by Asia Olanna
“Who are you?” I said. “You can’t possibly be real. I must be dreaming again.”
She giggled. “I’m more than a figment of your imagination,” she said. “Or maybe, I'm nothing more than a flirt.”
Her voice waned. At the edges of her body, she dematerialized. Threads of her clothes pulled away from her skin. Her eyes melted out of her sockets.
The tips of her fingers dropped down to the ground, clinging against the ground like rain on dry soil. Then her hair exploded in a blast of fire, and I saw Hae-il running towards me, his face blank, no skin at all, just scars bursting forward like the crags of a mountain. Straight at me, consuming my body, digging into my skin.
I struggled against his face, wrapped in my chains, rocking from side to side, trying to stop my legs from falling asleep…
“Wake up,” Bit-na said. I had begun to get better at remembering who she was.
“How are you, beautiful?” I said.
“Stop it,” she said. “Or else I’m going to get Oh-seong to come down here and give you food.”
“You don’t sound so offended. I think you like coming down here.”
She shook her head, smirking. “I’ll admit, you’re pretty boy piece of art. I don’t mind coming down here to gawk.”
“Why don’t you come closer then?”
“Because I’m not dumb,” she said, sliding over another plate—rice this time. “We’re going to have to move you soon though. So maybe I’ll get a chance at knocking you asleep.”
“Where we going? Where are we now?”
Bit-na put a hand over her mouth, giggling. “That I can’t tell you at all. I would get in a lot of trouble.”
She walked away again. Orange sunlight drifted through the skylight above. Late afternoon.
Moving.
“Where could they possibly take me?” I asked myself. “Maybe this would be an opportunity…”
I shook my head. Trapped in this dungeon, there was no way I was getting out on my own. I would need some help, either by enraging my masters, or getting on their good side.
If only I could break through the skylight. If only I could get out of these chains. That’s what’s really holding me back. These chains—how could I possibly break them? A shard of a plate is not going to cut it. I’m going to need stronger material, heat or source of power.
I closed my eyes, pushing away my plate. I didn’t want to eat.
If anything, I would rather starve.
Besides, the movies playing in my head weren’t too bad.
“Are you really going to give up?” the black woman said to me. Was I dreaming? She stood right beside the gate, fingers pointing at me accusatorily. I blinked, and she disappeared. When I kept my eyes open, there was no one there.
Telling apart reality from fantasy had become vague and difficult.
I had to get out soon.
“He’s still alive,” Bit-na said, rounding the corner. Now with Hyun-jun and Oh-seong, she sounded more menacing. As if by proxy they gave her what she needed to be fierce. “He’s doing well, too, I think.”
I sat up, staring out the skylight. Moonlight poured over my sweaty face. Oh-seong walked inside the cell, grabbing my chin and lifting up my head.
“Don’t work him too hard,” Bit-na said, giggling. “He still beautiful.”
Hyun-jun threw her a glance. “Do you want to get the car ready?” he said.
Oh-seong raised his hand. “We need to move quickly, so yeah, go get it started now.”
Usually, my captors would enter from the left side of the hallway. I had never seen them go down past my cell and to the right.
Now, Hyun-jun moved across the hallway, going straight down, and opening the door. The door echoed across and into my prison, bouncing around my head like a siren. Everything sounded twice as loud as normal. Their voices too boisterous, my ears too sensitive.
“We’re going to get you all nice and pretty for the cameras,” Oh-seong said, hissing. “You remember what that’s like, right?”
“Where we going?” I said.
“You are always wanting these answers we can’t give to you. Let’s just say the government has a pretty price on your head.”
Had they spilled the beans about who I was?
Impossible. They’re bluffing, I thought. Because if they went public with my captivity, then it would arouse suspicions about who the Twin Swords were.
And the Twin Swords did not need more attention on them than normal.
Especially considering that they were known for worse criminal acts than even the Double Dragons—rape and torture, abduction.
“Do whatever you want with me,” I said. Oh-seong gripped my wrists tight, enough to dig his nasty fingernails into my skin. He scraped his thumb across my forearm, digging a groove where my veins lay.
“Don’t talk anymore,” he said. “Bit-na, give me the keys.”
She threw them at him, saying, “I’m going to go check up on Hyun-jun.”
Oh-seong said, “All right. Just make sure he’s doing everything all right.”
She nodded at him, strutting down the hall the same way Hyun-jun went. Then Oh-seong undid my chains, freeing me from the wall. I had little strength. I wanted to punch his face out. But I had become scrawny, like a thin line in the air about to be blown in half.
A dandelion in the wind.
He bent down, still tugging me along with his grip. His hands were like a new tie around my wrists. After he undid my ankle chains, he kicked me forward, telling me to go ahead.
“You’re no better than an animal now,” he said. “Pretty boy album? Forget it. No one even likes your music.”
“I bet you don’t even write your own music,” I mumbled, feeling delirious. “You probably contract poor people from India or something.”
Oh-seong stabbed me in the back with his fingernails again. “Just keep going on.”
I walked out into the darkness of the fading day. Moonlight splintered off in several rays, shrouding a grassy hillside in a spooky glow.
I turned my head, trying to see where I was: maybe I could figure it out by topography. Scanning the countryside—I knew that we were somewhere near a farm, on account of the lack of buildings—I found and spotted a couple of trees, the empty dark sky, and a possible shoreline.
Even with the stars though, the light was not good enough to have high visibility. So I squinted harder and harder, not getting much out of my eyes at all.
In the end, I would have to settle with little data. I would have to go onward without knowing a damned thing.
Oh-seong forced my neck forward. He tilted my head straight for a vehicle, large like a tiger, sitting and waiting as if for prey—a black van of sorts, the kind you might find selling ice cream.
At the back of the van, a tarp flapped wildly in the light breeze. It made a shuttering sound, as if someone were closing a window and rattling a pair of blinds.
As we drew closer, sweat dripped down my back. What were they going to do with me? I did not want to be kept like a bird, caged inside like a beast.
The thought of torture came to me—maybe they were going to move me to a harsher sentence.
I did not want to think about the consequences. Or about what they were planning in their heads.
An electricity burned between them: an exchange in the air, a common frequency I could not connect to. They had an intention, a plot at hand.
And I was just their character, to be controlled, to be written however they wanted me to be.
Oh-seong’s hands dug deeper into my flesh, pushing me a head. “Is it all good down there?” he said, waving at Hyun-jun and Bit-na. The two of them nodded at him, smiling devilishly. Devils, actual devils to me. “Good,” Oh-seong said, “Hyun-jun start the van up. Bit-na, get the cage ready.”
Cage? What cage? The grass sunk underneath my feet. The earth gave way, the soil pregnant with water. Cage. I would be wrapped up in a tarp, possibly beaten. Would I have to fight back?
Would my time to get away be now?
All of the thoughts ran through my brain, lightning fast.
Suddenly, the woman of my dreams appeared to me. Cast in her ebony dark skin, I thought of her as an angel giving me strength.
“Don’t lose hope yet,” she whispered. “It’s not time for that at all. If you do it, then I’ll have come here for nothing.”
I shook my head. These hallucinations had to stop. These dreams. Focusing my mind more, I steeled myself for the van. What could I do? They could shoot me if I tried running away. I had to wait until I felt completely comfortable with an escape route. I had to be prepared totally.
And this was not the proper moment for an escape. Not yet. Not only was time of the essence but patience. Lots and lots of patience.
Me and Oh-seong drew up to the back of the van. We were at the lowest point of a sloping hill, trees surrounding us, an ocean breeze wafting in the air.
Sea salt on my skin, mingling with my sweat.
Oh-seong pushed me against the van, all the while Bit-na groped around with a flashlight, pulling the tarp aside. “It’s ready,” she said, pulling aside the rest of the tarp. It flapped even more wildly now, like in a rainstorm. The winds were really picking up.
“Get in,” Oh-seong said, pushing me up onto the van’s platform. I flinched initially, immediately struck by a cold, damp feeling. A cave? A mobile cave?
Around me were buckets. They seemed to contain water, but of course, I could not tell. I could not be sure. I tried rocking them with my feet as I got into the van, but Oh-seong and Bit-na were probing me recklessly, making sure I couldn’t my surroundings properly.
“Am I at least going to get a hint?” I said.
Bit-na whipped out a pistol from her hip. I did not recognize the make or model. She looked deadly, beautiful, but deadly. The specifics were not important to me at that time.
“Just stay quiet,” she said, Oh-seong stepping away. He came back with rope, and I should’ve been expecting it. But I squirmed in their grasp, gasping and wheezing with my lungs squeezing tight together in a spasmodic burn.
I writhed, groaned and whipped my head about, unable to truly grasp being a prisoner. Imagine: getting wrapped up like a present, except you weren’t bound for anywhere like a Christmas party.
There was no end to the torment. You were treated like an animal, unrealized like my dreams were.
“I think that’s comfortable enough for him,” Oh-seong said, patting my feet. My shoes had been worn away to the soles, leaving my feet practically naked. The top halves were broken down into shriveled fragments. You could feel the threadbare leather winding away at the stitches, seams. Oh-seong nudged my feet against my chest, making sure that my hands and ankles were wrapped tight.
“Hyun-jun,” Oh-seong said, tapping the van. “Everything ready over there?”
I assumed he gave a thumbs up of sorts. Because the moment Oh-seong and Bit-na looked up at Hyun-jun and got a signal, they glanced back at me, tapped the van once more, and closed off the lid. Darkness enveloped me, the tarp shrouding me in crinkled fabric. I gasped again, seeking air, filling my lungs with the natural oxygen being closed off quickly from my breath.
What could I do except lay there and think?
How could I possibly get out. It wasn’t a question anymore. I wasn’t pondering. I wasn’t trying to.
I was accepting defeat, but also thinking about victory. Making it so. In reality. I had to figure out my surroundings, materialize my escape.
The van started forward with a lurch. It crept along the grasslands, bouncing from left to right as if we were on water, hitting rocks here and there, bouncing upwards with a tremulous spurt of speed. I held onto the floor of the van, steadying myself as best as I could.
“Don’t give up hope,” the woman of my dreams said. “Don’t give up hope.”
A drizzle slammed down against the tarp. A pitter-patter constant in the night. I wondered how far we were going to travel.
If I was going to get wet.
♦♦♦
Finally, we came to a stop. How long we traveled, I had no idea. I drifted off to sleep, hoping to store up some energy. I would need it: I was their prisoner after all, and I intended to get out.
I heard doors slamming at the front of the van, and I saw lights blaring behind. Voices yelled out, and there seemed to be a meeting ground of sorts emerging, feet smacking concrete, boots and high heels.
Oh-seong and Bit-na and Hyun-jun.
“I have him in the back,” I heard someone say, probably Oh-seong. “I’m going to get him out now. But you have to prepare the prison. I don’t want the officials getting all weirded out about us. We need to make sure we have everything prepared nice and right. We can put him in the living room first, but make sure the upstairs gets good.”
A hand came up from underneath the tarp. It groped about the darkness, lifting off my cover and bringing on the morning dawn.
“Here he is,” Oh-seong said. It was him who was talking. I could put two and two together. “You guys have to remember not to act so coy. And don’t be shy with the officials. They’re not the types to negotiate.”
There were other men wearing suits and ties, women dressed in sharp skirts. Blouses and professional wear. They manhandled me, yanking me off from the van’s backside, dropping me to the ground like a piece of stone.
My body shook, my shoulders shivering, my stomach hurting. I had not had a real meal in ages.
“Bring him to the hotel,” Oh-seong said. “Bit-na, are you sure you want to do this?”
Bit-na came to my side. Her heels did, at least. She wore a shimmering sundress, and I could see into it. Shimmering lace stockings covered her thighs. Beautiful, but not the same way my dream woman was. Bit-na had a viciousness to her, and elegant strike like a snake’s tooth. About to inject poison with one wrong look.
“I’m ready,” she said. “You can have your break now.”
Oh-seong pulled Bit-na against himself. The other men and women watched on as he locked his lips tight around her mouth, squeezing her breasts, then kicking me once with his foot.
“If he tries to escape,” he said, “then just drop him dead. He’s better that way than alive.”
Oh-seong walked back to the front of the van. The door opened. I assumed he got in, because the van drove off.
Bit-na pointed to the men and women around us. “Get the room prepared. And make sure the premises is all secured.”
The others split off as if driven away by a spell. They were underneath her command all right, as the girlfriend of Oh-seong.
That’s what I could figure out between her and him. She was maybe a prostitute of sorts. For sure now, that’s what I could see. It made me sad that some girls had to fall into this line of work.
But then again, some women were vicious—just naturally so—and would take this kind of job to secure a position of power.
People who were unable to find their way in the private sector, in the “real world,” would fall into places like this.
And for that—for fighting her way in life—I could not blame her for her choices.
There were women like that in the Double Dragons. And then there were women like that in the Twin Swords.
“Aren’t you just a bundle of joy?” Bit-na said, yanking me upwards. She slumped me against her shoulder, commanding one of the men nearby to come back and pick me up. We walked together, the three of us, down a beaten path, a dirt road shrouded with the green leaves overhead, a canopy of tree limbs, dying birds’ nests, and the sounds of a vibrant forest.
“Are you really giving me up to the Korean government?” I said, smiling. “When did the Twin Swords become so good?”
“We’ve always been like this,” she said. “We’ve been planting small insurgents in your organization for a while now.”
“What happened to Hae-il?”
Bit-na smirked. “He’s not that important anymore. What happens to him, well, you’l
l see.”
We made a turnaround in the forest jungle. Deep within a clearing, there was a house. Made of brick, two-story, and having a chimney, the house seemed to be out of a storybook, surrounded by beautiful grasses and tulips. Well-maintained, as if a grandmother lived here.
It seemed too much like a trap. The government officials would never fall for this, would they? Or if they bothered to come, they would come armed. Ready to arrest everyone on the premises. I did not understand what the Twin Swords were up to.
Unless they had officials of their own in the Korean government itself.
