Scratchings on a Cell Wall

2007-03-20T06:21:59Z

I don’t know who might see this. Nor can I guess how much of it I will get out. My tools are inferior. For a stylus, I have only the sharpened handle of a spoon, pilfered from a guard too drunk to notice its absence. Ink I take from my arm, just above the wrist, where the pulse is stronger than anywhere else in the human body, save the neck. Blue blood, some would say, but I have learned: it dries as black as any other.

Then again, someday I might not stop at what I need to scratch out my story. I might hack away with my clumsy implement and watch my life drain into the filthy straw. I would not have thought it possible, once, but I recognize now that it might come to that. I hope not. I would have it said of me that even in my bleakest hour, I never completely surrendered.

Fiction is rife with daring escapes by the unjustly accused. Well, my imprisonment is not unjust, and I won’t be escaping. But I can hope that someone might read this one day, and understand.

I was never who they think I am.

Tim Keating's Stories

Scratchings on a Cell Wall