All I could feel was pain. My body was a raging fire, unable to be contained, unable to die. I felt the flames sear my arms and legs and back and burn my chest. My insides crawled with the sensation. For what felt life forever, I couldn't move, couldn't see, and couldn't speak. Everything was coloured deep shades of black and red and faded in and out of my vision. I was alone in agony, as my body attempted to comprehend how to heal itself in so many places.

So this is how I die. Thoughts flittered in and out of my brain. I always thought I'd go out with more of a bang...

I reminisced of my family through the pain, to try and ignore my terrifying reality. Max's cheerful smile filled my unconsciousness. Mum's cooking. Even Gabby the other friends I'd made back at St Agatha's entered my mind.

"We've looked everywhere, Amy." A foggy image of my cousin told me, her figure coming into focus in the midst of my thoughts. "You're just too small to find."

"Oh well, you were too much of a hassle anyway." Gabby's cheery face moulded into that of my mother's, and I gasped in disbelief. "Now you're out of the picture I can get myself a normal daughter..."

"You're not real!" I yelled firmly at her wavering image.

She only shrugged. "Then why are you thinking about this?"

I opened my mouth to fire back a response, but my insides protested and I gulped as a new round of pain engulfed my thoughts...

****

I wondered if she was dead. Maybe I'd killed the Amy Leebeck from the profile photo, the one with dimples and a huge smile that filled her doll's face with a soft beauty. I forced myself not to think in that way, though, knowing that the girl hadn't died from the fall.

No.

 She wouldn't be dead. Marcus would have fixed her up, just as I'd witnessed . It'd surprised me to realise that some part of him was still willing to care for another, to the point where after months of self induced isolation, he'd left the cage to help Amy. I almost cringed to myself at what I'd done to Marcus all of those painful years ago. I'd dropped him in exactly the same way as I had Amy, but he'd had to heal himself, stitch up cuts with a clump of his own hair and wrap ripped tissues around his broken bones to create a makeshift splint. My old friend had matured in ways I'd never imagined possible, but I never pitied him.

 I never liked pitying any of the shrunken, not even Abigail or James who had their whole teenage lives ahead of them.

They had brought this on themselves, after all.

Had they, though? A voice in my head demanded. Was it their fault that they had a different blood type to everyone else? A blood type that I myself shared? My brain was a confusing piece of work. I guess it just soothed me more than anything just to blame them, rather than the prison for jailing my mother in the first place, or the judge for declaring her guilty.

Blaming the shrunken for my mother's conviction allowed me to feel at peace with everyone else involved. It wasn't fair to bear the brunt of my emotional pain of losing my parents, but it was a better alternative, and kept me sane enough not to punch the living daylights out of every cop I saw.

So why didn't Amy hate me? It made me almost uneasy to even talk to her knowing that she wasn't like the others. Amy had shown real concern for my wellbeing. She'd been sassy, yes, and that had made me even angrier than I would have been if she'd simply stayed silent, but the whole time I realised that she was just trying to figure me out better. No shrunken has ever shown the slightest of interests in that sense.

It has always been far easier that way, if they'd all just hate me for what I have done. Their whole purpose here was to feel what my mum feels; trapped. She should hate the guards of her prison, yet she is more capable than any of the other prisoners for showing remorse. After all- they're the ones responsible for keeping her stuck there like the shrunken in my birdcage. For three years, I've fought a losing battle with myself as to whether it was right to execute my revenge in such a life destroying way, but I've begun to come to terms with fate.

And Amy will hate me now. She won't speak to me, acknowledge me or look at me again, and in a way it was for the best. After what I'd did to her, she deserved every little bit of hatred to bubble inside her when she saw me. In a way, I wanted her to hate me. I wanted her to feel exactly what mum felt when she stared out of her cell and yearned to re-enter the world she'd given up all those years ago. It made it easier for me to hate them, when they hated me back, I suppose.

But for some reason, Amy was different, and I'd noticed it straight after she'd woken up and busted out of the fish tank that day. Maybe it was her nature, or her personality. It might have even been the fact that every single day of her life had been spent at under six inches tall. I just felt strange and almost unethical hurting her or insulting her. She was just as vulnerable as the others, but Amy had chosen to fight back against me, and come close to escaping. It baffled me as to why she'd chosen to reveal herself the day before, rather than making a break for it.

I shook my head to clear out the irritating questions buzzing around like bees in my mind. Marcus had rushed to Amy's side to tend to her wounds; there was nothing left for me to do but get back to my own past times. So, forcing myself out of the pity cycle, I slipped my ear buds back in and lay back in bed, 'Radioactive' by Imagine Dragons pumping through my ears on full blast...

****

"Amy. Amy. Amy."  People continued to enter my dreams. It was strange to hear such familiar voices as they chatted on and on inside my head. I tried to fight them at first, but with their constant turmoil it became far too strong for me to fight back. The pain coursing through my body had dulled to a low throb but I knew that this was simply my nervous system losing the battle. I knew that something had gone terribly wrong at some point in time.

But I couldn't move a muscle. I felt paralysed to the spot, and for a fleeting moment I panicked, thinking that the slowly diminishing pain was a sign that I'd broken my spinal cord. My heart beat faster and faster, and despite being unconscious, I could feel a cold sweat forming on my brow. There was no way I was going to wake up five inches tall and paralysed. If that were the case, I'd choose not to wake up at all.

Unfortunately though, I knew that I'd have to step back into the real world eventually, and when the voices spoke to me again, I figured it was as good a time as any.

"Wake up. Amy. Amy... Wake up..."

For a few minutes, I focussed on the speaker. She had a thin, small voice...  I recognised it immediately and my fingers twitched. With a pained grimace, I opened my eyes to find Harriet sitting beside me, her hands clutching my own. I stared at her blankly, my head spinning. Every inch of me ached, to the point where I winced as I spoke.

"What happened?" I managed, my voice barely audible. I could literally remember nothing about the past few hours. It had only been hours, hadn't it?

 Harriet bit her lip and laid her hands down in her lap. "Thomas dropped you from a metre up at least. I saw it." She whispered, and my eyes widened in sudden shock.

"Really? Shit, I must've pissed him off. I remember talking to him and all... but—"

"Never talk to him or go near him. It's dangerous, Amy. You could have been killed!" She butted in, her grey eyes pleading. I coughed, pain building up around my ribcage at the simple action.

"What time is it?" I asked.

Harriet let out a long, sorrow filled sigh."It's been two days, Amy. Your left leg is broken and I think you may have sprained the other ankle. You were lucky to have landed on your feet first to break the fall." She explained, and for the first time since waking up, I looked down at my body, dreading what I would see. I was practically cocooned in blankets, one of my legs bandaged in what looked to be strips of tissue, with a splint that had once been half a paddle-pop stick. My chest and stomach were patterned with purple and blue bruises, which ached dully with every move. I was still wearing my striped sweater and jeans, although a large hole had formed at the knee, and the material covering my left leg had been torn off, replaced with the makeshift cast.

"Who did this—"

"Marcus. You can thank him later. Just rest." Harriet instructed gently, and for once, I just did as she said. She rubbed her eyes and yawned from beside me after a minute and I laughed, patting the collection of soft blankets beside my aching body.

"I'm all good now. You can sleep, if you're tired." I said. With those words in mind, she shot me a grateful smile and lay down beside me to stare up at the ceiling of the cage. Once a few silent minutes had passed though, Harriet sighed.

"You're the first girl to get her who's around my age. I haven't seen a teenage girl in years." She whispered, and a soft smile made its way to my lips.

"Heh- I'd only just gone to a regular highschool before, well..." The smile faded as I stared down at my ruined legs. "I guess it could've been worse. Heck; I'm just glad right now that he didn't paralyse me, the bastard."

I shook my head, disbelief beginning to sink in. "I can't even believe that he went and dropped me like that. I really thought I was getting through to him..."

"What's there to get through to, Amy!?" Harriet yelled, without warning. "We've told you countless times- Thomas is dangerous!" She threw her arms out, almost begging me to see the damage he'd caused me, and I really did. I knew exactly what he'd done to me. Yet I still couldn't bring myself to hate the guy, at least while I knew that there was a part of him, deep down that cared. "I don't know why you're still under the impression that he'll change, because he won't!" Harriet sighed once more, her chest dipping down like a deflated balloon. "Marcus thought that he could bring the 'old' Thomas back once, but look where it got him..."

I shook my head in defiance, refusing to look on the negative side. "Look, Harriet. There's something about Thomas; he almost... changed back there when he was about to drop me. There was pity in his eyes, and I'll be damned if he's not thinking about that pity right now!"

"Amy-" She began, but I cut her off with an agonising wave of my hand.

"There's a kink in his chain, Harriet. For a minute back there he looked at me and cared. I saw it!"

"Amy-"

"I don't think he's a bad guy, deep down. He's just stumbled onto the wrong path and has lost his way! If we all helped, we can change him, for good—"

"Amy LISTEN to me!" Harriet snapped with such harshness that I slapped my mouth shut. "People don't change!" She yelled, rolling over and facing me with cold, grey eyes. "Do you want to know why Marcus is the way he is now- why we're all like this?! Thomas broke us, Amy. He tore us away from our old lives and stuffed us in a birdcage because he needed someone to act as his punching bag!"

I frowned as my own anger began to build up, and I opened my mouth to fire back another retort, but Harriet's tone was firm, and her next words made everything that I was going to say crumble into an abyss of hurt.

"A-And if you think that after what he's done to YOU, that you can change him, then go ahead. Because all it's proving to the rest of us is that you're Just. Like. Him."

With that, she stormed off, leaving me alone in complete and utter shock for a long, long time.

****

And that was what triggered everything that followed.

 I couldn't walk or get out of bed for weeks on end, so I simply lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness with little on my mind. When Thomas came to open the cage door in the mornings I pulled the blankets over me like a cocoon of safety. I wasn't in the mood to see him, anyway. After what Harriet had said on that fateful day, I didn't think I would have it in me to confront him for a long, long time.

Marcus sometimes sat with me while the others were outside. He didn't have any intention of following anymore, as he'd mentioned multiple times. He would stroke my cropped hair as he talked and I would look into his eyes, trying to read his deeper thoughts. But like before, his expression never changed. He always came across as blank. Broken beyond repair, almost like a used toy that no longer had any purpose to fulfil, any story to tell.

Eventually, after the third week in bed, I felt something I never thought I'd've felt again: small. Maybe that was what I was, inside as well as outside. What I was destined to be. Within the next month, my eyes had dulled and I felt emotionless, just like the others. My appetite trailed downwards and my skin became pale and sallow. I was fading away, my mind thinking the same things over and over.

And over.

And over.

By two months, my injuries had healed, but my spirit had died. Someone had popped the balloon of my life and all that remained was a deflated body without a soul to carry it onwards. So when my worn legs could support my weight again, all I wanted to do was run. That was the problem, though: I had nowhere to run to, nowhere to go that would take me to a better place, where the grass was green, the sun was out and my family was around me to get me through these dark times. But I couldn't find that place, and after the third month, it ceased to exist at all.

 My life was contained by the boundaries of Thomas's room.

When Thomas looked at me smugly, I just stared at him, not knowing what emotions I could muster anymore. Thoughts of my family washed away like someone has doused me under a wave and stolen my memories. I had basic conversations with my cellmates about food and life in general, but by the fourth month, escape seemed so impossible I didn't even acknowledge it. I began to accept my life there and then in that birdcage, and that it was all I would ever experience. All I would ever see, hear and feel for.

But I felt nothing.

I thought of Marcus, being here for over three years, and tried to imagine myself in that time. Did I have any more hope to lose? Any more love to disintegrate? I busied myself with drawing and reading when I was allowed outside into Thomas's room. I used the lead of his pacers and the edge of a notebook. I drew everything I could remember of my old life. The kitchen, the shaggy carpet, mum and Max, Gabby. Their eyes stared at me expressionlessly through the paper. They couldn't comfort me. No one could. I was alone with my life. Alone with my mind. And alone with Thomas Ryan. Alone with a monster.

Yet I couldn't bring myself to pass the final hurdle that the other cellmates had so easily crossed.

I couldn't hate him.