I can’t breathe.
Well, I can — but barely. And each breath feels like I’m stealing it from walls that are pressing in so close I can taste them. They smell like rust and fear and something else I can’t place.
My spine is bent into this horrible C-shape, and I keep thinking it’s going to snap…Just crack like a brittle twig any minute now. My elbows are pinned so tight to my ribs that when I try to move, my bones grind against each other, and the sound vibrates through my skull. I scream, but the walls eat it, and the sound of my own frantic heartbeat echoes back.
The thing is, it wasn’t always like this.
I remember floating. Dancing. Dreaming. I remember doing these slow, lazy somersaults through space that went on forever. The ceiling? What ceiling? Back then, it was so far above me I couldn’t even sense it. Just this endless soft darkness that breathed with me, moved with me, held me like I was precious. The walls back then didn’t hunt me. They cradled me.
There was no constant, gnawing fear of the perimeter closing in, trying to entomb me alive.
I never questioned the boundaries it set. Why would I? When something holds you perfectly, you don’t interrogate it. You hold it back tightly as if your whole life depended on it.
But then — I don’t even know when it started — the room began to pull away. Not all at once. God, that would’ve been a mercy. No, it was this slow, sadistic theft. An inch here. An inch there. The walls leaned inward, pressing closer. The ceiling lowered itself onto my back until I was carrying its weight. Every day, less room. Every day, less me.
Now I can’t even wiggle my toes without hitting resistance.
And I have no idea why this is happening.
Maybe I did something wrong? Maybe you stay too long in a place and it just… decides you’re done. Spits you out. Or maybe the room is dying, collapsing in on itself, and I’m going to be buried alive in the rubble of the only home I’ve ever known.
I watch with bated breath as the walls start creeping closer in real-time. One more inch. It’s as if the room itself is holding its breath, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Ok. I am done being patient. I have to cut my way out now. Because if I don’t, this space will finish what it started.
I find a spark of heat in my gut and channel it into my legs. I kick hard. Once. Twice. The floor doesn’t even flinch. It swallows my violence whole and laughs at me. Fine. FINE.
Taking one last inhale, filling my lungs until they ache, I go all in. I lunge. I throw every ounce of my existence into one final bone-snapping strike against the wall.
Rip.
Oh! That’s new! There’s a new sound. A tear.
A sudden blinding light starts pouring through the tear, and for the first time, the walls stop moving.
Freedom at last.
My fingers, numb and cramped from being pinned for God knows how long, claw at the edges. I heave myself through the opening, tearing it wider with each desperate shove.
Rip. Rip.
“You deserve this,” I hiss at the dark, “for everything you put me through.”
With a final push, I tumble out.
But before I could take a victory lap, I was held by a set of gloved hands. Gripping me by the neck and squeezing my back.
What an anticlimax!
The air slaps me, cold….So cold it feels like tiny knives all over my skin. The light I was craving all along burns my eyes.
Everything is too much, too fast, too harsh.
I glance back at the torn, discarded shell I just destroyed. And for one perfect, crystalline moment — before the world can erase it — I understand…that cramped, dark, shrinking hole was the only place I was ever safe. The only place I didn’t owe anyone anything. Didn’t have to be anything.
Oh God! What did I just do!
I want to go back. I want to claw my way back inside and beg it to take me in, to forgive me, to hold me one more time. But even as the thought forms, it starts to dissolve. A thick fog rolls into my head, wiping everything clean. I try to hold on. I try so hard. But the memory just… puff.
Gone.
My capacity to reason dissolves.
The knowledge of where I came from burns away.
My brain resets itself to zero.
And as the crushing weight of this massive, incomprehensible world bears down on me, I do the only thing every newcomer is expected to do.
I begin to cry.
