On Thoughts Of The Red Room

    Sometimes, I wonder what goes on in that dainty little head of Mrs. Reed's. With a face that is frosty, it's a wonder how anyone manages to stand her presence without being chilled from head to toe.

    Ah, in hindsight, I'm mistaken. It is no much of a wonder how people can stand Mrs. Reed more than it is as to why her hatred of me is so great. Her own children never quiver in fear of being unjustly rebuked day in and day out and neither do they fear that their meals will be taken away just because you haven't been "sociable" or "cheery" or "childlike" enough. Her servants don't have to worry about getting sent away when they're so adept at their work. Her life is as comfortable as it could be; and then there's me. A prickly thorn in her side, a splash of ugliness in the life that she meticulously tried to maintain after the loss of her husband. I suppose I do feel a little pity for her husband but it's mostly for myself; how I terribly miss Mr. Reed and how I have not a doubt in my heart that Mr. Reed would treat me kindly and carefully. 

    Even if my little heart was proven wrong, at the very least, Mr. Reed wouldn't be so cruel to lock me up in the Red Room, especially after I've shown my terror. Yes, the cold mask from Mrs. Reed's face fell not once and she still had enough apathy and not enough sympathy to send me away. I hate, oh I hate her callousness and her cruelty more. Subjected to the many horrors of my mind, the Red Room would be a place I could hardly remember yet could hardly forget. 

    Bear no erroneous assumption, the Red Room wasn't short of comfort. It was lavish and accommodating. I should've even been happy! An entire room of comfort and luxury and they all belonged to me. When was the last time I had a decent meal or a good place to rest in, forget this room?

    There was something lurking in the corner. Indeed, this was the very room where Mr. Reed had breathed his last breath and something about being in a room where a benevolent person died in an unkind house was terrifying to me. My thoughts were raging, my mind going to places I never dared to venture before. At that moment, all I could remember thinking was of "all John Reed's violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference, all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality...Why was I always suffering, always brow-beaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one’s favour?" I remember wishing for death inordinately, I remember my heart beating erratically, every beat still haunting me in my waking moments, I remember being petrified at seeing Mr. Reed's silhouette of a ghost or a person, which I could not determine, I remember I remember I remember I remember and then I forget.

    I try to block out the memories; the experience in the Red Room are hardly better than what I thought of Mrs. Reed and her awful family. Both I try to not think about but the Red Room never seems to leave my mind. Sometimes, on dark rainy nights, I find myself comparing the present now to the past of before, where I'm certain I lost a part of my mind; that part I shall never regain, perhaps, for the rest of my life.

    My thoughts on the Red Room are as follows: it should be avoided at all costs. Nothing good ever happens there, as evident with the passing of Mr. Reed and with the imprisonment of a once-child me. The Red Room mustn't be remembered.