Interior Monologue

The Lady awoke, alone, in the dark. As her mind struggled to piece together bits of sensory feedback into useful information, her fingers curled reflexively around some cold, metallic object, which proved to be the butt of a pistol. She was cold, and it was dark. In trying to rise, she had no success. She was in a confined space and had miserably little freedom of movement. She could neither rise nor turn in any useful way. In a physical sense, she felt strong and healthy, fully present for the first time in months. Gone was the mental fog that had persisted without reprieve and gone also was the lingering pain and sour stomach that had left the Lady weak and lethargic.

As the Lady lay quietly, considering her current state of affairs, a terrible thought crept in from the far corners of her mind. Shoving it aside, she involuntarily shook her head quickly, as if to physically banish the thought that she could not dismiss mentally. No. She bent her left leg slowly, noting the low ceiling that impeded her progress. She pressed the ceiling with her knee, and then leaned to the left and right, exploring the confines of her newly discovered prison. A small box, no doubt, lined in satin. Still, her mind refused to give this prison its proper name.

Pressing her toes against the wall at her feet, she lengthened her body and found the top of her head pressed against another wall. She extended her right hand above her head, keeping low, reluctant to discover the true physical perimeter. She was again disappointed to learn that this box was equally claustrophobic around her head and shoulders. She rejected the word ‘claustrophobic’ at once; it was too close to the heart of the matter. ‘Confining’ would be a better, more level-headed way to describe this… confinement. Perhaps the Lord had devised a new method of treatment with counsel from her doctors, and without her knowledge.

Mary pushed words like box and suffocating from her mind and stifled the terror feeding her growing sense of hysteria. She listened. At first, she heard only her own ragged breathing set to the rapid staccato of her pounding heart. She closed her eyes, but it did not matter; the dark behind her eyelids was as inky and complete as the darkness around her. Still, closing her eyes was the only meaningful physical change she could make to her body, and so she did it. She closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed, and eventually her heart slowed as well. She listened.

She heard nothing. No birds, no wind, no leaves rustling, no animals chattering: no anything. The silence was as complete as the darkness, and equally disconcerting. Mary lifted one trembling fist and knocked on the surface directly opposite her face. The resulting thud was flat, dull. She knocked again, harder this time, enough to sting her knuckles and elicit a wince. This second, harder knock was louder, but still flat. There was a slight shifting sound from somewhere above, and then nothing.

A single tear made its way down across her temple, tracing her hairline. She shuddered, and raised her hand instinctively to brush it away, but instead her hand slammed painfully into the ceiling her of enclosure and fell uselessly back to her side. She cried out in pain, and then again in shock at the sound of her cry reverberating in her ears. The sound was as flat as the sound of her knocking, and it took substantial strength of will to control her hysterical sobbing. It was becoming difficult to breathe, but she did not know if it was because of her distressed state, or due to some shortage of air in her enclosure.

The word ‘tomb’ floated across her thoughts, and she seized upon it. After frenzied repetition, the word ‘tomb’ elongated, twisted, emerged as ‘womb’. She meditated on the word womb and slowly regained control of her senses. This was simply the beginning of her own rebirth. She could use a fresh start; she could not think why, exactly, at this moment, but the sense that she had needed change was sudden, and profound. Even in her panicked state, this stark realization gave the Lady pause.

Her life was pleasant enough, but she had so much she wanted to do and see, and she had been realistically unable to pursue her own interests. The Lord Pierce was not an unkind man, but his worldview was such that the Lady was not free to do as she pleased. She was free to conduct her wifely and motherly duties as she saw fit, but any activities beyond that were not encouraged. Nothing was forbidden, not specifically, not as such. But that was only because nothing was requested that might stretch the bounds of Lord Pierce’s propriety. This arrangement seemed generous, given the prospects for a girl who began as a nurse, and so the Lady had not complained.

Had she been unhappy? The Lady thought not. But there was a profound sense of loss when she reflected on her choices to that point. She had a distinct sense of a life left unfulfilled, which she might have been hard pressed to describe at any other moment, but which affected her viscerally now. Here, in the dark, what had seemed like a generous arrangement now took on the air of a fool’s bargain. Her life of quiet comfort was a blessing. It was also a prison, less obvious than the one that held her now, but a prison all the same. Her lavish prison, complete with courteous warden, had imbued in her soul such a sense of permanent dread that she had hardly noticed it until this very moment.

That dread, now realized, gave way to terror, but in her forced stillness, the terror gave subsequent birth to quiet anger. The anger simmered and boiled into rage. She reflected on her choices and came into the terrible realization that none had been her own. She had chosen to nurse, had chosen to marry, had chosen to bring a son into this world, but—in truth, she had been offered no options beyond those that were expected of her, and this fueled her rage further. More to the point, she had no freedom to pursue anything other than the life of a wife and mother. In fairness, she had never considered an alternative. Now, however, with her survival no longer a surety, possibilities flared in her mind with the brilliance of a solar flare.

Her survival—her life—was no longer a surety. This gave pause to her rage, cutting it off in mid-sentence. She thought of her life and felt no sadness in a liberation from chores and wifely duties. She considered her family and felt a pang for the children. Her son was so young; he would soon forget her. She thought of her husband next, and at first felt nothing. The sense of abstract blankness was slowly replaced with contempt. She examined this for a moment and then moved on. Her mental gaze moved outward, and she thought of more pleasant diversions, of sunshine and walks and lazy evenings by the fire, reading books that she hid in covers describing bible study and etiquette. These things she would be sorry to lose. Even now she missed the cats that would wind their way between her calves as she moved through the kitchen, and the smells of the seasons as they changed.

These were small joys, very small indeed. Mary imagined that her impression on the world had been equally small. She pictured herself now, a small woman in a small box, leaving a very small hole in the world that would be easily filled with other diversions, another wife. She would be soon forgotten, her memory erased so completely that she may have never existed at all.

Her breathing became shallow, and she mused that there was precious little air for the taking in this box. This tomb. This thing which must be acknowledged as her coffin. She knew now what the gun was for, and again her fingers curled around the grip. Did Lord Pierce know that she was alive when he ordered her placed into the coffin? Did the doctors realize, or were they even permitted to examine her before her internment? She thought no, on the latter, and perhaps yes on the former. Not that it mattered. She was here, trapped as she had been for her entire existence, and one last thought flitted through her mind as she struggled for air.

Soon, she would be free of this place.

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