By Annabelle Kennedy, TIWP Student

1: Establish a daily routine. Pull the dirt and grime from your hair with your tied-up and bleeding hands, the bits of straw, the dead insects. Stretch. Lift your arms over your head as much as you’re able while ignoring the pain in your side, in your legs, in your mouth from where a tooth has come loose from that last punch. 

2: Be more positive. Look at the grimy walls and, oh, now they’re covered in flowery wallpaper. The spot on the floor where you use the bathroom, it’s now an electronic bidet. The ragged, filthy clothes you’ve been wearing for the past week, instead they’re a set of silk pajamas with your initials embroidered in gold. 

3: Eat healthier. Have only a tiny nibble from the ruin that once was a single chocolate cupcake. For added benefit, throw it across the room. The stale metallic water is a necessity, though. Doesn’t really matter, you’re skin and bones by now anyway. 

4: Take up a new hobby. Find that spot on the floor where the camera just can’t find you. Work your ropes loose on that shred of broken pipe and almost cut a finger off in the process. Flip that switch on the wall and see light for the first time in days. 

5: Exercise more. Your hands are free now, you can do some jumping jacks, even though your lungs are like paper sacks and you’re so thin you don’t have that much energy at all. Eat that entire cupcake now, you’re going to need it. Climb out of that window, the one you broke after your struggle to not be captured failed. Ignore the broken glass digging into your knees and run. Run as fast as you can, spurred on by the sounds of those blessed fireworks that are cascading overhead and blocking the sound of your footfalls.

Happy New Year!