She paces in her silent cell. She used to bang on the walls, but the only sound was the soft zap of her hand meeting the electric field in front of the wall. Screaming is now one of her greatest desires since she no longer remembers what laughter sounds like, or even what it means to want to laugh. After all this time, there is nothing she would rather do than scream. She cried as much as she could bear a long time ago, now she just wants to hear her own voice. She wants to experience forgiveness, even her own has escaped her. A long time ago she heard him scream, she remembers that it was not good but she cannot remember what it felt like. After all these years all she is left with are silent words and wishes for a sound, an experience. How much longer?
Laughter, screams, crying. Leopold has learned to block out the noise of the protesters during releases. Sometimes he wishes he could block it all out, but quickly banishes the thought from his mind and stands straighter as if to remind himself and the world that he has earned the right to exist. He hates seeing the protesters trying to fight the release system, but he wonders if they have a point. The releases have always been controversial, but they have had many more successes than failures. Some people think that it is unnecessary, that they should just die. Some people think that it is good since they add to the workforce. Others believe that the Released simply cause problems, even though the crime rate decreased dramatically after the release system began and has stayed at a very low rate ever since. Leopold wonders if people know the truth about the Released. Each of the protesters has his own opinions about the system, but how many know the truth? Leopold guesses that none of the protesters know the truth and debates whether real knowledge of the system would cause them to be more insistent about getting rid of the system or if they would think it is a good idea. Leopold himself is not sure whether he supports the release program, but he is grateful for everything that it provided him. The lights flash, signaling the beginning of the release, and the protesters slowly lower their signs and the crowd is silent. Leopold holds the Box firmly, wondering whether this one will be able to handle his new life as a Released, and steps forward. The doors open and the prisoner, a woman, is barely able to stand by herself when the guards step away to allow her to leave her cell. Leopold notices how weak she appears and wonders if she was in the cell for too long; maybe she has lost more than just her evils.
This cell has become her entire world, but now it is breaking apart. The walls begin to fade until they are no longer the bright white that she has seen for these long years, they are now the grey concrete that they have actually been. A long ago memory flashes across her mind, of the first day she was in the cell and how she found the concrete comforting since it was at least familiar, but then the white light took over and there was nothing for her to hold onto. Now that she sees the reality again she wants the light to come back, at least it is something familiar. If only she could have time to get used to the concrete, maybe it would become familiar again. She hopes that she will have the time to get used to reality, but as she turns around to look at the corners of the room, something she hasn’t seen in a very long time, she realizes that there is a door. All she remembers is that she came in through that door. But now she remembers what the guard said to her before he closed her inside; “The next time this door opens you will be healed, in three hundred years”. She watches the door open and feels her heart pound in fear, she barely remembers what anxiety feels like and is unable to move as she waits for her fate. She doesn’t recognize the guard who opens the door, or the two other guards who walk into her cell and put her hands into a strange contraption that prevents her from moving her hands. They help her walk out of the cell, she thinks about how loudly her heart is pounding and wonders where they are taking her since that part was never made completely clear during the transition. As they move forward, she realizes that it is difficult for her to walk forward since she has only been able to pace in circles in her cell for such a long time. They walk through a hallway lined with doors similar to the one in her cell, but each one a different color (although she does not know the names of each one anymore). They finally reach the end of the hallway and stand in front of a set of doors. A guard turns to her and tells her that there will be a series of orientation courses to introduce her to life as a released prisoner. She will be given an apartment and a job. Her hands are freed and the doors open. The guards who walked her down the hallway step away as the doors open and she sways where stands as her eyes adjust to the sudden view of the outside. She can’t remember the last time she saw sunlight, and there is a gigantic crowd of people standing behind a guard rail. She sees a man standing near the doorway holding a box. He is looking at her, waiting for her to step forward. She recognizes the box in his hands but is not quite sure why. He holds the box out towards her and she steps forward, out of the prison and into the sunlight, towards the man.
Leopold watched the woman walk towards him, as if she were a child just learning to walk, and noticed that she looked as though she were in a new world. Once she reached him, he handed her the box and told her that all of her belongings are inside. He tells her he will take her to her apartment now so that she can get settled before the first orientation later tonight. He is worried that she will not be able to function in regular life since he knows how difficult it can be to transition to life as a regular life instead of life as a criminal or a prisoner.
The crowd of protesters watch the guard and the newly released woman walk down the path to the gate where a car waits to take them to the Released building where she will live. Once they reach the last portion of the walkway the silence disappears. The protesters raise their signs once more and resume their cries. They scream at the woman saying that she is a horrendous person and she should have been killed, that she doesn’t deserve a second chance, saying that she should just give up now and let them kill her. The protesters yell at the guard, saying that he is a worse disgrace, that he is pretending to be a moral person but they all know that he is really a demonic thing. They scream words that neither of the Released understand, they are not of this time and they just keep moving. The two no longer truly understand what they did to deserve this punishment. Nobody knows if it is a punishment or redemption. The Released have forgotten who they are, what they did, and must now learn to live. In their first lives they made choices that destroyed and annihilated lives, yet after all their years of nothingness they have lost their own lives only to have to start over as nothing. They are the Released, the ones who sinned in the past and now are slaves of the descendants of the ones they destroyed. Time is the only way to find out whether their lifetimes alone allowed them to erase their past. New place, new time, new name, new life, old soul.
Not Stories Yet 