(no I don’t) – Meg's Mumbles

complaininginthedark:

(I wrote Thomas killing a man and it hurt so I’m sharing it)

–

It was 1708, midwinter, and Thomas no longer knew the difference between one day and another.

All he knew was cold and numbness. Numbness in his fingers and toes, his right foot showing signs of black on the very tips of his toes, numbness in his mind and his soul. They had isolated him, thrown him in a dark cell with a barred window the size of his skull high on the wall. He was a danger to other according to the doctor who had put him there.

Thomas had killed a man.

The man was a fellow inmate. He had refused to sit near Thomas, to eat at the same table or be in the same cell. He had hissed “you filthy sod, you should be in hell” and spat in Thomas’ face. The broken and angry thing in Thomas called for blood, retribution, for the insult to be payed for. He saw James’ face in his mind, kind and loving on a summer’s morn…

“I’m already in hell. And you’ll join me.”

He had smashed the plate in his hands, food splattering to the floor, and slashed the man’s face, neck, chest, anything he could reach. The man yelled, screeched and fell back. Thomas leapt at him and throttled him barehanded until the man went still, a gurgling breath leaving his lips.

He was covered in blood when they found him. Thomas had sat in the corner as far away from the body as he could get and rocked himself back and forth to keep himself from screaming. The blood was frying on his hands and it was on his face, he tasted it when he licked his lips and it was so bitter-

When they dragged him away he heard someone call him a “poor bugger” and retched, his throat stinging as bile rose but he swallowed it down even as he kicked his legs out and struck the speaker in the knee, the crack of bone reaching his ears as a body fell screaming to the floor.

He was isolated for two months, fed once a day, bathed twice in that time.

Then he was taken to a ship and sent away again. Away from everything he had come to know. He thought of Miranda, how she would be repulsed by his actions, thought of James and how he might hate him too…

For the first time in 4 years he cried.