Flash Fiction

Jailmaze

by Maja Ulasik

mornings are sunny, afternoons are cloudy, you never know about evenings, but nights are full of dreams.

you can open a window even though you are in a prison that is also a labyrinth, which is a beautiful word but a fascinating and horrifying concept.

when you open the window, chirps fill your ears, and it comes as a surprise because you think and have always thought that it's not possible to hear any beautiful sound while being in a prison or a labyrinth, or a place that is both a prison and a labyrinth and is called a jailmaze.

believe it or not, the birds can sing everywhere; what's more: crows' favorite place is a cemetery.

talking about birds: those that sing just outside of the jailmaze sound colorful. now, don't make a face. it's cloudy at night but they don't take offence. they sing days and nights. they sing matinees and lullabies.

all it takes is to open the window, an ear or two, and listen, and... it's parrots! it's better to close your eyes because you don't see the walls, floors and ceilings of your jailmaze, and you can imagine it doesn't exist and you're actually somewhere in the tropics. if you expose your firmly closed eyelids to the sun, you will discover that light doesn't respect the thin fragile curtains that are covering your eyes but daringly shines through so that you can believe that you are in the tropics and tropics are hot and free and everyone always dreams of tropics for some reason that is very difficult to understand.

nobody ever dreams of the jailmaze but many people nightmare about it, yet only few really understand it.

this text is a jailmaze and i'm in a jailmaze which is easy to deduct because it's impossible to write any other text in a jailmaze than a jailmaze itself. jailmaze jailmaze jailmaze.

(of course i could use capital letters, but i don't want to scare the parrots.)

here is a fact. i know how this all sounds: childish, kitschy and lunatic (which is a beautiful and horrifying word just like a labyrinth). but i have an argument: this is a jailmaze and a jailmaze is childish, kitschy, and lunatic.

the reason is that you cannot build a jailmaze out of reason. to put another human in a jail as well as to put another human in a maze is a very childish solution to any problem. it's also a bit kitschy, lacks style, and it seems obvious to everyone that paying attention to the design of a prison or a labyrinth would turn an inhuman idea into a bestial idea. and it's only a lunatic's mind that can develop a concept of so many walls in a space so beautiful and free like earth.

i am a lunatic because i build walls of letters into a paper of plain and white which is almost as beautiful as a summer sky. my letters are black, and they have horrifying shapes like t h i s. why would i write on this earth while i can walk on this earth, touch the grass with my bare feet, let the sun shine through my eyelids right into my soul, and listen to parrots chirping in the sweet moment on earth that i have been given for free and only for a while.

Appeared in Issue Fall '21