One
The light was good for escape today.
It filtered through the iron bars like golden paint splashed across a dirty canvas, and if I stretched high enough, I could feel its warmth on my fingers. I could close my eyes and imagine that I was outside, face in the sun, free.
But I wasn’t.
Instead, I was encased in crumbling gray granite and cold stone floors.
If it was up to the prison warden, I’d never feel the sun on my face again.
If.
I picked up my rock that I had spent weeks sharpening to a point and etched a single line in the stone above my head.Three hundred and sixty-four.
I’d been here almost one year.
One year since I’d heard voices different from the guards who took my waste bucket every evening, the other prisoners’ sobs as they dwelled on their unfortunate fate, or the warden’s endless painful interrogations. One year since I’d tasted my grandmother’s earthy mutton karahi and felt the heat of those spices on my tongue. One yearsince I’d embraced my father and told him that everything would be okay, that I would be coming home.
And when I thought of the boy who had stolen all that, I wanted to tear down every stone that surrounded me and bury him beneath them. Let him feel the crushing weight. Let him feel the shame that shouldn’t have been mine to bear. Three hundred and sixty-four days of rage brewing inside my veins.
Three hundred and sixty-four days of plotting my escape.
I gauged the position of the sun through the iron bars, calculating the hour—noon. It was almost time. I pressed the tip of my finger into the sharp point of the rock, a huff of relief spilling out when it broke the skin and a thin bead of blood trickled down. It was ready.
Iwas ready.
Weeks of planning, of listening to the whispers of the guards, of knowing the warden would be away—now was my chance.
My empty food pan waited below the open slot in the metal door to be refilled. I crouched low beside it, the rock poised in my hand.
Today, I would be free. I would reunite with Baba.
And then I would wreak hell upon the ones who put me here.
Steps thudded down the hall, bouncing off the walls of the prison. The rusty squeak of a door flap opening. The bang of the ladle against a corroded metal dish. The greedy slurps of other prisoners receiving their rations.
Thump, thump.
I could measure how close the guard was to my door by the sound of his footsteps. I closed my eyes, imagining I was on the training field, sword in my hand, my opponent drawing closer.
Thump, thump.
With each pause as he doled out the prison rations, I exhaled.
I bit my lip hard to distract myself from the dread coursing through my body. If I focused on being afraid, I would never leave this place, and all my plans and plotting would come to nothing.
He stopped. The crack in his knees echoed like thunder as hecrouched down. Then his arm shot through the opening and the battered metal ladle upended the foul slop into my bowl with a slap.
I nearly cried out with surprise and pressed my hand to my mouth. He was quick, but I was quicker. At the last second I grabbed his rough sleeve, yanked it back through the gap, and smashed his face into the door.
His head hit the metal with a satisfying smack, and he wrenched against my grasp. I struggled to hold him, pressing my feet against the door for leverage and fumbling with the sharpened rock. I managed to push his sleeve up and stabbed the point into the fleshy part of his forearm, dragging downward to his hand. The guard let out a choked scream and thrashed, desperately trying to jerk free. I wrapped my fingers tight and pulled his arm with all I had, slamming his face back into the door.
Again.
And again.
His sounds grew more garbled, a suffocated whimper. My arms shook as I continued, sweat dripping down my neck from the exertion. I focused only on the singular violence of what I was doing, of what I needed to do to get out of here. Blood dribbled from the small square opening like crimson rain.
