by Ben Wise
“So ok, point the guns at the bad guys, save the day, it’s a great plan and all; but seriously, there are only four of us and I’m not exactly the soldier type,” Caitlin says.
“And neither am I,” I kick in.
“Do you even know where we need to go?” she asks.
“I saw the maps before,” Erik says with a nod. “Allison and I have that covered. Don’t worry. All we need you to do is keep watch outside while we deal with what’s inside. We’ll have the element of surprise, and if we keep a bit of speed to what we’re doing we’ll have no issues. If it’s necessary, there are additional people we can call in if we feel like we more firepower. But from experience these kidnappings tend to be by small teams and the best tactic is to hit them hard and fast before they’re able to react or get reinforcements.”
“I guess that makes sense.” I say.
“Well, we’re almost there, so get ready. This is going to happen quickly. Wait for Allison and me to go in. Stand outside until we give the ok to come in,” he says.
The van swerves violently as Erik rips the wheel to the left. Allison reaches over and taps on the seat in front of us.
“Heads up.”
She's already half out her door as the van screeches to a halt.
Caitlin tears the van’s sliding door open, using far too much force. She’s running off before it clicks in my mind that I too need to be running with them.
“Shit.” I jump out of the van trying not to look stupid.
Thankfully they haven’t gone too far ahead. Caitlin points towards the motel door nearest to us. Erik and Allison take up position on either side of the door while Erik points at the number to silently double check with Caitlin that it’s the right one. Caitlin nods to them impatiently.
Erik places his hand over the door handle and, with a thump of telekinetic force, flings the door open. Wood around the lock explodes into splinters. Allison is into the room milliseconds behind the door opening. One hand locks the small machine gun to her shoulder while the other is held out, palm forward, ready to perform any telekinesis. Erik is quickly into the room behind her. I have my arm around Caitlin to try and stop her from running in. So much for keeping watch.
“Shit.” The first noise to come from the room is Erik swearing.
Allison shouts out that it’s clear. Caitlin breaks free from my grip and runs into the room without a second thought. With nothing else to do I find myself tentatively stepping into the room to see what’s going on.
In the middle of the room, Cara lies on a bed face down with a black bag over her head. She struggles against ropes that tie her wrist and ankles together. Caitlin tries to calm her down and get the bag off her head while Erik attempts to use a small pocketknife to cut her free of the ropes without cutting her while she struggles.
A gentle hand on Cara’s shoulder seems to help her quiet a little. Erik is first to take advantage, sawing through the heavy ropes to free her hands. He moves down to free her ankles as Caitlin finally gets the bag off her head. Cara mumbles incoherently into the duct tape across her mouth. Despite the recognition in her eyes, they’re still wide open in panic. Caitlin tries to gently tear the tape from her lips. It stills leaves a red mark across her face.
Between heavy breaths, with eyes still wide open she cries out, “Run, you need to run.”
With One Stone
“Why did you come for me?” Cara says, devastated. She sluggishly gets to her feet, unsteady as she moves away from the bed.
“What’s wrong, Cara?” I ask. Why would she be so upset with our presence?
“They drugged me and left me as bait, you fools. Why else would they leave me here all alone? Please, you’ve got to get out of here. I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.”
To punctuate her point, the sound of multiple vehicles fills the room as they pull up outside. Too late. Boots hit concrete as Allison and Erik rush from the room with guns raised. They stand resolutely outside the room, statues against an inevitable flood. Then I watch their resolve fail them. They lower their guns, letting them fall to the ground and dropping their heads in turn, defeated. They couldn’t have done otherwise.
With an arm under Cara, I hold her steady as we walk out together. Twenty men, guns raised, stand arrayed against us. There’s little chance of avoiding our fate now.
“Well, well. Four little birdies caught with one stone.” Levia taunts.
I barely feel Cara recoil in pain as I squeeze her hand I’m holding tightly. I almost pull her off her feet as I tense in anger when Levia takes another step towards us.
“This is a good day. A number of significant members of the resistance all caught together. I think we might even make a special exception for you lot, because as tempted as I am to execute you all on the spot this could be quite the propaganda scoop. It’ll let us put a face to the terrorists. Show the public the consequences of complacency.
“Well don’t just stand there! Take them all into custody before they decide to do something stupid. Cuff them all,” she says, before pointing towards me, “but make sure you put that one out.”
Two soldiers step forward. One grabs me by the arm and roughly pulls me from Cara. I watch as the other swings the butt of his gun into her stomach. The last I see of her is the soldier grabbing her by the hair as she doubles over. The pain on her face tells a different story to just having her hair pulled. Then I’m pushed to the ground, face scraping against the concrete.
Allison puts up a brief struggle. She elbows one in the head when his hands wander too far. That earns her a punch in the face and a short trip to the pavement beside me.
I can almost feel each grain of dirt on the pavement grinding against my cheek. I definitely feel the prick of the needle as it enters my neck. Then the world is black once more.
Torture Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
The shock of waking up sends a jolt of adrenaline through me. The room is pitch-black.
Despite the darkness, I can tell I’m in an all-too-familiar setting. Barred window, solid steel door and a soreness in my muscles remind me that the past few days haven’t been just a dream.
Memories of the last time spent in a cell like this come flooding back; even a few I must have shut out. A shudder passes through me as I remember the abuse. It is cold comfort to know those guards can’t hurt me again.
The room freezes over, as unwelcoming as the last cell. Claustrophobia sets in. Naked; copper bracelets dig painfully into my back. My wrists are on fire, hands numb, locked behind me by thick plastic cuffs.
I try to calm my breathing. For a moment I wonder whether I just haven’t left the same nightmare.
No, this isn’t the same room. There’s something different; somebody else in the room. I hear the sound of their breathing across the room. I listen nervously. The darkness makes me hyper-aware. A moment later and I realise that it’s the sound of somebody softly breathing in their sleep. Who are they? Is it safe to try and wake them up? I sit myself up. Feet over the edge of the bed. I manage to stand up, with some difficulty.
Then the door handle rattles. Again? Maybe that’s what woke me? My heartbeat races, I remember what happens next. Where’s the bed gone? The lights flick on just as the door opens. Instant blindness. Light drilling into the back of my eyes, pain I could do without right now.
Slowly my vision returns. A dark shape hovers in front of me. My eyes focus, just in time to see that the dark shape is the butt of a rifle. It smashes into my nose, sending me flying backwards. I hit the concrete hard.
I find myself lying face first on the concrete floor, my eyes struggling to focus on the blood dripping from my nose. My head spins.
“Get up, please get up. You need to get up,” Cara’s voice begs me, twisted and distorted.
A thought in the back of my mind tells me to listen. Try, at least for her. It’s a battle with the agony spreading beyond my nose. Not fast enough; a boot connects with my ribs, sending me hurtling against the bed.
Just as I start to find some semblance of coherency somebody props me up into a sitting position. Tape applied roughly to my lips reignites the pain in my face. A black cotton bag gets shoved roughly over my head; a painful return to the black void. The metallic taste of blood overwhelms the only sense I have left.
Cara whimpers as she’s dragged next to me. And it kills me that I’m powerless to do anything for her. She’s there, only inches beside me and if only I could reach out and touch her, let her know I’m here and she’ll be ok. But she may as well be half the world away. At least I won’t have to lie.
Boot steps echo, moving off down the hallway. I lose track of time, of how long we’re left here. There is a silence that hangs over us, punctuated sporadically by Cara’s soft sobbing. The silence tortures; I’m helpless. Time, dispassionate, drags on.
The boots return. I struggle to draw breath through the grip my heart has around my throat. Somebody lifts me into a standing position. With a rough shove they face me in an unknown direction.
“Walk,” the captor says bluntly.
I blindly shuffle forward. It sounds like there are more of us here than just Cara and me.
‘They need to be cleaned up,” Levia says. “Take the females to the showers at the end of the hall. Take the male to the other wing. There are gowns for them to wear until we can get them processed.”
A hard shove sends me stumbling forward. I manage only a few ungraceful steps before falling face first to the floor. I’m left prone on the ground for a moment. To humiliate me I suppose. Behind me somebody is laughing. Eventually somebody pulls me back to my feet and shoves me onto a hard plastic seat.
“One at a time! That one first!” a new female voice commands.
A chair scraps across the room. A muffled protest. Not me. I guess that means I wait.
A high pressure shower is turned on in another room. A door shuts and the sound is muffled out.
The darkness that envelopes me is fascinating. It’s strange how impossible it is to describe the colours one sees when there is only darkness. Hypnotic. It feels like each colour flashing by represents the last fleeting glimpse into the reality draped around me. As each colour slips from my mind I feel myself slip further into the abyss of darkness. It’s my only escape.
Somebody pulls off the cloth bag covering my head. Light floods back into my world; a not-so-subtle reminder that reality won’t stand for escapees. I’m surrounded by guards with guns pointed at me. Directly in front of me is a door to the next room.
The shower is switched off. Allison is dragged out of the door, a guard tightly holding each of her arms. She flashes me a look of defiance. All I’m able to do is look directly back at her and meet her eyes. And I so desperately want to smile at her and tell her I understand. I hope she can tell through this tape.
My eyes wander over her. The gown put on her hides nothing. She has the kind of body that makes me instantly jealous; athletic and strong. My face flushes, hot. Yet she also carries a set of scars that hold a story that’s begging to be told. I find myself staring at her, unabashed. She’s sat in the chair next to me, completely composed. She gives me a subtle nod, a tilt of her chin to show she isn’t broken. Her defiant beauty lifts me. If she remains strong then perhaps all is not lost.
Then it’s my turn. A guard steps forward and lifts me out of the chair. Another joins him and together they drag me into the other room.
A woman stands in front of me and with a hand on each cheek starts pressing around my nose, poking and prodding without any semblance of gentleness. The pain makes my eyes water.
“Lucky you, it’s not broken,” She says indifferently.
If she presses any damn harder, I suspect it will break just to make her stop, out of sympathy for me. She picks at the corner of the tape over my mouth. Then to cement how little sensitivity she has for me, tears it off with one quick pull. I flinch in pain. She just gives an unsympathetic grunt and pushes me into an area of tiled floor.
“Sit down,” she orders me.
The guards waiting behind her raise their guns to ensure I know I have no say in the matter. The floor is wet and freezing cold. Then water hits me. I try to crawl away from the frigid water that batters me. But with my arms locked behind my back there’s no avoiding it. In seconds I’m shivering. Somebody squirts some sort of liquid soap haphazardly over me. All I can do is curl up as they painfully scrub me. They drag the brushes over my face, leaving me coughing and spluttering; the water bitter.
At some point the brushes stop and I’m left on the freezing tiles. I try hard to keep thinking of Allison’s defiance; to stay composed in the face of apparent helplessness. I fail, miserably. I feel each icy drop of water hit me. Each steals a little more of the warmth that Cara, Allison and everyone else had shown me in the past few days.
I’m lost in the forest near our house. Mum and Dad were distracted. They wouldn’t pay attention to me.
A memory from before my parent’s death; a memory of a day I had long forgotten. That day something important happened, though the significance I can’t seem to recall. I remember the jealousy, the rage; at least as much jealousy and rage as my little five-year-old self could muster. It seems so petty to me now, but back then it meant so much. I ran away. It never occurred to me, so young, what I was going to do after I ran away. I just ran. We’d never been allowed to play in this forest. It was too dangerous, Dad said. Too easy to get lost. So my little five-year-old self found out.
Under the cover of the trees it starts to get dark quickly. The sun struggles to filter through the heavy foliage. The trees begin close in around me like the claws of the demons from my nightmares. Behind every tree lies a hungry animal waiting to eat me. Every noise becomes the growl of an evil beast waiting to kill me. I curl up under a tree and start crying.
Somewhere under all the water pouring over me, all that’s left the lost little girl, crying. How much more will they throw at me? How much more before I’m lost forever?
The water shuts off. I’m completely numb. I can’t feel anything beyond tears. I don’t understand how Allison can be so defiant. This seems hopeless to me.
They drag me away from the shower and leave me lying in the middle of the cold tile floor whilst they rub towels roughly over me. I’m not sure if it’s a poor attempt to dry me, or just further abuse they want me to endure. The rough towels make poor work of it. Eventually it stops and I’m lifted to my feet again.
A guard slices off the cuffs around my wrists. I can feel their hesitation as they do it; were it not for the fact that it would be impossible to get this thin hospital gown on me I’m sure they would have left me cuffed. It sticks to my still damp skin, which compounds the difficulty getting it on. In the end they just pull on it harder, roughly tying it off once they finally get it on.
My arms are quickly twisted behind me so that they can click the cuffs back on. I’m not sure what their concern is. I couldn’t fight back even if I really did feel like getting myself killed.
Levia tapes my mouth up again. She then slaps me, hard, across the face. I’m so numb I don’t even feel it. That seems to upset her.
“Bah, take her back into the other room, bag her and bring one of the twins in.” She says angrily.
A guard gives me a hard shove from behind, sending me scrambling through the door. Without the bag over my head I’m finally able to get a look at Cara, to see if she’s ok. She sits slumped in the dark blue plastic chair with another of the black cotton bags over her head.
Of her porcelain-white skin, it makes an austere counter to the deep colour of her seat; her pale and faultless complexion enhanced only by her deep rose nipples centred bold on the rest of her petit breasts. My eyes roam lower, finding the only other blemish to her
pale skin. It occurs to me how easily I’m abusing her dignity.
Her sister sits beside her with a lot more confidence; legs spread and feet firmly anchored on the ground. Sharing Cara’s unblemished skin, Caitlin differs only by virtue of a pair of colourful tattoos adorning each shoulder and in the fact that her current posture leaves little to the imagination.
Another guard takes the bag off covering Cara’s head. Her face is red and slick with tears; her left cheek bruising. My curiosity towards her nakedness turns quickly to horror at my own thoughts as I think about what Cara went through only moments ago. I silently castigate myself for the hypocrisy of my focus. It’s in that moment that I get what Allison was trying to instil in me. Cara needs to know that all is not lost. Trying my best to hide my own fears, I look her in the eyes. I can see her searching me for answers as she looks straight back at me. This tape makes it impossible to see me smile, but maybe it’s enough. Not that I’m able to read her face to see if I’m convincing. I hold her eyes as I take my seat without fuss. I don’t want to give them a chance to force a show of weakness while she’s watching. For the next few minutes, she’s going to need all the strength she can get. Then my world turns dark again as the black bag is replaced over my head.
It’s an anxious wait as I hear them walk her into the other room and shut the door, the sound of the shower muted as the door clicks shut.
Time crawls, until the shower eventually stops and Cara is dragged back into the room. Does she see me? I hear her drop heavily into her seat. What does that mean? Is she ok? Not being able to see her is driving me crazy.
“Hurry up! This is taking too long.” Levia says.
A chair scatters across the room followed by a struggle of desperate feet scraping the floor. Don’t struggle Caitlin. A loud thud cuts the struggling short. All that follows is another uneasy wait.
Mum picks up Claire again. I look out from my hiding spot under the bed. I was being quiet just like Mum wants. I watch her desperately try to convince Claire to hide, but she didn’t seem to understand why she couldn’t help. Maybe she thought it was just a game. I didn’t understand what was going on either at the time. I just knew that I had to follow what Mum said and be quiet.
