She was trapped.

And God knew how much she loathed being trapped - whether literally or metaphorically.

It was like that one time in sixth grade when she had played hide-and-seek with her neighbor's daughter and hidden under the kitchen's sink. Her stupid 11 year-old self had inadvertently locked herself up in a cupboard which could only be opened from the outside. This made sense in hindsight. What use would detergents and bleach get from a doorknob, right? When she realized she was trapped, she threw a fit, kicking, crying, and hyperventilating before fainting for a few seconds prior to her mother coming to her rescue.

Right now, she was trapped again. And quite literally, at that. She was in a cage. It was a beautiful cage, she had to admit. High enough to stand but not large enough to move around freely. Shiny rough diamonds were embedded on the golden bars, catching and reflecting the sunlight passing through the high glass-ceiling of the room.

Her surroundings appeared little by little as she took them in. She was in a court hall and her cage was planted right in the middle of it. The room seemed abandoned. There were stacks of papers messily spread on a desk and bleachers surrounded the gilded cage.

As she was analyzing the room, footsteps echoed outside the room and a crowd of people started flowing in through the main gates. The audience took place in the bleachers before a man dressed in a judge attire cleared his throat. He took the hardwood gavel resting on the desk before slamming it down.

Once. Twice. Thrice. She felt like every strike was being inflicted directly onto her skull, drilling into it. She wanted to bring her hands to her ears, to block the sound off but her hands were numb. Like she had slept on them and stopped her blood flow. If she was thinking straight, she would have remembered that one history class where her teacher briefly mentioned that the use of gavels during trials and such were a typical US occurrence. And this was South Korea.

But she wasn't thinking straight. Her body was numb. Her mind was numb. Her inability to move was a giveaway that she was, in fact, dreaming. She couldn't move, couldn't talk. She could only watch whatever torture her mind had decided to put her through, internally screaming to get out of that messed up hell.

The man spoke up. "Let's resume." He paused. His eyes went through the stack of papers piled on the desk and she realized they were in the middle of a trial.

"Lee Bo Ra."

Her trial.

He flipped a page. "Born June the 25th of 1995 in Busan, South Korea." More page flipping. "On September the 22nd of 2008, 8 years ago, she and her mother Lee Ji Hye were driving away from Busan when Lee Bo Ra, aged 13, caused the accident that killed Mrs. Lee on the spot."

Her heart would burst out of her chest and spill its contents on the ground any moment now.

The judge leveled his gaze at her, a stretch of silence kept the audience on the tip of their toes to hear the looming verdict. She wanted to close her eyes, to set her eyes on anything but the man before her.

"Based on the evidence presented to the court beforehand, I thereby condemn Lee Bo Ra, to the capital punishment for the homicide of Mrs. Lee Ji Hye on September the 22nd of 2008. She thus becomes South Korea's sixty-second person on death row."

More gavel striking. Benches screeched, people applauded, someone threw a shoe at her cage like some animal and another laughed out loud.

But nobody cared that the cage's bars were narrowing down on her. That the bars were pushing against her sides, poking at her, making fun of her. Her hands were reaching for something, anything, and anyone to hold on to. But there was no one. The diamonds were jabbing at her skin. She couldn't breathe. Crack! Her bones were being crushed by the ever-shrinking cage. The bars pressed on her limbs, pressed on her heart and she was soon out of breath. Her hands fell limp before an abyss of black swallowed her whole.

***

Bora woke up from her slumber with a jerk, hitting her head on the shelf set low above her worktable. She hissed as her hands found their way to her skull, rubbing it in circles to soothe the pain. She stood up and her right foot went flying to the shelf hitting it in one angry kick. A clutter of palettes, paintbrushes and empty cans of paints spilled on the concrete floor of her cabin.

Her father had built an outbuilding in their backyard for Bora to have a place to paint, her personal art studio. It was a comfy shelter. The cabin was dimly lit by a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling as well as several windows to use and abuse of the natural light as much as possible. Right now, it was the middle of the night and it was dark outside.

She instantly regretted her outburst, as she stared at the mess. One hand went to her forehead and the other to her hip as she stood still. Her head hurt and she had an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach that told her she just had a nightmare