caffeinewitchcraft:

writing-prompt-s:

You’re an immortal 30-year-old-looking serial killer who was sentenced to 1,000 years in prison. After 100 years people started asking questions, but now it’s been 400 years and you’re starting to outlast the prison itself.

“Why do you stay?” your new cellmate asks. They’re younger than you despite the wrinkles carving into their skin. They watch you straightening your bunk with thinly veiled unease. “You’re not dumb. You could have escaped by now.”

You hum and focus on getting the corner of your sheet exactly right. It’s taken this cellmate three weeks to believe what you are and another week to ask this question. Braver and quicker than the last. You don’t mind. You’re not trying to hide what you are. You ask, “Why should I?”

Like their predecessors, your cellmate is wrong-footed. “Why? To live your life. To see the sun. To– to be free.”

Free. Your lip curls unconsciously. Free is a word that’s become almost meaningless to you over time. “As you pointed out, I could escape. I’m not trapped.”

A lot of things have become meaningless over time.

The sun is already below the horizon, not that it matters. you’re in an east-facing cell. The shadows are deeper in here and the thin slit of a window is pitch black. A fence twinkles a good 300 meters away and you know the guard in the tower is already asleep. A newborn at home, keeping him awake, awake, awake.

“Okay,” they say. They take a deep breath as if, somehow, they’ll be able to sniff out the right question to ask you. “Say you can escape. Say you don’t feel trapped. Why here? Why don’t you–I don’t know. Sit in a cave somewhere?”

“I did do that,” you say. You wrinkle your nose. “No one tells you that caves stink.”  You turn away from your bunk to look at them. They’re leaning against the door to your cell, shoulder blades pressed tight to the metal as if hoping to phase through it. Now that the weight of what you are has settled on them, their instinct tells them to run. Your lips twitch at the feigned nonchalance on their face. “I decided it was better to live in society.”

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