Room 16

I've made scribbles here and there in an attempt to reach you. The pen has fallen from my grasp and by the time these jagged fingers have scratched around searching, it's too late. The words have gone. I start over but I find myself lying in a bed of torn paper with this story still untold. My back is weak and it struggles to hold these brittle bones that once danced with muscle and flesh. Now a rotting mess I lie waiting only for death to save me.

I have become accustomed to this stench. It is the stagnant air of old and the cruel contamination of one's own faeces. To the outside world I may appear dysfunctional and incoherent. They look at me in disgust like I am some sort of parasite feeding on their resources. But it is they who leave me here to waste away. The linen is stained not only by myself, but by those who lay here before me. The markings of previous victims are etched deep within these stone walls, a canny reminder that I am not the first.

I could not move even if I so wished, for the sores on my back are now a part of the bed. Stuck like superglue to a finger. One would have to rip the skin in order to remove it. I am cold, at least I think I am. When a body falls victim to countless attack it creates a numbness to camouflage the pain, thus forcing out all feeling. I no longer have an identity. This room and I are no longer separate. We have molded into one. Number 16 if my memory serves me well.

To be known as a number? Still, I have been known as worse, called many names in fact, but that escapes me now. I may have no control over much of my body, but my arms can still move.
‘Ah, there you are. I had almost given up on you. You are short of ink.’ I fear I do not have much time to tell you. As much as I long to leave this decrepit world, I must not take my story with me. It must be told in order to save the next.