Born in prison, Brechek had never known anything but the brutality and darkness of incarceration. His mother, a political prisoner of the despotic regime, died before he was grown, but he still remembered the stories she would tell him of the outside world; the sunlight, brighter than any bulb, the green grass, softer than any carpet, water that fell from the sky. As a child, he would hold her tight and listen, and believe every impossible word she uttered.
He had always believed her, in everything she said, particularly about the outside. But when the dictator died and the prisons were emptied, outside Brechek was blinded by the ball of fire in the sky and his feet felt the warm softness of grass instead of cold concrete.
Brechek realized then, yes, he had always believed his mother’s tales of the sun and the sky and the grass. He just never actually thought the things she spoke of were real.
See the author’s published work here.
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