• Perhaps the worst of it was that I could not confide in anybody. It’s not that I am too afraid to tell people my thought but that there is no one to tell them too. I have been in total solitude for longer than I care to remember.
    I am surrounded by four high grey walls, a grey ceiling and a grey floor. Pale insubstantial sunlight shines weakly through a small square window set high up in the wall. It does nothing to lift my sorrow as I watch the shadow of the five iron bars drift slowly from one wall to the next until the light disappears altogether.
    There is a bunk bed on one side of my cell, though no one to share it with of course. It’s a small rectangular piece of metal with a lumpy mattress and regulation grey sheets. The wall opposite the window has a door in it. A big iron slab with no handle or window. Halfway up there’s a five inch ledge beneath a rusted slide they use to stick my food through twice a day. They seem to be determined to keep my existence as colourless as possible. Even the food is the same grey slop day after day. But they can’t keep out all the colour.
    In the furthest corner of my cell there is a small grate set into the concrete ground that serves as my waste dump. It is surrounded by a puddle of fetid water that never drains away though I can hear it dripping day and night. The stench that rises from the clogged drains beneath catches in the back of my throat and makes my eyes water. But I don’t mind. The grate is the best thing about my cell because it provides my one source of colour. The ground around and walls around my grate are stained a hundred shades of yellow and the damp has caused a sickly green mould to form, slowly creeping out in all directions to engulf the grey. I spend my whole day staring at my grate. I used to stare out the window when I first arrived here, hoping to catch a glimpse of blue. I came to realise that even the sky had turned its back on me. But that’s all right, I’ll always have my grate to fall back on.
    I’ve forgotten what the sound of a human voice is like. I used to talk at first. I’d scream and shout for them to let me out or just to hear the sound of my own voice. I soon stopped. It did nothing to reduce the loneliness and only made me seem mad. I still hear the other inmates screaming all the time though. The ones who haven’t given up hope and the ones being dragged away to unknown horrors. The only other noise is the banging and clanging of pipes from when the guards turn up the heating. I pray for the day when one of those guards will finally open my door and tell me I’m free at last. But I know somewhere inside that that won’t ever happen. This dull prison will be my home until I finally give up and slip into the blissful peace of madness.