Cage

## 12-14-03

I cannot recount what the cage looked like. I never saw a shred of light the entire time I stayed there. I don't know how long I was there either, but it must have been somewhere between 6 months and a year. The cage itself was constructed of jagged metal pipes of varying thicknesses, as if cobbled together by hand. Certain parts of the cage smelled of rust. All of the pipes were solid, and I theorized that they had been filled with concrete. I'm not sure how much room I had to move around. I know for a fact that I could not sit nor lay down. All of my hellish moments in there were spent standing up, leaning against the bars of the cage for relief.

The room I was in was very large. When I screamed, an echo returned. However, the only noise in the room were those produced by myself, excluding when The Jailer came to see me. The Jailer was mysterious. Never said a word to me. It would give me food and drink every so often, usually something gross, like old bread, or water tainted with dirt. I could tell from the sound it made while walking that The Jailer wore no shoes, but did wear some sort of clothing that would rustle while brushing against itself.

The Jailer did not have a specific time schedule for feeding me. There were days where I would get to eat three or four times, then there would be multiple-day periods where I received nothing. During these periods, I grew very desperate and broken. I often resorted to trying to catch insects out of the air for sustenance, and I would lick the moisture from the bars of the cage in an attempt to quench the relentless thirst.

I tried to escape a few times, in the beginning. The first attempt, I wailed on the bars with my fists, until I bled profusely, and passed out. When I woke up, my knuckles were bandaged, and the cage cleaned of blood. I deduced that The Jailer must have bandaged me, and the next time I tried to escape, I began punching the bars again, but held myself from passing out, planning on attacking The Jailer when it came to heal me. But this time, no help came. My blood drained everywhere, soaking my skin, the cold concrete beneath my feet, and the bars of the cell.

I often found myself trying to pass the time. I invented worlds inside my head, invented people to live in them. I think this practice drove me a bit mad. Even today, I cannot tell which people in my life are real, and which of them are figments of my imagination. I created new memories. I cannot discern which of my memories are truthful. I can name at least four different mothers I grew up under. Another memory tells me I grew up with no mother at all. One memory recounts my adventures as a young boy through the sewers of New York City. However, when I got free, a man had told me I'd never even been to America.

You can see the confusion this must create. In fact, I'm not even sure if you're real. I may just be writing a letter to be thrown out at the post. I can imagine the smug workers laughing about it once I leave, mocking the crazy old man.

While I was in the cage, my beard grew untamed.

I contemplated suicide many times while in the cage. In fact, I settled on it, once I had given up hope that I would be set free. I pleaded with The Jailer to just let me die. If I were smart about it, I would have requested something to do it with myself, rather than give The Jailer a glimpse into my plans.

It wouldn't have made any difference. The Jailer ignored all of my requests. My begging for more food, for more water, for freedom, all met by silence. I think I would've preferred that it laughed at me, or threw some sort of insult in my direction. I would have found more comfort in hatred than the void it created.

While in the cage, I made a resolution to myself, that I would never leave the light again. I would always play music for myself. I try to hold myself to these rules. When I don't, I feel myself slipping. I close my eyes, and wonder where the feeling of those rusted bars digging into my back had gone. Sometimes, I can smell the rust. Sometimes I can hear the footsteps from The Jailer.

The day I got out was the best of my life. The Jailer had come to see me. We stood there in silence for a long time, before I began to talk. I sputtered out nonsense about my worlds and my people, taunting it because I knew whole universes of knowledge that it could never glimpse. I had created new forms of life. I had created my own beautiful world after it tore the one I knew from me. I remember laughing. I must have laughed until my voice gave out. Hours and hours of laughing, while it just stood there silently, watching. I was poked with a needle suddenly. It must have been a tranquilizer. I woke up in fresh new clothes, a denim jacket and khaki pants, sprawled out under the cover of a bus stop in London. The rain slammed onto the roof above me. It was heavenly to hear something that loud.

I think I laid there for days, not ever wanting to stand again. My legs felt as though I had lifted the weight of a planet off of them. Eventually, a police man arrested me, said I "couldn't linger in public spaces for so damn long, especially smelling like that." I tried to tell him what I had gone through. He refused to listen. I told him about the worlds I knew of, the important people I knew who resided in them. He simply stared. I knew for a fact that he was

*The rest of this letter is missing. A sharp tear runs through the page.*