Free Time Heals No Wounds by Hendrik Falkenberg

for light was almost painful. It had entered the room only once, and that was a day ago. When the sound of steps outside her prison had finally ceased the night before, a thousand thoughts had gone through her head. What would happen to her? Beatings, shackles, rape? Would anyone come in? A man? A woman? Or would she be released and it would all prove to be a horrible joke?
    She had sensed scraping, followed by a slight creaking noise. Suddenly, a small flap had swung open—at the exact spot where Merle had suspected a door. A bright beam of light shone into the room. The long period of darkness had made her eyes incredibly sensitive, and she had quickly closed them because of the pain.
    There had been another scraping noise and then a loud bang. She peeked warily through her fingers. She saw nothing, only darkness. Just as she was about to dismiss the experience as a figment of her imagination, she again heard footsteps growing softer and moving away.
    “No!” she had screamed. “Who are you? Please, tell me what you want!”
    Without thinking, she had jumped off the bed and run to the spot where she believed the door to be. She threw herself against the wall and pounded it in desperation.
    “Let me out! I want out of here! Please!” She’d dropped to the floor and carefully felt around, bumping into hard and soft objects. Then she had noticed a new smell. Food! Someone had brought her food! She identified fresh bread, sliced cucumber, and a big piece of cheese. A bottle of water had also been placed inside. Merle had forced herself to take only small sips in order to ration the liquid.
    Now, a day later, Merle’s stomach was rebelling. She pressed the button on her watch; it was almost 6:00 p.m. She was terrified to discover that the hands now had a weak glow: the watch’s battery was running out. She had turned the light on too often over the past few days, using the soft light in an attempt to make out the details of the room, though her efforts had been in vain.
    If only she could talk to someone! She had never been a particularly communicative person, even though her social skills had vastly improved in recent years. But after days of silence and the absence of human contact, she noticed that her mind gradually began to drift.
    “Not anymore!” she shouted into the darkness. It sounded wrong: her voice was hoarse and strange. “I can’t lose my mind! If there’s no one here to talk to, then I’ll talk to myself!” Again her thoughts slid back to the past, and she shivered. “I escaped the darkness once before, and I’ll do it again!”
    Merle sat up in the bed. She had succeeded! She had found a weapon against the darkness and loneliness. Her bright voice became more certain, and she felt calmer.
    “I still don’t understand why Mom hated me. She got a lot of money from the government because of me, and she spent it on herself. Had I not taken what belonged to me, I’d probably still be stuck in that awful house.”
    It was only by accident that Merle had found out her mother’s secret. A professor had given them an assignment to write a short biography about any relative of their choosing. Since Merle had known virtually nothing about her grandparents or her mother, she had first tried to make up a story. But her thoughts had wandered as she wrote, so she tore up the paper.
    In the days that followed, Merle had constantly thought about Mrs. Bernstein, a friend of her mother’s who had always been kind to her. Strangely, she’d been unable to remember her face but could recall her hands. They were soft and delicate, and Mrs. Bernstein had lovingly caressed Merle’s hair and given her affection like she had never known.
    Merle had read a newspaper article about the famous Amber Room, which had been lost during the Second World War, and the memory had come flooding back to her. Amber had received an amber brooch from Merle’s mother for her birthday. Merle, who at the time was eight years old, had