Windscript Volume 24, 2007-2008 - Saskatchewan Writers' Guild

The Magazine of Saskatchewan High School Writing
Amanda Ahner
Bright Lights
They never turn these lights off you know. Cold words
tumble from her lips as she sits, stone still, a frozen embodiment
of apathy. Her long wheat blond hair cascades from
her shoulders, glinting dully in the harsh industrial light of
the white room. No days, no nights, no passage of time. A
cold perpetual sun. Hard light to drive the insane, insane. The
words cut through the deaf silence with no echoes to greet
her ears. The sound is dead on her thirsty being. Her voice,
her thoughts, her memories, no longer soothe the loneliness,
yet she continues to speak.
There’s no imagination in the brightness, only the cold
hard truth. Slowly untangling her lithe body from its crosslegged
position, she lifts herself from the floor. A hint of
regret tints her harsh tone. In the dark, I could imagine you
were here with me, that I was there, with you.
Nostalgically she wanders through the room, as if it
were a place from a dream. I live in the memories these days,
the bright, blinding memories. She stops at an invisible kitchen
sink, her voice softer now, like ice. His blood was so beautiful.
The blood that washed off my hands, and spiraled down the
drain. I remember I kept all the lights on that night. I wanted to
watch them die beside me.
Pacing across the open floor she wades through
the memories, remembering her daughter’s whimpers in
the dark. Callie was her name. She always needed a nightlight
at her bedside. A vivid image of Callie’s midnight tears
scrawled across her mind. The night the bulb burnt out, I
came to her, and held her close in the darkness. Closing her
eyes, she wraps the unseen child in her arms and rocks
her back and forth to an unsung lullaby. But now, I’ll never
hold her and I’ll never hold him. Her calm face breaks into an
anguished grimace as she shouts into empty space. But he’ll,
he’ll never hold Her. And I’ll never have to wonder when he’s
coming home, or who he’s with. I’ll never find them in our bed!
Retreating into the back corner of the cell she holds
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herself in pitiful self-righteousness, lamenting her condition
to the lights, her only audience. No, I never did anything
wrong, I didn’t kill him. They shouldn’t have locked me
up. He betrayed me! Betrayed our life together! The life I
built! She thinks of the home that had been ripped apart
by his adulterous excursions, a home that at the back of
her subconscious, she knows never really existed. Tears
began to stream down her light blanched face. In this
living nightmare of the mind she won’t accept the truth
that lies before her.
Rising from the corner she ambles to center
stage, her eyes large and mournful but her voice calm.
They told me she is dead, but it can’t be true. They just don’t
want me to look for her when I get out. She remembers
that they told her she’d never get out. She would be
stuck in this room, forever. The room with the lights.
She pauses and her fragmented thoughts return
to the man, her husband, who’d betrayed her. He must
have taken her away. He took her away, yet her rational
mind knows the truth. He’s dead. I killed him.
Slowly she lowers her slim, colourless body
to the floor where she kneels in cold reverence, eyes
closed, her face empty.
The blood, his blood, her blood, drips onto the sheet,
onto the floor. It trickles down the knife, down my arm. I
hear a footstep behind me, and I turn. “Mommy?” I hesitate,
but my hand is too quick, and she falls to the floor.
Awakening from the trance, Sara blinks her eyes
rapidly and then settles herself crossed legged on the
floor. They never turn these lights off you know. No days, no
nights. No passage of time. A cold perpetual sun. Hard light
to drive the insane, insane.
volume 24