"You know, I- I can still see what it looked like. In there."
She looks off into the distance - past her companion's eyes, past the grassy hill on which they lie, past the horizon. She doesn't know how to say it, how to explain the image that overtakes her mind.
It's as if she's still there.
The angle at which the walls met the ceiling. All 1,008 bricks, painted a dull grey. The muddy color of the concrete floors, the discolored spots in the shape of half-cleaned bloodstains. The grooves between the bricks, where she would run a finger in circles for countless, mind-numbing hours. The location of each metal hook - the ones she spent equally countless hours cuffed to. The solid metal door, a harsh, imposing rectangle standing between her and freedom.
She just doesn't know how to say it. The image is clear, but the words are not.
"I just spent so much time.. seeing it. It's.. it was.. all there was."
The shape of her prison cell is burned into her retinas like the afterimage of a camera flash. She can remember every inch - all harsh right angles and glaring fluorescent lights.
There are no harsh angles in sight, here, just dappled sunlight filtered through the trees. The world has never looked so unnatural.
"And-" she breathes - "you know, I used to imagine you were there with me. And it- it helped," she admits, ashamedly.
She blinks back tears as she stumbles over her words.
"but- but you weren't- you weren't there, and, and that's, that's good, you're safe and you're not there, it's just- you don't know, you never saw it, and I, it- it was all I could... all I could see for so long, and-"
With shaking hands, she reaches out, taking his hands in her own.
"Can I.. can I show you?"
Slowly, cautiously, she moves his hands to the temples of her forehead.
"I don't want to be alone in there anymore."
Through tears, she looks up at his face - his eyes full of shock and horror.
"Please, I.. I want you to see. Please."
