Myra smelt the lavenders at last. She gently spread out her arms and felt the light breeze caressing the gaps between her fingers. The grass beneath embraced her bare feet. Silence surrounded the atmosphere. But she could hear the silence speak to her. In fact, she heard that silence hum a soft song into her ears. The pine tree rustling at a distance, confided a secret into her ears. The sky was bluer than the last time she’d seen it.

She giggled. She laughed. She ran after the breeze.

Myra returned to this place again and again, sometimes in her dreams. It was the only place where she felt loved. That day was different. She couldn’t see the shadows. The bright sunshine had lifted her fears. Her body soaked in the warmth of the heavens. Everything was at perfect stillness, as she had ever wanted. Myra wanted to live every moment of it.

 But when the feeling of well being had started to sink in, the mirage of peace was pulverized. The pine trees had conspired. She heard the voices again. The voices made her want to run beyond the infinity of universe and drown in the deepest of the oceans. They controlled her. She often had sleepless nights staring at the moonlit ceiling. Her soul wasn’t hers anymore. She couldn’t hear her voice. She was a slave to the demons that controlled her life.

 Myra was quite young when the demons had infested her life. The once happy-go-lucky teenager had locked herself in the cage of her bedroom. The bedroom was the darkest secret of her life. Dark shrouded figures told her tales from purgatory. Those stories conjured up a blazing inferno that roared to life in her bedroom.  She covered her mouth with a pillow and screamed until she went out of breath. The walls were coloured with the words ‘Jesus loves me.’

Myra made futile attempts to run away from her home but the demons drove her right back into the place. Her devastated mind saw an enemy in everyone that surrounded her. She would never let her mother come close to her. Hues of red clouded her vision when she saw either of her parents coming inside her room. It was not long before the day she was handed to the nursing home, when Myra’s parents had seen her sitting at the edge of the window.

She was now frantically running away from the voices. The pine trees seemed distant now. They bid her a cunning farewell. She had evil forebodings. She was now gasping for breath, but her feet didn’t stop.

Myra was having visions of the past. That day when she was forced into that medical van with a small window of light, she tried to stick her hand out to feel the air. The demons had followed her yet again. She felt a pang of fear, every time the canopies of trees blocked the only source of illumination. Everything after that was a blur. The small room where she laid with her hands tied ,the cold atmosphere of the mental asylum and the doctors who were accomplices of the demons : were all a fleeting part of her memory.  

She now saw an end to her pain. That last stop where, it all ended. Myra had stumbled upon a cliff. A cliff that was deep enough to carry her to another dimension. She didn’t have time. She had to think fast. Down, she stared. The depth of the cliff was now all-the-more enticing. It dawned on her. It wasn’t her life what she was ending. It was an inevitable death which she was escaping. All she saw down there was a new life. Her freedom was step away. It was her escape. She stepped forward. Gravity embraced her. She gave in to the gentle descent. The demons tried to follow her, but the darkness of the cliff engulfed them. At last, Myra smiled again.

Myra woke up from her dream on the bed with her hands tied. She had to survive another day of submission, before dying again.