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“You’re a caged animal!”
The allegory of the cave is a thought experiment by Plato, related to the nature of learning. It describes prisoners locked within a cave, forced to watch shadows dance on cold, stone walls. When one prisoner escape, they relay with endless admiration the depths of the true world just over their shoulders, within their grasp. The prisoners are not moved to action.
Shadows and cave is all they know. There is no true world; there is only the cave.
Well, AJ thinks she knows a thing or two about caves. The smell: rot, stale water. The taste: regrets, relief, a question with little answers. It speaks of not shadow play, but of shadow figures, tall and armed to the teeth. Commands, instructions. Glass bottles with slow acting poison and passion.
A woman in black. A past. A future.
AJ likes the allegory of the cave. She tells it to Ghostie, to R, to Drift once upon a stolen midnight, the two drenched in starlight and deception, bodies pressed together.
1. EXT. OUTSIDE THE ACADEMY WALLS, A DREAM LONG SINCE DEAD, THE CORPSE ROTTING — NIGHT
AJ (note — she means it): Which do you think you are?
[Drift just smiled.]
DRIFT (unsure? nervous? afraid? how long has she been lying?): I’ll have to think about it.
[It bothers her, such a non-answer, but like most things she re-orientates them back to safer ground when she feels the heat rising too fast up her neck.]
AJ (with bile crawling up throat, with open flesh wounds): Open book, why the hesitancy? Scared of a little internal conflict?
It’s always so easy to be funny, to be flirty. Drift flushes, and it all fades away.
Her answer, on the other hand, has always came quick to her. AJ does not suit the role of prisoner. She has found herself in the position numerous times, naturally; stolen drinks, venomous words, dangerous magic. But it can never last. AJ is not one for staying. Therefore, what cave and all its dancing shadows could entertain a mind always in motion? Shackles do not suit her; too much silver and brutality.
(She is aware that the point is that to the prisoners, this is reality, not just entertainment. In honesty, she just cannot imagine herself bound for too long without shaking. AJ keeps going forward, forward like a shark in the water on the blood trail. There is no time to consider stillness. She cannot really stay. She never learned how to).
So of course, AJ is not the prisoner in the cave. AJ is the philosopher, Plato, filled with an intellect and an abundance of unending audacity to turn around and walk out. She would storm through the mouth of the hollow, silvery penitentiary with the great ambition to break the chains of her follow captives. That’s what this is all about, right? Rebellions live and die on their sparks of change, of breaking out prisoners of mundanity, sparks that are fanned into blazing infernos. AJ is a pretty good inferno. A pawn on her way to be promoted to queen. Move along the monochrome lines. Check.
Would they listen?
Would they listen.
Would they all just fucking listen—
That, AJ cannot start to phrase.
God, it is easy to think herself that great thinker. Boring. So, now, let’s say, for the sake of experimentation, of thought and wonder, let’s say AJ is one of the prisoners in the cave. Let’s think, for just a moment, just a breathe, that AJ sits, damned and destitute, watching the ways the puppet show swirls and waltzes upon cobblestone. Iron digs into her wrists, cold metal biting like rats in science labs, in cages with medicines and toxins pumping along their bloodstreams, like dogs shocked to learn how to help each other, to learn help is not coming.
Here is the shadows: her life, in perpetual present. Motion, growing and shifting and never staying. A rebel with a cause, drunk on the fury and the proclamation of destruction. AJ, a girl with a sharp tongue. A hound, all bark, all bite. Her bite is, of course, fierce, digs in with teeth like daggers. Every good attack hound needs a weapon. Drenched in poison, she meanders the halls and the crypts with a mission. Women to entertain, skins to scurry beneath, food supplies to ruin, bodies to bury — the full monty.
Drift, her brown curls framing her freckled cheeks. Her hand in AJ’s own. Her face, empty. Drift, motionless.
2. INT/EXT. EVERYWHERE AT ALL TIMES - DAY/NIGHT/THE ENDLESS MARCH
DRIFT (silent): I will never leave you, AJ. I will always stay unmoving, and I will never change.
Here is the shackles: Well, does she really have to say it?
Here is the escapee: More complex. She is, naturally, the real escapee, the real philosopher. For this experiment, however, the idea of the escapee — it does not come with much ease. Too many options and none fit very well. Pencil that for later discussion.
(There’s an answer on her lips, but in this experiment saying it aloud makes her stomach drop. An escapee at the entrance. A shadow that engulfs the false world).
Here is the mouth, here is the true world: AJ is honest. She confesses like a sinner on death’s doorstep. Nothing will ever be the same. There is anger, hatred, shock.
And then. God, and then.
Then it goes a little something like this: A hot summer’s night, sometime in the future. A house of her own. Drift, mid snort, laughing at something stupid AJ has just told her. She’s a baker girl from Ashford. She is a Princess from Thornreach.
Here, she is AJ’s. Real and genuine. No strings attached.
Sunlight streaks through an open window. The air smells of fresh fruit and a home cooked meal. AJ winds her arms around Drift’s waist, pulling her amused beau against her awaiting chest with a hungry grin. Kisses are mellow, long, a surrender onto thee endless devotion and affection. They do not descend into salty gasps and lavender fields that smell like liquor and remorse. They break apart for air, and lean in for more. More, more, more and more. AJ is a ravenous lover, selfish and wanting. Drift smiles easy, and endows her with her wishes. The two rest every night. They sleep in.
There is no cruel monarchy, no watchful rebellion. There are friends on the weekends, dinners and catch-ups and inside jokes. Plays to watch and books to read.
No one is angry anymore.
It’s a silly dream. Unbefitting, really. In fact, it is so saccharine it makes her gag, just a tad. This mouth, this true world. Indulgence has never been her forte; she has always been better at self-destruction.
But it’s just an allegory. Just a thought. Besides, she’s the escapee, remember? She’s already in the true world. And get this — Plato was kind of full of horse shit. The true world, the one over your shoulder? It’s dark and cold and lonely. Drift is gone and no one will ever love her like that again.
That’s why she belongs to the true world. Her dreams are fallacies that slip away into nothingness and mourning anyway, so there is no harm living in sorrow. Pain and suffering? That’s real. She once saw herself at Ghostie’s side, pressed against her knight in shining armour forevermore, some sweet fairytale ending, some play where everything goes right for the poor girl and her crow down on their luck. That was the falsity, that was the shadows on the wall. It fell through her fingers like sand in an hourglass. She was naïve, yearning like a school girl. She thought pretty girls with pretty lives would rescue her. But pretty girls with pretty lives have pretty lofty expectations. AJ is a bit of a liability.
And yet, the hourglass flips and the air is full again. She saw herself in Drift’s arms. Idiot. Can you not smell the ocean swelling, the tiding swallowing the land whole? Guess class was once again in session.
The true world is cruel. Cruel and real. AJ likes real. It’s not that pretty, and it lacks expectations, fantasies, nice messages for readers to interpret. Liabilities get to be pawns and princesses go back home when the magic wears off.
AJ left the cave a while ago, no doubt about that. Yes, AJ left that stupid cave and she had a brilliant idea. Why go back at all? Why bother? Go find the other escapees. Relish in your awful, ugly freedom together. You are free. You are free. They will never learn, and you will never convince them anything. Stop trying to look behind, there’s nothing there, AJ. Keep looking forward. Keep marching on.
Rebels love bright young minds with eyes like a tempest, raging private wars in pubs and market squares. She barely had to ask. One second she was AJ the escapee and the next she was AJ the rebel. AJ the dragon rider. AJ the culprit, AJ the liar, AJ the who and the why and the pawn moving desperately across the board, sneaking past knights and bishops who sneer and scoff and scrutinise. Sweat beads on her brow. There is a promotion at the end of the horizon. Bathed in glory, she will win, she will win and everything will be fine and worth it and fine. Don’t look behind you, don’t turn around, eyes on the prize. Don’t look over your shoulder, it’s just the rest of the true world. AJ, why do you want to look over your shoulder? Stop that. There is nothing there.
Was it always so dark in here? Did it always smell of damp and smoke? When did the academy become so suffocating, her room so small, the taste of dirt so nauseating?
Did Plato feel this way too, when he began to think of the cave and its occupants? Did it choke him, wake him up in the dead of night, trickle down his throat with every swung of an amber-coloured bottle? How about the escapee? Did it kill him to leave? Did the true world scare him? Did it still, deep down, feel like a cave? Like a cage, like a prison, like a crypt, like hell itself. AJ is in hell itself, sinking and swaying and buried under the dirt.
Sometimes, she fears she never made it out of the human deathtrap.
Sometimes, she wonders if she ever left the cave at all.
And then—
And then—
And then—
Goddamn it all, fine, AJ is not fucking Plato. Plato was a man a million miles away who spoke with a thousand tongues. AJ is a woman who speaks in hushed whispers and booming soliloquies. She is no philosopher, not really. Plato got out of the cave; AJ just found herself in one much, much bigger. The crumbling walls of stone and gold are doused in beautiful, horrifying technicolour, and as AJ moves her hand along its facade, the paint chips, layers itself upon the dirt and congealed blood beneath her fingernails. Highlights and lowlights create a perfect fantasy, a kingdom standing proud and true against an enemy, a rebel tucked neatly away behind the barricades. A gilded cage — but a cage all the same.
There is no promotion for pawns like her, not in this game of chess, not one teetering constantly on the edge of checkmate, of stalemate, of pieces-flung-of-the-table-in-rage-mate.
Plato wrote books on thought experiments. Plato moved minds to creation, to rats in cages, to dogs getting shocked and lying down to whimper. AJ is the dog, the rat in the cage, biting down hard on the hand that hurts and the hand that feeds. She bites and she bites and tears away at everything, tears hopelessly at her shadow play, her cage, her cave — but the shocks still course through her veins, the puppet show remains.
She could leave the cave. She should leave the cave. She knows the entrance is behind her. And here of course lies the rub: she too is still the escapee. A woman with the face of everyone she has ever loved, clothes stained in gore and pain and regret. The person who can free her, herself.
Life in perpetual present. Osteon, sword of Damocles. What lies behind the cave has teeth of its own. No wonder they call it a mouth.
She too is still the escapee. Still to the prisoner in chains. Still to the cave itself, yawning and grand, holding onto every troubling thought lingering in unpleasant memories and unpleasant girls. This is her home. These chains, these shadows, these walls. So violently does the pawn know the game, does the rat know the cage, does the prisoner know the escape. Violence breeds violence, bleeds violence, cherry red and oozing down broken skin; AJ stands in her cage, in her cave, fist coiled not to punch back but to lavish in the agony, feel bones break and eyes bruise violet and mahogany.
Plato, beg her this, beseech onto thee a new thought experiment created by nasty, unpleasant rebel girls with swollen eyes and bleeding noses, with rotting limbs and decaying skeletons. Girls who know love, loss, betrayal, chess, poetry, glowberries and true worlds.
Plato, there is no true world for rebel girls. No mouth with shaved teeth that bite down on shackles, no warm summer nights with lovers.
There are only caves. Only shadows. Only chains.
“A cage is all I’ve ever known.”