heaving breaths causing my body to rise and dip at a phenomenal speed. I turn my head at every angle physically possible but at every point is an object of undeniable restriction.

However, it is the view from the inside that bothers me most; the fact that I can see all that I can’t have lying beyond this prison. I only want a piece of it; a small piece to satisfy my hunger for freedom. When I first entered this forsaken state of loneliness two long hours ago, there was little doubt in my mind that my time for reflection would be limited. Oh, how wrong I was. It feels like I’ve been inside these walls for days but time is ticking on so slowly. The world seems so much larger from in here. I feel I must have taken freedom for granted. I must have been taking my privileges for granted.