by Amy Solus
Chapter 11
There is no sleeping in in a place like this. We are awoken by the sound of clinking bells-- the ones you would’ve found in a high school from the past. There is little sound in our cell block. Little needs to be said; most of us are content now that our friends have been returned, but I am not content. I could scream right about now.
The floor is icy cold and my feet tingle as I step around the scars scratched into the floor and peek my head out between the bars of my cell.
Down the row there are two guards. The curly-haired one and the one who had killed the girl walk in unison, inspecting each inmate in their cell. The curly-haired one has a clipboard with a piece of paper clipped on the front and an old-fashioned fountain pen. You’d think the government could find some decent pens for their own.
I pull myself back into my cell and sit down with my back against the wall. Their footsteps echo down the hall, mirroring a ticking clock and reminding us that the louder the footsteps, the sooner they will be in front of our stall asking whatever it is that they’re asking. Perhaps it’s about Taylor.
Really though, why should I care? Why does it even matter? Mara and Taylor’s business is their own, isn’t it? Should I even involve myself with them? I stop, pressed with this thought, and sigh. What else am I going to do? I need to get out. I cannot stay here. I cannot continue on like I was before. I need somewhere I can find stability. I cannot be stable alone, as much as I wish I could.
I guess this thought has been bothering me for awhile now. Why them? Because I can see some of my ideals in them. Or perhaps because I Think I see something in them, but really I’m just grasping for someone or something to keep me sane. I don’t want to go off the deep end. I also don’t want to die. We have a common bond. I have no doubt that I dislike this shit government just as much as them. I’m done with running, always running. I need to be surrounded by people who aren’t out to steal from me or if it comes to it, kill me.
I need to get out. Out and away.
Their footsteps continue on for half an hour and by the time they reach my cell and come to a halt, it feels as though the clock just struck midnight; ringing and chiming at an uncomfortable volume.
I look at the two men carefully. The curly-haired man is taller and has much broader shoulders than the other. He resembles something mighty, something honorable. The other does not-- nothing even remotely attractive or admirable. If I had to say an animal that he reminds me of I would say a weasel or maybe a large red-eyed, disease-carrying rat. I’ll refer to him as the rat-guard from now on.
“Hello my dear,” says the rat-guard with his nasally sounding voice, “We’re just walking by-- asking to see if anyone has any information they might be willing to share about a fellow inmate whose name is Taylor. She has a terrible habit of not speaking, so we’re unable to, well, barter with her. Would you happen to know anything about her?”
He looks down at me with those beady, rat-like eyes of his. I ponder at what I should do. What I should say. I need to do something, but I don’t want to make a poor decision and put someone else’s life in jeopardy.
“Are you talking about the girl who’s mute?” I ask.
“Yes, it would be just so incredibly kind of you to share information with us about that poor dear,” says the rat-guard.
He sounds so corny when he says that, like he’s just jumping with an uncontrollable amount of glee and happiness. What a joke.
“I know something about her. And I know you’ve got the wrong person. Please don’t hurt her.” I try to sound as guilty as possible and I think it works.
The rat-guard turns and looks at the curly-haired man and flashes his Cheshire grin. The curly-haired man scratches something onto the piece of paper on his clipboard and passes it to his counterpart. He pulls the key ring off of his belt loop and walks up to my cell, inserts the key in the lock, and opens the door.
“Get up, you’ve got to come talk to the warden about what you know,” he says softly. He looks me in the eyes yet again and I see an edge of panic in his eyes. He looks like he wants to warn me.
I stand up and he cuffs my hands together behind my back and leads me out of the cell. And yet, as we walk down the hall with the rat-guard trailing us, there is still no noise. It sounds almost as if the whole cellblock is dead. The silence pounds in my ears. I certainly hope my ears are just failing me.
We walk out through the field where we eat dinner and still no one is around. The place is completely barren. The rat-guard snickers a bit as I nearly trip over a rock that just lingered out of my trail of vision. The curly-haired one keeps me from falling, and he isn’t rough or violent in his aid.
Once we cross the field, I see a door that I had not noticed before. It is a dark iron door with many locks on it. The door is quite intimidating. It looks as though it may keep a monster locked behind it. I just wonder how I had not noticed it before. It must’ve always been there; you can’t just put in new doors in a prison anytime you want.
The rat-guard walks up and opens all of the locks on the door; some involving passcodes, some open with keys, and others just seem to be latches. There is a strange clicking noise after he finishes opening the last lock and the door pops open.
I wonder if there is a certain order that you have to unlock the locks to get in. I should’ve watched more carefully.
The rat-guard walks through the door and the curly-haired man leads me through and shuts the door behind us. I hear that same clicking noise as he finishes relocking the door.
The hallway is dark and narrow and I hope that there isn’t a staircase anywhere nearby, because if there is I will most certainly have a good chance of falling down it. I can hardly see a thing as he continues to lead me along.
We take a right, a quick left, and then another right and the rat-guard opens a door to a dimly lit room. A very large, masculine looking man sits in a large leather chair behind a rather large wooden desk. He has dark sandy blonde hair and very dark eyes. He’s looking down at the contents of his desk thoughtfully. He looks incredibly familiar in all of the wrong ways.
The curly-haired man leads me to a chair positioned in front of the large desk. As I sit down, I notice that the room is incredibly large and that the furniture strangely positioned, only taking up the first ten square feet of the room. Behind the large man, there is a large oak dresser to the left and a coat rack to his right. On the floor is a green and maroon elegant, Oriental rug.
As I nestle myself into the chair they had set out for me, I notice something else peculiar. Around the boundaries of the furniture it looks as though there are forms of people. Goosebumps crawl up and down my arms and I feel incredibly scared for the first time in a long time. I keep my cool, though. I can’t lose control.
The large man shuts the book he had been reading and moves it to the far right part of his desk. His desk looks unused and is probably unnecessary for his line of work.
He takes a drink of a dark liquid from a tall wine glass and I can hear the noise of him swishing it around with his tongue. I really wish he would just cut to the chase. He takes his time with that and finally sets down the glass.
As he took his sweet time drinking his beverage, I’m given the time to study this man closely. His dark eyes are as deep and empty as a black hole. I’d say that they were dark brown, but to be quite frank- they’re black, and I find that quite disturbing. He has a wide-set jaw and a similarly proportioned nose. His hair is cut short and side burns creep up on the edge of his face. He has a goatee, but stubble is sprouting around his beard and he’s beginning to look quite shaggy. He needs to shave. He isn’t just familiar; he is much more than that. As the memories of who this man may be flood my mind, the silence is broken.
“I’m sorry that the warden isn’t here to converse with you on the subject at hand,” he says with a fake smile, “I’m his replacement for the day.”
I nod and look down at my feet, desperately searching through m
y memories, trying to figure out whom this man is.
“I’ve been told you have some information on a topic I’m quite interested in,” he says with his liquid fire voice.
As his voice streams in and out of my mind, it hits me like a freight train. I realize who this man is and why he’s so familiar. I can’t believe how stupid I am to have gotten myself in this mess. This man is the man who sent his men chasing after me through that trap-city. He was the man who is our tyrant’s very own right-hand man-- the man with the brains and the brawn to conceive all of the completely diabolical things that have been done to this country, and to the world.
This man’s name is General Guerra and he is, unfortunately, one of the most fearsome men in the country.
He smirks as the realization of who he is flashes across my face. Fight or flight kicks in, and after weighing my options all I want to do is run away, run away as fast as I can, and never look back.
As I struggle to control my breathing in an attempt to keep myself from hyperventilating, I look down at my hands, which are trembling with the fear that is consuming my body, and try to calm myself. If I want to survive I cannot make any mistakes. I cannot throw my life or Taylor’s life away. I must be careful with my choice of words; words that may or may not trick the devil that sits across from me. The coincidence that we are locked behind a seemingly impenetrable door and I just referred to this man as the devil may not really be a coincidence.
I take long deep breaths, careful not to look up at this man. I’ll be especially wary of looking him in the eye. I have a feeling this man knows a liar when he sees one, it seems like it’d be difficult to trick him. I ask myself an unnerving question. How exactly do you ensnare the devil himself?
I feel his gaze on me and I almost begin to lose my breath again. Never in a million years did I ever think I’d be sitting in front of the man who sent my family to their graves, never did I think I would’ve put myself in this position willingly. All of the courage and hope I had built up in the past month is gone. I feel deflated and pathetic. I feel like the bug scurrying to find a secure hiding place again, but this time I’m stuck to sticky paper. It’s only a matter of time until I get squished.
“My dear, I don’t have much time,” he says in an insincere gentle tone. He says it in the kind of way that, if he could kill me and get the information quicker, he’d do it.
I struggle to rope in my thoughts. I can’t remember anything I had rehearsed before. Cat’s got my tongue.
“I promise I will give you a gift, if you tell me what I need to know.” I look up, not at his eyes, but maybe his neck. I’m trying to stop showing so much fear, but it’s nearly impossible. He’s looking at me as if I were an object; it makes me feel very uncomfortable.
The fact that he’s a ruthless murderer and that he may have been the one who willingly sent millions of people to their deaths doesn’t bother me as much as how he looks at me. I bet that not only is he a heartless monster, but he’s also a man who doesn’t treat women right. I have no doubt he’s a pig.
I feel a sharp surge of anger rise up in me and I want to scream at him. He makes me sick, and I just want to make myself clear. I want to be able to say what I want to say. Back when the world wasn’t controlled by an evil tyrant, we had these things call rights, and one of the most cherished of these rights was the right to freedom of speech. I feel my mind swerve off the track back into the lessons I had learned when I was still in school, but I force myself back into focus.
I’m angry. I need to get this insurmountable amount of rage out of me or else I’m going to make a fatal mistake. I think about maybe getting up and pacing or maybe doing jumping jacks, and then I remember that I’m in the presence of high officials; they’d probably think that I’m crazy and I don’t really have any information. And then they’d probably shoot me or not feed me for a week for wasting their time.
On my lap sit my hands, which have stopped shaking. I clench them, trying to release some energy out, and I remember what my plan had been to get out of this mess. I bring my right leg up and cross it over my left leg, with my ankle resting on the top of my thigh. I move my hand over the sole of my shoe and I trace the outline of my concealed weapon. I feel less afraid. I feel calm again. I take a deep breath.
“Taylor has nothing to do with the insurrection that may or may not be taking place in this prison,” I say firmly. Our eyes meet and I do not waver. I ignore the pang of fear in the pit of my stomach.
“How can you be so sure,” he says in cruel, yet sing-song sort of way, “Are you one of them? Are you a traitor to your nation?” That last snide remark pushes the fear out of my stomach and that rage comes racing back through my body.
“I am not a traitor. And no, I am not a part of this rebellion, but I can assure you Taylor holds no information. She’s a mute.”
“But alas my dear, one who does not speak is given all the time in the world to listen, and in turn gain the knowledge that I so desperately need.” He continues to look me in the eye and he smirks a little. I want to slap that smirk off his face.
My hands begin to tremble again. I search through my mind for words to respond with, but the fear and the rage in me is distracting, making it impossible for me to think. I race to recover my thoughts and he chuckles a little, noticing my lack of composure.
“She’s nothing but a decoy, a safe with no lock. Even if she holds the information, you’ll never get it out of her. She can’t speak. She was born with a deformity in her tongue making her incapable of forming words and she never learned how to write. She lived in poverty.” All of that is hopefully a very convincing lie, and I look up to Guerra pursing his lips in thought. He must be falling for it.
“Or maybe she’s as much of a liar as you are,” he spits. He stands up and knocks back his desk, which I will remind you is larger and much heavier than he is, and rests his hands on his desk as he stands. He looks very angry. I can tell he’s used to getting his way.
There’s a strange silence and my ears begin to ring. Vertigo hits me and I have to rest my head in my hands. As I recover my composure I look up and notice Guerra staring at me-- looking at me right in the eye.
He straightens back up and walks around his desk so he’s standing directly in front of me. He sits on the desk and then brings himself forward so our faces are basically inches away. He studies my face and chuckles to himself again.
“You’re the girl who was brought into our trap,” he smirks, “You’re the one who we almost lost, but alas we didn’t; we couldn’t let a girl as pathetic as you get away. We hold ourselves to the highest standards.”
He continues to stare at me. He looks quite amused. “Why were you wandering alone through the Midwest, may I ask? Stragglers aren’t supposed to have lasted so long; the fumes that have been hanging over the country should’ve destroyed every last bit of life.”
“You’re not a straggler are you? You must be a freedom fighter,” he says, “you hurt two of our men-- not just anyone can scrounge up the skill to fight two armed special police anytime they please.”
“As I said before, I am not a traitor,” I say softly, “I am not a part of any insurrection in this prison. I wish only to survive.” I cannot look him in the eye as I say this. I study the rug on the floor instead.
“Then, my dear, please tell me the truth about this girl. I know she is not a mute and I know she is a part of a group that is thinking up ways to make my life hell,” he says. He sounds firm, but the anger in his voice has left. He thinks I am sincere.
“I’m sorry, but what I’ve told you is all that I know. I know nothing more about the subject.”
“Then you may have some time to think about what you know and what those girls have told you and next time we speak you will give me all of the information you know, or I will not be as kind as I was to you this time.”
He smiles and the guards that brought me push me up and begin taking me out of the room. As we’re about to l
eave, they stop me and turn me around so I’m facing Guerra again.
“Please, make it easy on yourself. Remember everything they’ve told you. I don’t want to damage your pretty little face; you are one of the prettiest girls here.” He goes back and settles into his chair.
“And by the way, if your facts are inconsistent with Mara’s, you’ll both be put to death.” He smirks.
“Take her away. And by the way my dear, I’ll be seeing you in a week-- I hope you have all of your facts sorted out by then,” he says as he stands up and walks over to the oak dresser behind him.
As the guards lead me back to my cell, I stumble; my legs can hardly support me.
A wave of horror and fear washes over me and all I can think is: what have I done?
