I walked down the long hallway, seemingly endless, into what I knew was a fate worse than death; and yet still I went. Right foot. Left foot. Right. I took it one step at a time. I could feel the laughter emerging from the room near the end of the hall. It was cold and loving. I could see the smiles; feel the warmth and the hatred.
I suppose it wasn’t their fault what happened every day, but still I blamed them. I still hated every one of their souls, wishing them to a fate as mine. Down into the room. Down into my fate. Down into infamous agony. My mind was telling me to stop, demanding me to turn around. The message never reached my feet. Still I plunged on. I could see people talking, but I didn’t hear a word. Left foot. Right foot. Left.
I clutched my books close to me, not daring to let go. Down at the end of the hallway was a door, a door that led to freedom, a door that led to fate. Right foot. Left foot. Stop. Every day comes with new challenges, mine lie surrounding that door.
Move! Stop! Move! Stay! Walk! Thoughts twisted into a ball of confusion and pandemonium. Right foot. I shoved the door open. Left foot. I stepped from the dreary hallway; the sun greeted me warmly. I let its warm rays soak into my skin. Right foot. My destiny -- cold and unforgiving. I walked, sinking my feet into the cool grass with every step, smelling the sweet aroma of the grass freshly cut, hoping they wouldn’t see me. I

walked slowly, taking in the sunlight, listening to the sweet song of the birds, enjoying
the feeling of soft grass between my toes, and wrapped around my feet. I suddenly started walking faster, having had my presence noted. Fear slowly crept its
way up me. Starting at my feet, slithering coldly around my leg and up into my soul, taking with it the warmth of the sun. I didn’t care about the grass between my toes anymore; I just wanted to get to the other side of campus and inside. Help! I wanted to scream. Please don’t let them get to me.
Walking at a normal pace, that trek across the lawn would take me seven minutes, fifteen if I really wanted to enjoy the outdoors as much I could. Today, I made it across in four minutes flat. I was practically at a sprint to the door. I swung it open and kept running, feeling them behind me, catching up. My heart was racing and weakness was drawn out by fear. I didn’t stop running until I was down the hall and around the bend, hidden in a closet, trying to catch my breath. My legs were shaking; heartbeats and gasping - the only noises to be heard. I collapsed on the floor without even turning on the light. Were they still out there? Will this ever end? I drug myself over to the door with trembling arms and pressed my ear against the door. I could hear footsteps in the distance.
“Where’d they go?” I heard a muffled voice say. I waited, frozen, not daring to turn on the light. I pressed my ear again the door once more. Nothing. I sat in silent darkness, waiting for hatred to find me out.
My destiny was waiting in room seventy-four. From this closet I figured it would take me four minutes. I peeked out to see if my aggressors were still present. Slowly I emerged and started plodding, once more to destiny. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. I felt as if I wasn’t moving; the sight of room seventy-four growing closer was my only indication I had.
Room seventy-four was at the end of another long hallway, that you took two whole minutes to get down. I was about a minute’s walk away and I could already hear chatter easing from the room. I stopped. Right foot. Left foot. Right. On and on. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Don’t Stop. As I reached the door of room seventy-four, I noticed how tense I was, how close I had been clutching my books. These people that lie on the other side of the door, they could smell fear and nervousness. They emitted an aura of light around those whose destiny called out. I was just such, a victim of their cruelty and hatred. The heavy wooden door was stained dark brown, almost black; its handle painfully cold. Slowly reaching out, the door flew open, a gush of pain escaping the room. I could hear the screams and taste the agony. My feet clung to the ground as I walked into the unknown known.
Room seventy-four had tables and chairs placed against the wall, with only enough room behind and in between for people to get in their seats. There were two
tables placed together in the middle of the room with chairs crammed around them. The tables and chairs around the edge of the room were stained the same dark brown as the door. The tables and chairs in the middle were a dark plum purple. The purple was explained to represent authority as purple was traditionally a color kings and their court wore. It was explained to us that those at the purple table had the authority over those at the “black” tables. No one ever took a seat at the purple tables unless invited to do so. Yet the person who sat at golden desk had complete authority. The leader of this congregation traditionally sat at the golden table, though occasionally relinquished the position. The golden table, like the others was a dark golden color, with no shimmer or shine. It sat in the corner near the door. Room seventy-four contained sixty-one seats. There were four tables along four walls, each with three chairs behind them. The two
tables in the middle had twelve chairs around them and the dark gold desk had one chair.
I slowly walk into room seventy-four and took a seat at one of the “black” tables in the corner, hoping to blend in. My footsteps echoed in the dark room, heard only to me for all the chatter. My chair scraped the floor as if fingernails on a blackboard. All the chairs were the same, too heavy to pick up and move. One you were in your chair, you were basically trapped, for moving came with dozens of pain staking glares pointed at you. Even happy colors like purple and gold were dark in the room with windows that ran from ceiling to floor. The windows were placed on the wall opposite the door, but no light could penetrate the heavy dark red curtains that drew them shut. What little light did escape hardly lightened the room with dark floors and ceiling. There was little in the room other than the furniture. A portrait hung above the door -- a man in all black against a red background, the same red as the curtains. His eyes were cold blood- stained stones that penetrated the shield which is your body and looked into and attacked the soul. That man watched everything and was more alive than me. On the gold desk sat an assortment of red and black roses, dying in dirty brown water. Room seventy-four, unlike most had four chandeliers. They were small, but detailed. Engraved
in them were people’s faces, so real it looked as if they were once human. A spider engraved here and there. Though at first glance ostentatious, these chandeliers were

the most beautiful thing in the room. Their almost dead bulbs flickered off and on, producing little light.
I counted sixty, including myself, in room seventy-four, but I was one of the only people sitting. As if being led by some invisible force, everyone sat down a few minutes before the dark golden desk in the corner became occupied. Footsteps echoed off walls and a chair grinded against the floor. It was that moment when fate caught up with me. It was that moment when I wished I could run and hide, but that would only make everything worse. So I sat trapped in fear with no escape.
*****
Wounds were torn open to reveal a bleeding oozing mess. Old scars were replaced by new ones. I could feel the cuts, scrapes and gashes slowly being infested, knowing that the infestation would be contained by a hard rough scab, only to be torn open again later. The pain was, for the most part, the same. Some days were worse than others, and irregularly the pain was considerably easier to bear, but never did it cease to exist. Every day came with new challenges. Every challenge had its obstacles. All we could do was tackle one obstacle at a time, and pray to see the finish line. And that is what I did; but it didn’t, doesn’t, make tackling the obstacles any easier.

Alone. Completely and utterly alone. Not a sound to be heard but the steady breath that emerged from my mouth. I lay in bed that night trying to sleep. A corpse took the place of my body as sleep refused to come. Questions and wonders engulfed this lifeless corpse of mine, sucking the very breath from it. Why me? What is to become of
me? What does my future hold? What?! Why?! How!? They all screamed in my mind. Refusing to stop. When sleep came, it was welcomed majestically.
Sleep is a funny thing. Sometimes it brings grief and other times it brings joy. Contained in sleep might be relief. Yet then again, sleep can very well be agony's accomplice. The thing is, you need sleep, but not so much its dreams, for you never know what they shall be. On this night, it was nothing. That was a night of mercy, for sleep came unaccompanied. It didn’t bring pain and agony, or dreams to be crushed. Sleep came and that was all.
*****
Have you ever had the feeling that a day was going to be miraculous? Then, I suppose you know that sinking feeling when your perfect day was gruesome. It was terrible, was it not? That was my life most days. I thought I felt that this day was going to be different. This day was going to contain joy and laughter, and pain would be sent to the abyss. And every day, I was painstakingly wrong. So, I gave up hope long ago that
things would change. Hope is dangerous; when it shatters, you are worse than you would have been had no hope ever been present. So for this, I gave up hope and took
the blow. I had become a zombie. No human remain within me. I was a walking body with little shown emotion and little hope or joy left. The world around me cared nothing
for me, and neither did I. I was trapped in a cycle too strong to break, in a place with invulnerable walls.
I found quickly that life relied on patterns. Your heart beats about 100,800 times a day, which is over 36,792,000 heartbeats in one year. You breathe about 12 breaths per minute. On average that’s 17,280 breaths a day. The average person blinks about 448,512,000 times during their life, which is about twelve years or .02% percent of your life spent in darkness due to blinking. Every day, your body depends on these patterns to survive. Everyday these patterns, the patterns of life, go on subconsciously. Every day you get out of bed and get dressed. Every day you eat and drink. Every day you repeat the patterns of life, not bothering to think why you are doing what you do. Life is a pattern, and this pattern has been woven into our minds and very beings. But over time we have done one of two things. Become the corpse that has life, but might as well be rotting in a grave. And why? Because all that corpse knows is the pattern of life. The
other option is to break the pattern and live life. To wonder what are the patterns? Not only to acknowledge them, but explore them. I, like most, did not choose which I would become. I figured life was life, and you either accepted that or tried to fight a losing battle. Lying in bed, sleep having fled from my grasps, I realized, that my wounds would heal, and my agony would cease, but only if I break the pattern. Never before had it occurred to me that the invulnerable walls and never ceasing cycle had a weak point. Hope. Trust. It occurred to me then, that everything I had abandoned years ago, when I became this rotting corpse, was what I needed to survive -- to break the pattern. So there, in agonizing pain, I stopped feeling sorry for myself. I stopped believing that this would be my life forever. It was then when I walked out of my room -- room number one-thousand, on the ninth floor that I believed. That I believed in hope. That I believed I could change my fate. That I believed I could break the pattern, and live.