And that, darling,
is how people react
to the truth.
— An Echo From An Earlier Allegory
The drive to Indiana State Prison wasn't long, but it was hard. As it should be.
Prison is a terrible place. Hostile and unrepentant. Hardened, yet broken. But I was not. I knew what I'd done and I knew the consequences, even though I was no longer in control of them.
I knew, beyond the impenetrable fence that surrounded this horrendous building, on the other side of its walls, on the inside, one life would be ending as another began.
Finality is a bookmark for the end of a time.
This bookmark in time was mine.
"It's time," I said, again and again, as I stared at the cavernous structure before me.
Prison is a cave within a cave.
This thing called Earth is the real cave.
We are all in Plato's Cave. We are the shadows. We are the echoes. We create more of them, more of us, when we pass on our pain.
A child raised wrong grows up wrong.
We are what we were raised to be.
We are The Allegory.
If any of us escapes, who tells the tale?
I've told you mine.
Or have I?
I've lied to you. I know you know.
I've lied to myself. You know I know.
I am the echo.
"I can do this," I promised myself, as I walked toward the prison entrance, as if I needed to hear it. As if I needed to be convinced. As if the choice hadn't already been made for me, by me, through the course of my own actions.
I was no longer in control of it, but I was the cause, and this was the end.
Finality.
Again, I said to myself, "It's time."
But for the first time in a long time, the voice I heard was truly my own.
I walked toward the building, slowly. Cautiously.
But I was not afraid.
I approached.
I entered.
Inside, a man said, "Name?"
I responded, "Claire Jenkins."