Spoiler! :
Okay, I know this story is awful. Any way to fix it, critiques, comments would really help. I wanted to do something different, not just random with this prompt and I think I have a general idea down but am not sure how to proceed with this.
Bethelem Royal Hospital, London, 1791.
My eyes wonder. They drink in the colors that I haven’t seen in months. The rich come to see me, finally come to watch me perform. I will be great. Soon my career will go beyond this cage. This job, playing something I’m not. But I am so wonderful at it. I hear the applause as I take a bow, the chains attached to my ankles and wrists clap too, hitting together in a metallic cheering. My eyelids slip closed as my body tips forward, torso angled toward the floor and I imagine money being thrown. Coins bouncing off my toes, off the cobbled floor. That’s what the manacles remind me of. I right myself then dip my torso down again. The perfect stage man’s bow, what I have been practicing all year—has it been a year?
I crack my eyes open a small bit, enough to be able to see my calendar but not enough for the audience to see what I’m doing. My hand strains against the cuff but I manage to hold my arm parallel to my stomach, just like I am going to bow for them again. My eyes trace over the calendar, the lines I had to draw in my blood on the inside of my arm. I count the tally-marks counting the fifty-two slashes on my skin. Exactly a year and my audience still comes to cheer for me.
Something hits my calf; I bend down farther toward the ground. The chains won’t let me find the treasure that some one has thrown to me. I have to scoot back. My left foot steps back, the chain starting to pool under my sole; my right follows, the slack letting me sit with out straining. I lie on my belly, my ribs almost directly on the bricks beneath me. But my fingers can reach out now. I stretch as far as possible until my finger brushes a soft thing. I touch the thing one of my adoring fans has tossed to me.
My fingers wrap around it. The present. It is too soft, not a coin like usual; I touch it, brushing my fingers across the spongy exterior. I bring it to my mouth and breathe deeply. A laugh sounds from somewhere on the other side of the cage. My beautiful audience can’t believe that I don’t know what has been given to me. I of all people should know what to do with this, a prop. So I act. I act like I know what it is and bring it to my lips, my touch pushing past the thin skin that is stretched tight above my chin. It tastes salty, like a tear and feels like cake. My sandpaper tongue, dry and rough slides across it making small flecks stick to my mouth.
I think back to my calendar, to the small crisscross marks that tell me how long this job has lasted. They seem longer, like my skin has stretched them over my bones. The skin pulls taunt as I move with the cuffs on my wrist, my arm small enough now for the cuff to go almost up my arm. The bones make it stop before it can reach the other side of my wrist, impossible to break free.
Something else flies, sailing through the arm until it hits my head. My brain rattles and my mind spins. On the floor is a cup, small and metallic, empty of everything but air. I blink quickly as the cup falls out of focus, blurring gray against the darkness of the floor.
“Now you’ve done it!” The first real words I’ve heard in days. The cheering of my watchers the only thing my ears are used to. The words make my brain struggle to understand them, to put the sentence together logically. They are harsh, the words, full of force and annoyance. Voice deep, controlling belonging to a guard more than likely. They have never appreciated me, always the ones shooing away the audience, always making me angry with them.
Nothing else coherent is said. The real words die and are replaced by whispering ghosts. No real meaning is there that I can comprehend. But there are lots of ghosts now, talking, murmuring around me. I can see their outline in my dimming vision; hear their footsteps as quiet as my hesitating heart. But I don’t move, I play the part they have awaited: the death of a man.
It's like... you go from island to island, but there aren't any bridges, so you (and we) have to jump over the water. I'm sure that all these details are an important part of the story, and I respect that, but I guess you just introduce the new things too quickly. Of course, you have a limited number of words, so you kind of do need to rush a bit, I guess.
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