The Labyrinth of Souls

by Nelson Lowhim

  Her heels move towards me. I hold my breath, hoping she’ll speak to me. Her voice, I need to hear it. But instead she laughs, mockingly, and stand in front of me. I half wonder if I should lean forward. As if they know, the guards come from behind and hold my hands, twisting them way past the normal comfort level.

  I open my mouth to protest. She shushes me.

  “Don’t speak.” But she whispers this too and I have no idea if I should know her voice. It sounds a little too much like all Yankee-white-middle class and above chicks try to sound. Or perhaps I’m being too angry.

  Her heels come into view at the bottom of my hood. I see the pumps, the frilly laces that wrap her feet. They are sensuous, these heels, though I’ve never been one to like shoes, truly never understood the city-culture of wanting things that were beautiful but lacking in utility. But perhaps that’s why I’m here.

  And as the room falls silent, and the two men twist my arms ever tighter, threatening to pop them from their shoulder joints. I sense that something is going to go wrong. That something horrible, in fact, will happen to me. The silence rings in my ear, and the pain returns, with a vengeance.

  I try to lean back, take some pressure of my bones. But the men push me forward. One places his foot on my calf, stretching my ankle joint. I feel each individual ligament stretch to the tearing point. It was the same ankle that I tore up during an especially bad jump in the army. I’m sure they knew this.

  Beads of sweat regroup on my forehead. I try to wiggle.

  “Take it easy, little boy,” says the woman, still in a whisper, but there are the hints of her voice. Between her vowels there’s an accent to her words. She’s not born of this country. For a second I feel like I’ve found a friend. But that evaporates in a heartbeat.

  The pain? Yeah, that’s sending a nausea up my throat, little hints of a dry heave form. But it’s not that makes me lose hope. It’s the overwhelming way she increases her American accent, or the parts of her language that are American are extremely American. It means she wants to be labeled as such, or be more American than others, and that usually means that she’s overcompensating.

  My hood is ripped off, burning my chin and I’m face to face with her, she’s leaning over me. The perfume is strong. I squint, slowly getting used to the increase in light, and when I open my eyes I’m not sure I recognize her. She might be a friend of a friend, but I do know her. She’s gorgeous. A perfect smile and a facial structure of perfect symmetry as well.

  “Am I beautiful?”

  Again my pain has gone.

  “Don’t be shy.” One foot of hers moves in between my legs. In an instant I’m enthralled, but when she presses down, catching my balls between her feet and the floor, the pain rushes back. I try to move, but there’s no chance of that, the guards are holding me tight.

  “You coward. Trying to kill innocents and now you’re scared of the consequences?” Her voice is cold, the smile as evaporated.

  From my balls the pain spreads to my guts, my legs, my chest. I quiver, trying to hold back the dry heaves.

  And like that the hood is back on and I’m dealing with the pain. Oh pain. And I think on my wife. I’m not sure, but I feel like this is the first time in a long time, and I try to remember her face, but I can’t. And I try to remember her touch, but even that is barely a memory. So I finally try to remember the sense of haven ghee in my arms, of all the times we laughed and held each other and talked. Nothing. Just when I wonder if it’s all worthless, a warm feeling runs through me, fills me, takes away the pain. I do need to find her. But how?

  And the warmth diffuses into the air and it turns cold; all of my skin cold and I can’t help but want to cry and cry out, but I need to stay strong, but that too is only an ideal, one I can’t touch, and all that’s attached to it or the cause of it doesn’t seem to make sense, because why would I care about looking good or appearances when I’m here, the pain being the only thing I know and the only thing I truly want isn’t honor or dare I say love, but simply the lack of pain, or the ceasing of pain and I need it or I will break, each bone with shatter, and that’s all I can think about and now my wife is no longer a memory, she’s only a word in my mouth, one I can roll with my tongue and think on the vowels and consonants that make the word but the thing is no longer something I can grasp, only the pain, and the breaking down of each body cell of mine and my mind... well it’s putty now. Sniveling and sad.

  When it feels that I can’t take anymore, the guards yank me to my feet, leaving the hood on, and I’m taken to the couch, held tightly as I can barely stand on my two feet.

  “You still going to play the tough guy?” asks the man on the couch. The writers to either side of him seem bored.

  “I did—I won’t.” I’m not sure. All I know is I don’t want the pain. A part of me is sure that perhaps I have done something wrong, but surely what is civil disobedience is different than the other things I’m sure they’re accusing me of. Of course, that’s an ignorant point of view, one that requires a complete lack of historical knowledge. In this country alone there were a few men who had dared to be civil about their standing up to great powers, and look what happened to them. Some of them died. Except I’m not entirely sure, right now, as to what I’m fighting for; or perhaps I am but I know that unlike that affair there will be no one to follow me. That’s the trick, isn’t it? In this country, or world perhaps, you need others to follow you. That will give you strength. Power grows from the barrel of a gun, but it doesn’t really. You can only hold a gun for so long. Have someone else on board and now that gun is threatening for a lot longer. Or perhaps that has been my mistake from the beginning: I’m straddling my military background too much (while at the same time trying to chuck it I’ve used it as a source of strength, oh how confused and teeny of me) while at the same time trying to make sense of the civilian philosophers I’ve known, or read, or heard slightly alluded to. Perhaps that too is my mistake. I’m reading, of course, but I’m also being influenced by the same society I’m trying to change. Perhaps that is the battle cry of the fooled. I see a handful of out of context quotes on Facebook, or perhaps even on the mainstream media, and they sink in. One can only fight them off for so long, but they will sink in and influence you, bit by bit. Goebbels was right, and he should be plastered above every single ad and news agencies’ ethos plaque.

  I teeter, feeling the silence and the eyes in the room upon me. The pain still lives on, pulsating through my body, finding reasons to scream in my ear. A coldness, sharper than before, hits me, but I’m not sure what to make of it. It settles in my gut. The body knows that something is amiss.

  “I want to see my wife,” I say. My body flinches at this last bit of recalcitrance in me. I’m not even sure where it came from. I hadn’t been thinking ton my wife.

  “Oh?” the man says.

  I stare at him. His face is shiny, like he dabs lotions of exotic sorts on it. I feel small when I realize that a horrid smell, one that reeks of decay, is coming from me, while he smells like a fresh shower. He smiles.

  The writers smile as well. The whiter one speaks: “I think he deserves to know. After all, we aren’t barbarians.”

  The man sighs and flashes a look at the writer. That they aren’t on the same page soothes me some. Perhaps I can play one off the other. Or perhaps I have a chance if they aren’t so united. And perhaps I’ll find out about my wife. The writer doesn’t seem to budge. That too is refreshing.

  “We’ll get to that,” the man says looking back at me. “What do you say to that, George?”

  So he knows my name. Did he tell me his? I can’t recall.

  That I automatically want to grovel makes me sick. “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know what?” The man’s eyes narrow. “I know that you have some military in you. Don’t forget your place, or else your life will be much harder.”

  “I don’t know, sir,” I say. I look down at my feet. They’re red, scratched up. I’m not sure when
that happened either. I see an ant crawling up, and instead of trying to shake it off, I feel instant companionship with it.

  “Look,” says the man, anger moving into his voice. “I’m not sure if you think we’re playing a game, but you had better start giving us what we want.” His voice increases in volume. “Or else I’ll have you on your knees until you break, then I’ll have the boys go at you with a pipe and then I’ll send you to that cell for a lifetime of silence. You’ll go crazy, everyone does. Soon you’ll never get a wink of sleep and your neighbors will scream all day.”

  “I didn’t hear any neighbors,” I say absentmindedly.

  “Of course you didn’t. You think we haven’t learned our lesson about being too nice? This prison,” he says and taps the floor with his feet. “Is state of the art. We learned from all our POWs returning, and how they held onto hope but tapping and what not. No longer. We now have silenced walls and completely encapsulated cells.” He puffs out his chest. “You’ll find no hope anywhere.”

  I stared at the man. He smiles again, and he seems genuinely concerned.

  “Uh,” I say, as my voice cracks. I’m fine, I try to think, but my body betrays me. There is no hope, there is no freedom. And with this man, whatever his name is, acting so cordially and so concerned, perhaps it’s true that I’m the terrorist. That I’m in the wrong. A hater of innocents. All school textbooks and history book son the matter would point to that fact, wouldn’t they? And so I think in that manner, but it still seems odd, and a piece of my gut cries out against this, reminds me of what this place is. But the pain. I cannot put up with that, can I?

  “Isn’t there something about creating a cell that would have driven our POWs mad or to early deaths, that seems...” I pause. The man looks like a growl’s forming on his lips. I’m acting like I have a spine. They won’t like that.

  “I mean—“

  “I know what you mean,” he says, snarling again. “I know exactly what you mean. You really are broke.”

  And the way the man says it tickles something in the back of my brain. “Behemoth?” I whisper; softly enough that I’m sure no one hears me. But the man winks, and I stare hard, because he looks and moves nothing like Behemoth did. And it hits me, and hits me hard: the woman I saved was the woman in the heels. Didn’t she recognize me? Why would she make me hurt like that when it was I who saved her? And before I can think that perhaps I’m trying to assign too rational a thought to what is inherently an ape—all of us that is—I think that perhaps she was forced to do what she did, that if she didn’t more suffering would have come to her, and perhaps to me, and I shouldn’t blame her. But there’s still the relish in her eyes that I must explain, and I can’t. Or there’s the men, or other prisoners in the cages.

  My field of vision closes in on the man I’m sure is Behemoth. I must have collapsed because the next thing I know—even though I didn’t pass out—is that the guards are holding me by the armpits. Pain straightens out and clears my mind, before it sends it right back into a haze.

  “Looks like our weakling can’t handle the facts.”

  “What facts?” I say, though I know better than to argue. Why don’t they just make me sign a confession and let me go?

  Why make me suffer? But oh, how I know the answer to that question. How I know that the reasons for torture; the reason to melt a man down, separate him from his soul, steal it from him, leave nothing but the flesh behind, the reason for all that is an explanation of morality, that one cannot allow more people to die for what is just one man; but I also know that there are the real reasons and that is the anger, the won’t to see a man suffer and bear a cross for all your sins, and with your teeth gritted you will claim the higher moral ground, but you will enjoy his suffering and you will inflict it without much concern to the secondary need of information or whatever other moral argument you have used because you have already gained the moral high ground, haven’t you? And so you must now know you’re better no matter what and why not just get your kicks in?

  I shiver.

  “You mentioned your wife. I didn’t want to go into it, but she wants nothing to do with you. We told her about your attempts to tear down the world. She’s signing the divorce papers right now.” And with that, the man who must be Behemoth looks at one of the guards and I’m dragged by my arms the hood roughly placed over my head.

  I close my eyes. When will this stop?

  I pulled up on my feet and find myself in a dark room. A light goes on in another room. It’s a one way mirror. There’s my wife, sobbing over the speaker. Behemoth is across the table from her.

  Seeing her cry, knowing our past, I try but can’t stop tears from welling in my eyes.

  “I’m sorry Miss, Behemoth says. But we felt you had to know.”

  “I can’t believe it,” says my wife, sobbing. “How could he?”

  “He was broken, Miss. I’m sorry. But you can sign this and sever all contact. Everyone will understand. You can’t go living like this. No one wants you to. Think of your family. Hell even his family has disowned him.” He slides the papers in front of her.

  She picks up a pen. “This is final,” she asks. Her hand is shaking and her voice trembles.

  “No,” I say. But I’m being firmly held in place.

  My wife pauses. Did she hear? The guards must have sense this because a rag is stuffed into my mouth.

  She signs it. The light goes out.

  The hood over my head, I’m dragged again. There on the couch is the man who must be Behemoth and the two writers.

  “You bastard,” I say.

  “It was never going to work, admit it,” he says.

  “This is your revenge?” I say, trying to sound strong, trying to think of bluff or showing a bluff where I don’t care what he’s doing or what my wife’s doing. But again my body betrays me, and instead of saying something a squeak comes out of my throat.

  The man throws his head back and laughs. And in the depths of his mouth I see sharp teeth. It is Behemoth.

  “Looks like someone doesn’t like the consequences of what he does,” says the whiter writer.

  I have no energy.

  “Sign,” Behemoth says. He shows me a piece of paper.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “Your confession.”

  “It’s blank,” I say.

  “We both know what you did.”

  I shake my head. Surprised that I’m still willing to take more pain that will inevitably be sent my way.

  “You’re trying my patience,” says Behemoth. “You will sign it.”

  “Listen,” says the darker writer. “Don’t be a goon. Just sign it. Then you can be on your way. You can go back to living your life.”

  “What life?” I ask, angry now, because I know both these writers have only ever liked seats of power and not anything ideal in their lives. “Am I to listen to a writer who never bites the hand that feeds him? Who has never known starvation?”

  “Don’t be a fool,” he says. “Only fools bite the hand that feeds them.”

  “And yet you asked that of others,” I say, happy now because the anger is giving me strength to argue on.

  Both the writers, under Behemoth’s gaze, shake their heads as if something is above me.

  “You are a fool. No one will miss you,” says the whiter writer.

  “And you’re the biggest tool of all,” I retort.

  It’s all I get to say. A the flick of a finger, the guards batter the back of my knees and thighs with rods of high tensile strength, and I feel the hood and I’m dragged back to the cell.

  When I’m thrown in all I get from the guards is a: I hope you like being alone. You’re going to rot for that.

  But they leave me. I use whatever’s left of my energy to bang the walls to either side of me. To no avail. I sit there and wonder. My wife seemed so real. They said she was signing the divorce papers that she wanted nothing more to do with me. Surely it was only a mater of her having been a pawn in t
heir game. They must have filled her with so many lies that she didn’t know which way was up. She wasn’t trained for such things. She was never meant to fight against such an onslaught. At the end of the day she’s another person who believes whole heartedly in the government and the fourth estate and the amount of money all that creates. Most people are. The ones who don’t are the extremists. That too I let sink and burn my insides. I’m an extremist, no matter what I say. No matter what I bear witness to. That’s what I am and what I will be.

  I lean back. At least they’ve left me alone.

  They don’t, though. I’m not allowed to sleep all night. Each time I doze off, the speakers blare the screams of some inmate. Other time it’s a moan of pain, a cry to a God of some kind, but it’s always loud enough that I awake. So this is their game. Of course it is.

  When I finally give up trying to sleep, I assume that it’s time for me to get some breakfast, it must be morning, right? But nothing but silence,or a piercing sound in my ears meets me. I steel myself, wonder how I’ll wait this out. Three days and one dies from a lack of water, right? Surely I can do that. But to be extinguished in such a dull manner, what does that mean? Who does that help?

  The thought of my wife sinks me farther into a depression. I surely will die here, and I surely will become nothing but a speck. Maybe they’ll bury me out to sea. That seems to be the prevailing standard operations in our great nation. Perhaps they mean to tie themselves wholly to the items in the past: perhaps it was they who taught all those third and second world despots how to clear out their dissenters via sea burials. It does tend to help in erasing a person’s history.

  But my wife only signed on (ex I assume) because she believed what they said. There’s a chance that if I go to her, that if I get the chance to speak to her, that I can at least see love in her eyes.

  Yes, this is what I need. I feel energy restoring itself in the cells of my body. I will find her out.