Crown’s Plank (one) Solitary Confinement

Tobi could feel the minuscule twitching of the muscles just outside the outline of her lips. Her mind flashed to images of some sadistic puppeteer pulling the thin threads of her nerves until the curl of her mouth was curiously morbid. She imagined she could see a...

Crown’s Plank (two) The Labyrinth and Midnight

Tobi’s past constructed itself as a labyrinth in her mind. This labyrinth was in constant twilight with wind that whipped tall, evergreen hedges that made up the walls of its gnarled pathways. She was always in a sprint through the maze. Her mind’s eye saw...
Crown’s Plank (three) Compulsion

Crown’s Plank (three) Compulsion

Tobi wondered what time it was.  She dared not move from her seat to ask.  She had already learned the painful lesson that getting up and speaking were not options and that if she had a need, she was to sit quietly and wait for it to pass.  No one cared about her...

Crown’s Plank (four) Luminous Cries

Typically, these groups were held indoors. Unless… a penance was necessary. Breach of the rules at Crown’s Plank had many consequences, each depended on the infraction and the example that was to be made of the culprit. If an offense was such that it was...

Crown’s Plank (five) Submitting to Memory

The thought of her father brought with it, as always, crippling desolation.  Tobi’s grief over her father was such that she had not cried for him once since he had died.  Her heartache simply couldn’t be expressed through tears.  A stone lay in her stomach...

Crown’s Plank (six) Shanty Town Floor

The conversation looped. Each time it thrummed inside Tobi’s skull, her grief slipped a little further back to make way for her fury. Her breathing became labored and erratic, her eyes scanning the floor for anything sharp. She would prefer a carpenter’s...