When i was a young girl, the boundaries of my imagination were undefined. I would spend hours in the backyard of my childhood home lying down on the ground surrounded by tall weeds. I would look up for hours often losing myself in my daydreams and never hearing my mother’s voice as she called me in for tea and biscuits. In those days the clouds would form shapes of animals, people and things. Before i ever came to Paris, i saw the Eiffel tower in the skies over my home in Sheffield. I was always seeing the beauty around me and all i wanted was to be a part of that beauty. To show those around me what i saw in my mind’s eye. So i became an artist. I drew and i painted and even dabbled in some sculpting. That last one wasn’t always pretty but i loved every minute i spent doing it. In the end i graduated from a presitgious arts school in Paris. I thought i would make the beautiful world i saw around me even more colourful.
Looking back now, i realise i was still so young; still so naive and unprepared for what would come next. I’m so far from home now and the clouds have no decernable shapes anymore. My mind’s eye is plagued with horrific scenes i can’t get rid of. My body is always soar. Worn down by all the terrible acts done to it. All i want now is to forget. To drown my mind in an endless sea of intoxication. I never used to drink but i learnt to counter the feeling of sleeping on cold tiled floors with the warmt of vodka. It’s one of the few perks of being here. We get fed to keep us alive and we are offered plenty of alcohol and drugs to ensure we are too damaged to run. The added bonus is i no longer dream. I used to dream in colours but now only darkness. Such dreams would take only serve to remind me of the girl I used to be and nostalgia would be too painful. I look around and the world has lost all of it’s beauty. I realise now that beauty is as they say in the eyes of the beholder and a pained soul sees no beauty. My mind’s eye can’t see anything anymore. In my mind it feels like I’m stumbling around in a dark corridor i can’t find my way out of.
I cannot wait for my death. Lately, it’s the only kind of day dreaming i can do; fantasising and imagining how it will happen. Maybe I’ll be lucky and it will happen in an instant. I hope it’s quick. But if i have to die in one painful way, at least it will be the last ever pain i feel. The only reason i haven’t taken my own life is that i know what would happen to the other girls if Victor comes back and finds me dead. He would pick one of them and kill her as punishment and as an example to the others for not stopping me. I’ve seen him do it before. It’s his way of ensuring that his products – which is what he calls all of us girls trapped here and waiting to be sold off as sex slaves – don’t try to escape, even through death. But i know i will escape this life. Victor says i will be auctioned off soon. Maybe then i will get my chance to leave this world behind. Then and only then will my pain end and if there is an after life, maybe i will get to see some beauty again.
JaK30b 