My right eye glares at me from a glass jar at the foot of my bed. Torn clean out of the socket, it floats in some dark fluid with ribbons of fleshy nerve bundles trailing behind it. This bulging, naked eye bears a dreadful illusion of life, its expression of horror a ghostly reflection of my own.

I have resigned myself to this situation. I desire no mercy, no answers, only an end to it all. And I suppose that would be a fitting culmination of my torment — the complete absolution and acquiescence of death.

I am held in a chamber with no doors and no windows. I have run my hands along these walls many times in an effort to find an escape; they are deceptively smooth, incredibly firm, and entirely blank. Their edges and corners are rounded to erase all form and focus. A sourceless suggestion of light from above casts a dim glow over me. This whole place is a mystery to me. I know only that it is silent and cold. With me in this strange blank cell is only a dirty mattress and a small, silver crucifix that once hung over it.

I cannot say how long I have been kept in this chamber. The very emptiness of the room itself has blurred my memory, leaving it barren and vacant. Yet some dim recollection of the past convinces me that there was a time before being brought to this room and that I was a part of a vast and colorful world outside these four bare walls. Perhaps these assumptions ushered in the suffering I now endure.

Perhaps they only hastened the inevitable.

Of the things I do remember clearly, I can say that life was not always so gruesome in this prison. With no sunrise to mark my days, I lost complete track of time. I was utterly alone and totally unaware. I had only my racing stream of thoughts to pass the time. Although I fought to hold on to as much of my mind as possible, I gradually forgot my beginnings. I forgot who I was. I forgot almost everything.

I turned my attention to the crucifix above me. I held it in my hands and

studied it. The cross was two small, slender beams. Against them hung an intricately detailed Christ, in sharp contrast to the plain and unrealistically thin cross. This tiny symbol was the only thing in my chamber which broke from the monotony of bare nothingness. I marveled at the very human expression of agony that had been captured on the Christ’s face. He held His bleeding hands up, but turned His head downward. His legs were crossed and nailed to the post one on top of the other. He looked very helpless with His knees and His body so sunken. I pressed it against my flesh and relished the coolness of its touch. I tried to find my reflection with it, having forgotten my own face. I could not see my own image in the cross. It was then that I noticed the wound in His side, so subtly sculpted it was difficult to notice. This was not merely a rendering of Christ suffering on the cross; it was of Him hanging dead on the cross. It no longer seemed strange to me that this crucifix had been placed above my bed.

This growing sense of desperation propelled me into action. I had tried many times to leave the room, but never successfully. Still, I was convinced that there was some way out, because I would receive occasional meals in the room while I slept. Whoever brought me the food had to be able to come and go somehow.

My determination to leave this place marked the beginning of my hideous torture. I would sometimes wake to find a tooth missing. On one occasion it was a thumbnail. While this troubled me, I had no idea that these injuries could be a result of my defiance. I had no idea of what punishments would follow.

I decided the only way out would be through the wall. I took down the cross and used it to bore through. This took an incredibly long amount of time for several reasons. The wall was very strong and thick. My hands were tired and I was especially weak, because I had been deprived of food. I had also lost two fingers while resting. The pain was there, but not to the degree it should have been. My wounds were healing quickly. The fingers were on the floor at the foot of my bed. I wondered what sort of malicious being would do this to me.

I got to the point when I could scarcely move at all. I hadn’t eaten in days. It eventually occurred to me that I hadn’t been refused meals. I simply hadn’t recognized them. My eyes turned to the bloody fingers on the floor. I took them down quickly, finding it difficult to swallow, though the flesh was tender and slid off the bone with ease. I did this believing that I was near to escape. I did this hoping that I could survive long enough to depart from this horror.

Time passed and I scraped away a great deal of the wall. I had yet to break through. The silver crucifix was barely solid enough to withstand the impact of the wall. But it was all I had. I was losing myself rapidly. An entire leg was gone along with strips of flesh from my chest and arms. I was ill from consuming my own dead body. I was in constant pain. There was still no way out.

When at last I struck away the last bit of plaster from a section of the wall, I found not a passageway or crawlspace. There was another layer beneath the crumbling innermost part of the cell. It looked to be made of steel. I took the crucifix to it, praying that it might be weaker than it appeared. The cross fell into pieces, Christ still intact, but now facedown on the floor. The steel barrier had not even a dent.

I could not torture myself any further, only to find that the steel layer extended entirely around the room. Beaten and broken, the cross would be of little help to me. Even if there were some yet unseen gap through which I might escape, I would never last long enough to locate it. I finally surrendered to this madness out of utter weariness and misery. I could never leave. Worse, I had deluded myself into believing I was above this simple truth.

So here I stay, waiting for death to plunge me into a sea of oblivion where I can drown in the fullness of its nonentity, rather than linger on the dark shore as I do now. My dead eye remains whole and uneaten, a solemn witness to the agony of my final hours. I will die unsure of who I am, where I am, and why I am in this place. I must believe this brings whoever has imprisoned me here some semblance of satisfaction, or else my pain is meaningless.

Death can bring me no closer to hopelessness and desperation than I already am as I lie in wait for its smothering embrace.