Insanity of Isolation

I don’t want to be alone. 

The words echoed through my mind as I peered out the small window that separated me from the rest of the world. Four stone walls formed my prison, not an exit or entrance that I had been able to find in my stay. The window was the only thing that I had, the only glimpse into what was beyond.

Stars winked down at me from the great expanse of the sky, but I knew that their reassuring winks would mean nothing, that morning would come and I would be forced to watch the people move back and forth, doing everything I could not.

They spoke, and when I yelled they could not seem to hear me.

They walked about, and yet I could only move barely three steps in the tiny room that contained me.

I don’t want to be alone. 

I wanted to know what they were saying, what they were doing, and I wanted to do it with them. I wanted to join the smiles that spread from face to face beyond the glass of this window. I wanted to know what the things they carried were, the globes of red and orange that seemed to shine in the sunlight that never seemed to reach me.

No one saw me here in this room, no one glanced in my direction, peered from the other side of the glass. I was an observer looking out, but invisible to them.

Did they know I was here? Would they come if they knew?

I don’t want to be alone. 

The stars mocked me with their winks, their empty promises. They were free, the dark dome of the sky to house them, while I sat in my four walled prison, staring up at them.

I don’t want to be alone.

The sun peeked over the horizon, hiding the winking stars from view and bringing its golden radiance with it, spreading over the ground but never shining through my window, never giving me its light.

I don’t want to be alone.

My heart beat with longing, with an insistence that echoed with the phrase repeating in my mind. I could not stay here any longer.

People began to wake, emerging from their houses, beginning to appear on the streets of the city that spread before me.

I wanted to speak to them.

My fingers curled against the stone of the windowsill, stiff with the grime that coated them, that hid beneath my nails and itched uncomfortably.

I wanted to be with them. 

And the window. The window was the only way. 

I clung to the stone above the window, pulling my feet up onto the sill, pain tingling down my leg as it scraped against the rock, small beads of blood forming.

Ignoring them, I held awkwardly onto the rocks and I brought my foot against the glass, once, twice, three times, before a crack formed, spreading from the top to the bottom. Again my foot hit the glass, the impact traveling up my spine, causing me to shiver.

I wanted to feel the warmth of the sunlight, prove wrong the mocking winks of the stars. 

I don’t want to be alone.

Shattering glass accompanied my fall, as my fingers slipped from the stone, allowing me to fall to the ground with a thud. I pulled myself up, captivated by the hole, the fallen glass, the opening in my four walls. Eagerly I shimmied my arm through the hole, avoiding the broken glass that threatened it.

The gentle touch of warmth touched my skin, and I held my arm there, seeing its paleness in the bright light, feeling the heat that seemed to travel from my hand to the rest of my body.

I was out.

And below me, I heard a scream.

My hand flinched backward quickly, my wrist catching against the broken glass, tearing a ragged cut down my hand.

Hissing with pain, I held the hand close to me as I heard the screams spreading, people beginning to yell. Looking down, I could see them all staring up at the window, running away.

They could all see me now.

I was no longer invisible. 

I didn’t have to be alone. 

The floor began to quake beneath me, and I grabbed the windowsill, trying to keep myself upright as the roar of falling stones grew louder, as the four walls around me quivered, seemingly as stable as paper in the wind. 

A scream tore itself from my throat as I found myself in free fall, my four walls cracking apart and crumbling around me.

With a thud I hit the ground, the fallen walls around me, dust floating through the air. I pushed the rubble off of me, struggling to climb out of the wreckage of my home.

Turning from the streets I knew so well, my eyes caught on the flying flags of the palace that I had never been able to see from my small window, the one that I knew people were looking at when they had gazed into the distance. 

And the sunlight.

The sunlight shone all around me, on my arms and legs, infusing in me a warmth that I had never felt before. 

I don’t want to be alone. 

I began to turn, looking for the people I had watched every day, the people who had smiled and laughed and talked and walked. 

But that was when the arrow hit me.

The impact was painful, and I could hear myself gasp as the shock of pain tore through me as I was knocked to the ground, catching myself on my hands and knees. Tears pricked my eyes, my breath caught in my throat as I cried out with pain. 

I glanced upward, my eyes skimming across the line of archers that stood yards away, bows lifted to the sky.

The rain of arrows pummeled upon me, lasting for what seemed a moment, arrows digging into the ground by my face, striking my leg, my shoulder, my back. I held myself upright, panting, and when the repetitive smack of arrows stopped, I looked up once more.

And then I rose, stiffly, painfully. 

I didn’t want to be alone. No walls surrounded me. The people were gone, their screams echoing in the traces of the wind that blew around me, dancing through the tips of my hair.

A spark of anger lit as I looked up at the archers once more, some with bows dropped, staring at me, others gone, having already fled.

I didn’t want to be alone, but my walls of isolation followed me wherever I went. They would always run, run away from me.

Reaching up, I grabbed at the arrow shaft at my shoulder, my fingers curling around the wood, and it snapped, searing pain traveling down my arm. My chest tightened, tendrils of anger wrapped around me, hot tears welling in my eyes.

I was alone.

But I wasn’t to blame for my immortality.

Two men wandered through the empty, musty hallways of the cottage, peering into the small rooms, out windows that showed the rolling hills of tall grasses and wildflowers that sprawled downward in every direction.

“How did anyone even know she had died, all alone up here?” Their heels clicked along the wooden boards, and the older of the two men, a grisly gray beard clinging to his chin, glanced into an empty bedroom.

“A clerk at the craft store in Rosdare alerted us,” he explained to his companion. “Apparently she went down there every Tuesday, and when she didn’t show up, the clerk knew something was wrong.”

“No one else was here with her?” the younger asked, surprise lacing through his words.

“Not a soul within a hundred miles.”

A door creaked open as the two entered a dimly lit room with no windows, a small desk the only piece of furniture occupying the tiny space, barely bigger than a broom closet.

The younger man stepped inside, tracing his finger along the desk. “I would have gone insane, always alone. Do you think she was?”

His companion shook his head.

“I don’t think so. The clerk said that the only odd thing about her was how happy she was to come to the craft store, even though she never bought anything.”

Shaking his head in wonder, the younger man slid open the thin drawer that ran along the length of the desk.

Assorted pens and pencils laid haphazardly in the drawer, bits of paper and pencil shavings scattered among them. 

His hand sifted through the clutter and emerged with a small sketch, the likeness of a girl looking up from the paper. 

Her hair was disheveled and she appeared to have smudges on her face, but years of sitting in the desk had long since blurred the details until they were unrecognizable. 

The older man sighed, looking up and down the hallway.

“Let’s go. I don’t see any evidence of foul play, and there’s nothing worth much here. Besides, it will take around two hours to get off this mountain, and I don’t want to be driving in the dark.”

The  drawing was dropped into the drawer, which slid shut jerkily, and the two’s footprints tapped down the hall and out the door of an empty house.

But a small piece of paper sat folded in the corner of the drawer, hidden beneath the mess. It bore six, unremarkable words, words that meant nothing but to one old, deceased woman, one who had lived alone for most of her years, too wrapped up in her world of fancies, where myths and legends came alive and danced together in a land that didn’t exist on any map.

I don’t want to be alone.