It was the cold that woke me up. I sat slowly, rubbing my aching head. I could see my breath in front of me creating a fog by my face. There was hardly any light and my eyes strained to look around me.
The floor below me was old and splintered wood. There was an eerie stillness and quiet around me. I stood up carefully, only to fall to my knees out of dizziness. I groaned and felt the spot on my head that ached so badly.
I could feel the hot, sticky mess of blood in my hair and began to panic. Why couldn’t I remember how I got here?
Where am I?
I forced myself to calm down and slow my breathing. By this time my eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting just enough to make out the cabin-like interior around me.It was nearly bare other than the small moth eaten couch and rotting coffee table.
This place had to have been abandoned for several years. I reluctantly started to crawl towards the conjoined kitchen, in fear of falling if I stood up, and began searching for something to help my bleeding scalp.
I felt around the broken cabinets and countertops to no avail. I opened a rather odd looking cabinet, still in perfect condition, and reached inside, but quickly pulled back my hand in shock.
My now bleeding fingertip pulsed with pain as I took a closer look inside. There was an old, engraved dagger sitting innocently in the middle of the shelf.
I took it out hastily and looked around for something to wrap around my wound. I ended up using an old curtain cut into strips.
Just as I was tying it around my head, there was a creak in the floorboards above me. I could hear my heart beating out of my chest as the creaking continued into uniformed footsteps.
Panicking, I looked around the room for some kind of escape. There was a hal...
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..., I tried to sit but the cords attached to my arm held me back and my head spun when I tried to move.
My mother would later explain that I had been in a car crash and I was in a coma for several days.
The police report stated that I had been out driving when I was caught speeding by police. I heard the sirens and sped away. But as I was driving my car slid off the road due to black ice. As the police began catching up I sped off again, this time my car hit another sheet of black ice and went off the side of the road, hit something along the way and began to roll. I had struggled to get out of my seat belt until I used a pocket knife to free myself and the cops found me passed out a few feet away due to blood loss with the trauma to my head.
I couldn’t personally remember anything about the car crash, but I did gain a habit of constantly looking over my shoulder.
I heard a blood-curdling scream and I jumped. I felt silent tears running down my heavily scarred face, but they weren’t out of sadness. Mostly. They were a mixture of pain and fear. I ran into the eerie, blood-splattered room and screamed as I felt cold fingers grab my neck.
When adversity stares people in the face, do they run away from it, or do they have the willpower to fight it head on? James Joyce, the author of Dubliners, at the young age of twenty-three, was able to take note of the struggles and hardships of the Irish people at a time when their once prosperous Dublin city was in retrograde. He took all the emotions and angers that his people had during this period in time, and summed it up into fifteen short stories. Throughout these stories Joyce places his characters into situations that leave them in constant states of dishevelment and agony. Some characters run away from and are left defeated by these situations and responsibilities, while other characters are depicted as being strong and confront and handle their crises. “The Boarding House” and “The Dead” are two stories in particular, where the characters find themselves longing to escape not only from Dublin society, but also from the obligations that they have in Dublin.
“The bigger the real-life problems, the greater the tendency […] to retreat into a reassuring fantasy-land” (Naylor). When the difficulties of life are unbearable, people often escape through various forms, such as an imaginary world where such problems do not exist. This is a form of escape and a way of ensuring that the difficulties at hand do not overpower their lives. This idea is explored through various characters in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The district in which these characters are imprisoned, Gilead, is controlled by a radical Puritan government. There exists a regulation for every aspect of the characters’ lives: from religion to sexuality, from language to occupation, from meals to marriages. With such absolute laws, one would imagine that suicide is the only escape; however, numerous characters within the novel learn to escape in a manner which does not cause them harm. In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, government extremists cleverly employ various forms of control to manipulate the characters into feeling powerless and isolated; ultimately, this forces them to depend on temporary escapes to survive in Gilead.
Gasping in terror I awoke and shot to my feet. He was gone, but where, how long had I been here and ...
thing, with all of that noise. I lit another candle to carry with me downstairs, and opened up my
Just as I reached for my jacket, I heard the harsh sound of a siren, alerting us to the danger that, as I look back now was the last thing I remember before my life changed forever.
stood upon, was frightening. The only was to go was down. I took a deep
I woke to total disorientation that night, not sure if I'd even slept at all, reaching out in distress for a hand-hold, arms up and out for anything I could grab on to. My fingers flexed to breaking, only to curl back in convulsively, like a pulse, echoing my pounding heart. Should I go forward? Am I headed back, somewhere? Where am I going?
My knotted stomach dropped as we reach the barrel rolls, my head spinning and spinning, and my ears pounding and pounding from all of the high pitched screaming. Then, out of nowhere, I jerked to a stop, and then I looked down.
I have learned how to drive safely as I used to drive my car recklessly. I was very excited when I got my driving licenses at the age of 18 and when my father surprised me with my new car. I was careless and irresponsible when driving my car. I drive fast, text while driving and talking on the phone. I eat, drink while driving, take selfies and pictures too. I never had my seat belts on because I always thought that it wasn’t necessary for me to wear it. Seatbelts were not very important to me. Until that unforgettable day, I changed my way of driving from recklessly to safely. On that day, I was eating my ice cream while driving and holding my phone to take a picture. I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt on. I was holding the steering wheel with my knees to keep it stable and straight for it not to move to the left or right. Suddenly my ice cream fell and I wanted to clean the area so that it doesn’t be sticky. I bent down to clean the spot and I wasn’t concentrating on the street as my head was down. By accident, I hit a car so hard. It was a huge accident and I got injured. I have never forgotten this moment and how I was very scared and hurt. My car was damaged and couldn’t be repaired. I have realized then that what I was doing while driving is wrong after my car accident that reawakens me. I should obey and respect the rules and signs on the street because these are put to keep us safe. I have learned that I should drive safely and
I constantly adjusted to stare at the glass for a moment. Therefore, it suddenly in a pleasant kind of way came to me. No one is willingly home yet. Accordingly, I had an ideal, wide amount of time to clean this terrifying mess which was a massive distraction.
I brush my eyes awake, feeling the cold seeping in from my window. It’s 9 AM and it’s winter in Minnesota. Feeling sleepy, I stand up and go outside. I love the winter air. It always refreshes my mind and there’s just a cold bite to it that I enjoy. Coming back inside, I boot up my computer, hoping to enjoy it a little before heading out. The winter days swim together, phasing throughout my mind, and I fall asleep again, or I have woken up.
Feeling, not heroic, but disgusting, my first thought is to cleanse myself. Running to the bathroom, the antiseptic soap and hygienic water distill my memory. Normally I faint at the sight of blood, funny, but that had occurred to me too during Al’s seizure. I continue on to Chemistry class.
I awoke on a summer day, birds singing, children playing, but all the joy and the innocence of this was behind me. I couldn't just get up and play, or sing, because I was chained to a wall.