Ghost Cage

Small town, the American dream. A blue-collar family living the idyllic rural lifestyle. Nothing is out of place save for the lacking white picket fence - and the old JAIL that occupies the 2nd floor of their century-old home. Seth Delray knew the possibilities before he moved his wife and two kids into the old jailhouse, but the Sheriff assured him that it would take an act of God to put that place back into service. Times were tight, and it was just too good of a deal to refuse. That is, until the county jail caught fire. The Sheriff's hands were tied and he had to put displaced inmates anywhere he could find iron bars with a locking door. The Delray house was his only option. For Seth the worst wasn't the criminals locked like animals in the soiled cages above his living room. It was the mortal fear in his children's eyes, it was the piercing cold looks from his wife. It was that deep, dark creeping recognition that something had happened there, something terrible, something that would grip his soul with hundred year old hands squeezing hate from unknown depths. No longer did the birds sing upon the morning lit branches beyond the barred windows of the old jailhouse. No one could know the confinement of such a place and the horror it brings... the bleak hopelessness of one without freedom... ...the inescapable iron bars of guilt and regret into which revenge imprisons a man's mind. —Anonymous