The Portrait

Silence.
Even during the day it was quiet, too quiet. Always had been. I couldn't see it now but I knew it was morning, and that the murky sun was once again rearing its head over the fragile frame of a building once decorated with a false illusion of grandeur and fortune. Yes, I could picture the scene in my mind: The pathetic sun attempting in vain to send a thin stream of light through the dense forests of overgrown grounds. The vines and creepers that had sneaked their way up the walls over the years, would lift their faces hopefully sniffing the air to lap up the feeble, faded beams of light.
Oh, yes. I know this place well. I would have made good with this place, had the others not locked me away. Here I can do nothing. I must sit and watch my plans fall into disrepair, my ideas fade to dust and rot, just like the darkened rooms. I could have made good with this place, but they had ideas of their own and I was hopelessly outnumbered.
An asylum. Yes. An asylum. For children. Even now I hear the echoes of screams. Abandoned though it might be, this place still remembers. It remembers everything, just like me. The bleak stench of guilt and anger and innocent blood still reeks in the rooms, although masked slightly by age and dust it still lingers. These yellowing walls have been through horrors unimaginable to most folk, forced to watch, just like me...
Wait...
Something is different...Youthful footsteps echoing. I hear them through the forests. Their voices ring through the halls though they are not here...yet. But they are close. This is wrong. They should not be here...They are coming...

I awaken. I had not realised that sleep had overcome me, but I am almost certain that I am waking up. I can see nothing. It takes a few moments for my numb brain to realize that hours have passed, and darkness shrouds the building. The lights haven't been switched on in years, and even in the day the curtains remain constantly drawn, so I do not worry. I am used to the darkness, but I know that night has fallen...They come and talk to me. The voices. Echoes of the past, imprinted within the walls and inside the rooms. They come and they whisper to me in the night, never during the day. It is the light; the light frightens them even though I assure them, night after night, that it cannot harm them, they cannot be harmed...They always leave. They are too frightened.
But still, I don't worry. I know they'll come back, and they always do, they never fail me. Not like the others.
Wait...
New voices blend in with my whispers...stronger, more alive...
They have arrived.
I watch. I wait. I listen motionlessly to the new voices, the voices of children. They plan to enter. Enter my house! I laugh. They wouldn't dare...
The curtains fly open, and light suddenly bursts through the rooms. Years of dust and cobwebs are blown apart in a cataclysmic explosion as the livid sun scorches through the entire building... books fly off their shelves and my carefully arranged furniture is decimated. All my rooms that have not been touched for years are destroyed in a matter of moments...all gone...
My whispers scream and flee for the darkness, though there is no safe shadow in which they can hide. Of course not. I know the light will surely kill them, and even if they were to survive they would never trust me again. They would leave, leave me, all alone, nobody, just like before...
Before?
I remember.
I remember everything.
Faint flashes of memory bleed into my brain, disconnected like film on an ancient projector screen. My whole existence was presented to me in grotesque images and movement: watching the 'treatments' those children were forced to endure - the light - the light meant pain - a flash of silver - hideous 'experiments' that made torture seem humane - his face...His face, with a cold white mask to hide his insanity...the sound of screams tore through my body then as it does now, all the while helpless - I could not save them, their poor souls...
I see red.
I want to rip, tear myself from my prison, to escape the light, the pain...Oh, the agonising pain...
But I...can't.
I must endure. I resign myself to this damning fact. All I can do is sit and watch. I was foolish. Stupid. What can I do? I am helpless to defend. I am mute, motionless. What could I do? Nothing. I feel the children leave at last, and my anger is subsituted for jealousy that burns my heart to blackened ashes as I accept defeat. They can leave this place. They can come and go as they please and the thought sickens me. But I merely watch.
Trapped forever in my prison of paper, paint and an ornate frame.