Recollection: Anne's Journal


Time slips slowly by, hours slip into days, and days melt into each other in this never ending abyss called time. How strange, life has slipped quietly by and has left, me once again, alone and afraid. This time I do not fear for my life, rather for the safety of my children. It has been seven long years since I last laid eyes upon their splendid beauty. My gentle sweet, sweet Calum. He has his father's eyes. Oh his father! Rest in peace my dear sweet husband. I have betrayed you. Only heaven can comfort you now. I, most certainly, could not have wounded you more than by gentle sweet Cathleen. She has her father's appearence, so fair and so mild. Perhaps it is for the best that I remain in this prison chamber, alone and forgotten.

Everyday I hear the cries of agony and defeat. Everyday my heart breaks and along with it, my spirit. No, tears cannot help you now Anne. They are nothing more than cries in the dark that nobody hears. How though? How could we lose? It is our right as humans to live free from social asphyxia. Why did they not come to the barricades, to aid us in our fight for what was rightfully ours? Why did they die? They were just a handful of school boys, a few children, and workers, gone, never to see another dawn, another day. How can that bastard Louis Phillipe rob us of our lives? Our brave Enjolras, he wanted to give us back our freedom, our dignity, our hope for our children. Oh I will never forget his speech just hours before they died. It burns into my heart like hot metal liquifying skin.

"Friends, the hour in which we live, in which I speak to you, is a gloomy hour, but such is the terrible price of the future... Whence shall arise the shouts of love, if it not be from the summit of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, here is the place of junction between those who think and those who suffer; this barricade is made neither of paving stones, nor timber, nor of iron; it is made of two mounds, a mound of ideas and a mound of sorrows. Misery here encounters the ideal. Here day embraces night, and says: I will die with thee and thou shalt be born again with me. From the pressures of all desolations faith gushes forth. Sufferings bring their agony here, and ideas their immortality. This agony and this immortality are to mingle and compose our death. Brothers he who dies here enters a grave illuminated by the dawn."

Where is the dawn now? For all those left behind in this cold, cruel Tartarus, shall we see the light again? Ever again? Light! Light! All things come from light, and all must return to it. I have not seen such radiance for seven years! Seven cruel, hard, soul breaking years all alone and forgotten. I was put here for some odd, twisted purpose. Shall I die alone too? Without a hope, without a friend, without a fact to whom I may say goodbye?

I realize my pride and arrogance now; I have been humbled in defeat. Oh let me die! Please, no more misery, no more grief. Even in hell I would be happier than here. I must not dwell upon these matters, they only break us more. If I broke any more, there would be nothing left but dust of a former radiant youth. The fire has been stolen from my eyes, but it still flickers in my heart. I am becoming the model citizen! I no longer ask questions, but follow every idea to the fullest. Please, someone, take me now before I break in two; please someone set me free! Alas, my cries fall upon deaf ears. Alone again am I. Alone with the exception of my thoughts, my misery, my recollection of the past, all on this piece of paper. Everything has changed. I am no longer Doctor Anne Dagna Delacroix. She has been murdered, her dignity, her pride, her soul, stolen. I am all that remains in her place, a shell known only by the number: 83508. They tattooed it acrossed my breasts. Years of torture, blood, sweat, toil, and despair.

Tonight was like any other night. Please let me die. He came again and had his way. I can not put up much of a fight. They have starved us, worked us until exhaustion, and then come to us in the night. I remember the first night so vividly. They tied me down, beat me, and then had their way. All I could do was weep and hope and pray that I would not bear them a child. Oh how does one go on after something as horrid as that? Slowly, day by day, night by night, my heart grew cold and hard. I have only the rest of my life to perfect this iciness, this hardness. I cannot live in such a manner. I will not mearly scrape myself off the floor to do another's bidding. Some how I will, and this I promise myself, continue the fight started seven years ago or I will die trying. It is time for me to enter my grave illuminated by the dawn.



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