By Anthony Stanley (Dannyluke10).

The shackles have fallen off. With a crash they hit the dusty floor as you grope around blindly in the dark. The realisation that you’re free hits you softly, almost unbelievingly, as if merely admitting to the fact will cause the manacles to spring back up and reattach themselves. You rub your calloused wrists and make for the hut’s door.

Tentatively, aware that this may be a trap, you grip the handle and turn it. The door opens letting in radiant sunshine as you stare out across a beach towards the brilliant azure of the sky and the green-tinged blue of the softly lapping sea. This is an ocean of limitless possibilities which is now in your future. You set off across the burning sand towards this new life, eyes shut involuntarily against the searing sun which you haven’t seen in years. You spy an apparently abandoned boat tied to a pole beside a rock; it gently murmurs as the waves rock it back and forth. It’s calling to you and offering you a new life. You barely have the strength to reach the dark shore and then you collapse, the wet sand clings to your cracked lips and blistered face but it is a blessing. Your fever is cooled and now tears well in your eyes as you manage to open them and take in your brilliant surroundings. The promise of freedom is now in every fibre of your being and you drop your head and silently give thanks to some god that you don’t even believe in. The past four years stretch away behind you and you cannot help but contemplate what you have come through. As you feel the warmth of the sun on the back of your neck and listen to the ocean of possibility, whose waves are getting ever closer, you remember the four years that has been your lot.

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