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Wendy Flora
Member
since 2000-01-11
Posts 182
Virginia

0 posted 2000-01-30 06:47 PM


The dank smell was the first thing to hit her senses.  A smell of rot - of rank, vile
things. . . it was the smell of death, and she knew it.  Her sight was useless in the pitch black of the tunnel, and she kept stumbling over the uneven floor, but the two guards who were half-dragging, half-carrying her seemed to have no trouble finding their way in the dark. There was no light whatsoever - only a black void.  Their hands were encased in rough gloves, and the shackles on her wrists and ankles were starting to cut off circulation to her fingers and toes.  Her head was ringing, and she fought off the waves of pain that came from her back and side and thighs and lower abdomen as they cried in anguish at the rough treatment they had received.  She listened intently for any familiar sounds, but the guttural language of the Middle Eastern guards had been replaced by a thick silence broken only by the militant march of the guards' boots on the cement floor.  They stopped for a moment, and she heard a groan of metal, like a heavy door being swung open, and then she was thrown onto the floor, her head striking a wall that gave her blessed unconsciousness.  This time the groan was followed by the metallic slam
of the door, and sounds of a heavy lock falling into place as the boots retreated into the
blackness. . .
"I need this story by Monday.  If you can't do it, believe me, I won't have any trouble finding someone who can."
"Who says I can't do it?"  She was rather indignant at the question of her abilities.  
"Well, you know as well as I do that a woman isn't exactly safe in that country anyway, and knowing what happened to your husband, I wanted to make sure. . ."  He trailed off as his look softened.
She glanced at the ring she still wore on her finger. The engraved, 'With all my love' was well worn from her thumb's unconscious twirling of the band. "Don't worry, Harry.  I'll have your precious 'scoop' for you by Monday.  I didn't come this far in the last five years only to be drug back into the past by one ****ing story.  I'll need the name of our contact in Istanbul. . ."
Cold.  Something was extremely cold and she couldn't quite figure out what it was.  She started to shiver a little, and the movement broke the floodgates that had been holding back the pain.  She opened her eyes, but saw only the black void.  No, there were lines of light, thin ones, marking the outline of a square high up in her vision, possibly a window. The light emitted was insufficient to even enable her to make out the outlines of her hands, let alone any clues as to her surroundings.  She sat up slowly, allowing every inch of her body to have its justifiable cry of pain before silencing it into submission.  She had been laying on her back with her head touching some kind of wall and her legs askew sideways.  She used the wall as a brace to lean against as she straightened her legs and tested her body for major injuries, finding a knot where her head hit the wall and various cuts and scrapes that served as evidence some violent intrusion.  She remembered only the pain.  She tried to recall the events which had brought her to this cell, but frighteningly she found she could not even dredge up her own identity.  She moved her hands out from her sides, exploring the broken cement floor. Her fingers caused scraping sounds in the almost silence as they trailed pebbles in their wake.  On her left she found another wall about two feet from her, so she slid tentatively to her right, searching for maybe another wall to at least determine the parameters of her confinement.  She had maybe gone three or four feet when her hand encountered something foreign. . . cloth. . . ragged and stiff with dirt but cloth all the same.  She fingered it lightly.  Cotton, perhaps.  Her ears caught a faint whooshing sound, and it took her a moment to place it, but when she did she drew back her hand as if bitten.  She reached out tentatively again and let her hand roughly trace the outline of a leg.  It started at her touch, and was jerked away from her.  She panicked and cried the first thing that came to mind, surprising herself when it came out in Arabic.  Translated roughly it meant, 'please do not harm me,' and she drew herself into a crouch position against the wall in preparation for the blow. . . but there was only silence.  The whooshing sound came quicker and heavier, and she realized that whoever was just as frightened as she.   A man's hoarse voice began to haltingly discharge a sentence or two in Arabic, but she didn't have enough understanding of the language to even guess at the meaning.  It was a smooth, plush voice - a nice voice, she noticed - and it was evident  both from the quality of the voice and the hesitant way in which the sounds were spoken that this was not this man's native tongue.  A few moments of silence passed after he was done speaking.  She whispered, "I'm sorry, sir, but. . .  I don't speak Arabic," listening to the words become swallowed in the darkness.
"You're American??"  The way he said it, one might think American's were only a legend to him, like dragons or faeries.
"Yes. . . I am. . . are you??" Her voice rose slightly as hope caught in her throat.
"Yes.  We have to keep our voices down.  If they hear us talking, we could be beaten or even shot.  They don't approve much of communication around here. . ."  There was a note of wry sarcasm tucked into that last remark, and she thought it best to leave that one alone.
"What is your name?"  he asked.
She hesitated.
"I. . . I don't remember. . . I think I remember two guards throwing me into this cell, but. . . nothing before that. . .  I can't see anything. . . is there ever any light?  I don't remember any light. . ."
"No.  They don't go in much for that around here, either.  It's been years since I've seen the sun."
"You've been here for years?"
"It sure feels like it.  I'm not sure exactly how long, but so long I've almost forgotten what it was like. . . before. . ."
"Do they ever take us out?"
"Some. . . I'm taken out once in a while and they inject me with something that knocks me out. . . I'm washed, shaved. . . disinfected I suppose. . . then left back here in a heap on the floor.  I wake up groggy and cold, but cleaner than when I left, I guess."
"How did you get to this place?"
"I was walking to work one day when three men ambushed me from behind.  They shoved me into a van with no windows and in the process I was knocked unconscious.  I woke up in here and that's where I've been ever since.  I kept the same clothes I put on for work that day for the longest time. . . before I guess they got too 'unsanitary' and I was given something else for a while, then something after that, and something after that.  I can't remember how many 'new' outfits I've had. . . It's funny, I don't even know what color I'm wearing. . . ha!"
He was silent for a moment, almost brooding.
When next he spoke, his voice was very small. "Do you happen to remember what year it is?"
She thought for a moment.  She thought very, very hard.
"No. . . I'm afraid I don't."
"Well, that's okay.  It's probably better not to know anyway."
She was about to ask what year it was when he was captured, but the sound of approaching boots caused him to hiss, "Quick!  Get into a corner and keep quiet!"  She retreated to the corner closest to where she had woken up and held her breath, listening.  She heard the creak of another door in a place that she could only describe as 'elsewhere' - as in not close enough to be her door, she thought - and a scream followed by a shot.  When the boots retreated, the scraping of something being dragged went with them.  She sat frozen in her corner, shivering now with more than cold.  She waited until she was sure they were gone before whispering, "What was that?"
"An execution."
"Does that happen often?"
"Not often.  Fairly regularly, but no, not often."  His sweet voice was colored with both sadness and bitterness at the same time, so that she found hot tears rolling down her cheeks and hitting on her updrawn knees.  She sobbed quietly, no longer trying to control her shaking.  She heard the stranger slide along the wall until he was sitting next to her.  The warmth of another body next to hers made her want to curl up in someone's arms and hide from the rest of the world. . . to escape what was happening to her. . . but she sat rigid against the cold cement wall, her despair flowing out of her with her tears.   He seemed unsure of what to do, and after a moment of what felt like debating, clumsily draped his arm across her shoulders and squeezed her reassuringly.  He emanated strength, and she took it and was grateful.  In this way, the two sat in the dark, each contemplating the powers that had brought them to this place, and the bitter cruelty that seemed to shape the workings of the universe.
* * *
Sometime while she slept tin pans of some kind of sustenance appeared in the cell.  The stranger had finished his long before she awoke, and she wondered if he had slept at all, or just sat waiting for the food.  It smelled putrid, but thankfully had no taste whatsoever, and she even licked the pan to get every last drop.  When she was finished, the stranger took her pan and placed it with his own near the door with a small clank, but there were still no words between them.  In the silence of the dark she had started to become attuned to every scraping on the floor, the whooshing of the two of them breathing that echoed off the cement walls. . .   The boots had not returned in what was probably hours, but with the absence of light came the absence of time.  She had fallen asleep slumped against the wall, the product of extreme fear and exhaustion, with the stranger's arm still around her shoulders.  She had awakened curled up on the floor with the pan being the first thing her fingers encountered on her rudimentary exploration of her surroundings.  This became the routine over what was probably the next few days.  The time was divided into waking time and sleeping, and each waking was the same with her sending her fingers out first to explore the area around her before sitting up. The times between were spent mostly in silence, with her feeling her way around the cell, exploring each crack, each corner. . . tracing the edges of the door and the window. . . finding the height, the length, the width of her cell.  It was roughly six feet by eight feet square, and over six feet high - she couldn't reach the ceiling. . .  The few exchanges between the stranger and herself were only slight "excuse me's" and "sorry's" when they encountered each other in the dark.  It was not that they had nothing to talk about - indeed they both longed for the sound of another human's voice - but for the time being they took comfort simply in the sound of each other's breathing, the soft sounds of the scrapings of each other's movements on the floor. They began to be anxious for those small sounds, getting queer knots in their stomachs just after contact was made and before the excuses were spoken. It was almost flirtatious, the excitement they took in anticipating the quiet "excuse me's" and "sorry's". . .  She thought it was strangely ironic that she set so much weight on those small things,  especially considering her circumstances. Still, she supposed that the human spirit would do whatever it could to find joy, even in the most oppressing situation, so she let it be.  Something about him was familiar, and after a while she decided it was that he was American, because there was nothing else it could be.  He was one of her kind, and that was more than enough.
Suddenly, on one of her explorations of the wall, her foot caught on something and she fell onto him with a great crashing noise in which they both cried out.  She started to say, "Oh, my god, I'm sorry," but he cut her off with an angry, "Shhhhh!" Sure enough, the sound of boots coming quickly in their direction could be heard, and their door was opened with a rough, wrenching sound.  The two had scooted to their opposite walls, and there was still no light when the door was opened.  The boots went straight to the stranger's wall and there was a grunt as he was yanked off the floor and dragged out of the cell.  The boots marched away, and she felt a stabbing sense of guilt and fear that cleaved right through her.  She remained glued to her wall for the longest time, expecting them to come back for her at any moment, but they did not.  She awoke later still sitting upright against the wall, and as she started to stretch her legs out her foot collided with the pan of food, causing a scraping sound that made her jump.  The scraping sound was followed by more complete silence than she had been aware of before, as if she were the only living presence left in the cell-block.  She finished off the food with lightning speed, and placed the pan cautiously near the door.  It occurred to her then that while the pan appeared while she slept, she never could remember a moment that it disappeared. By that she meant that she wasn't sure if it was ever taken away.  Just then, she heard the sound of boots again, accompanied by the scrapings of something being dragged behind them. She scuttled to her corner just before the door was yanked open and something heavy flung inside.  The door slammed shut, and the boots went away once again.  She stayed still long after their thudding faded, listening in the dark. There was silence for a long time, then the sounds of someone moving around, small groans escaping as whoever it was struggled to sit up, but finding no success, and finally slumping back to the floor, the labored breathing thundering in the stillness.  She moved quickly to the spot where the person lay, and whispered gently, "Shh, wait. Don't try to move, yet. Just lay there for a minute, okay?  Can you hear me?"
"You're still here??  I thought they would have killed you by now. . .  You must be very valuable to them, or they would have shot you by now."
"It's you!  Oh, my god, what did they do to you?  I thought they'd killed you!"
"Maybe it would have been better if they had. . ." he grunted with more of that wry sarcasm threaded in his voice as he struggled to sit up again.
"Here, take it easy. . ."  She found him in the dark and held on to his upper arm, encircling his waist with her arm and helping him to sit up and scoot back to lean against the wall.  The wall must have been insufficient help, because he sagged against her, breathing heavily.  
"Where are you hurt?" she whispered.
There was a short bark of a laugh.  "Right now, I'd say all over.  No, they beat me pretty good on my back, with a couple good cuffs to the head.  I may have a broken rib or two, but I think no major organs are punctured. . . at least, I hope not. . ."
He made no effort to move again, and she let him lean against her until his breathing became more regular.  She felt a responsibility to him, not only for what happened to him, but because he had become an ally in this foreign place.  She still had on the two shirts she had been wearing when she was put into the cell, and she removed her outer button-up shirt slowly, trying not to jar him too much.  The cement wall was cold through her T-shirt.  She rolled the button-up shirt and helped him to lie down, rolling the shirt and placing it under his head as a somewhat rough pillow.  
"Hold still, I'm going to look you over."  She almost laughed at the irony; she hadn't had enough light to actually look at anything yet.  "Here, roll over on your side, if you can, and tell me if this hurts."  She started at his neck and moved to his shoulders, his right arm, his left - his left forearm had a gash about three inches long that had, thankfully, stopped bleeding - his chest, his ribs - two, maybe three were broken - his left leg, his right leg. . . her fingers lightly exploring.  He had a nice body, she noticed, well built, muscular. . . He also had a lump on his head the size of a golf ball.  She remembered what that was like, since she had come into the cell with a nice one of her own.  
"Do you need me to do anything?"
His reply was faint, as if he were on the verge of sleep, or unconsciousness. . .
"Cold. . ."
She looked around her in the dark helplessly.  Of course there were no blankets of any kind; that would have been almost civil, and the Arabs wouldn't dare do a thing like that, she thought to herself. Her outer shirt was under his head, and that would have been her only option.  Her hand was still resting lightly on his shoulder, and underneath it he began to shiver.  I can't do anything about it, she thought.  Well, I could. . . no. . . I wouldn't do that; I hardly know him. . .  The shivering continued, and she thought to herself, this is my fault - what happened to him is my fault, so it's up to me to do whatever I can.  She felt her lips harden into a grim line. Being as careful as she could not to bump into him, she positioned herself between him and the wall and moved her body to spoon his.  As warmth started to develop between the two of them, she felt him unconsciously move his body toward hers, until he was snuggled up against her, with her arm draped around him. Something stirred in her breast for him, something familiar.  Maternal instinct, she thought sarcastically.  She fell into a light dozing state beside him, very conscious of him and keeping alert for changes in their situation.  Soon it became apparent that he wasn't going to be moving - either because of the deep sleep or unconsciousness - and she relaxed and fell into a deep sleep herself.  
* * *
She stepped off the airplane and followed the crowd of people towards the baggage-claim area.   Her beige travel-suit was wrinkled from almost 19 hours on the plane, and she was exhausted.  She wanted to find her bags, find her hotel, have a shower, and crash.  
Her suitcase was one of the first ones off the carousel, and she moved to the bathroom closest to her.  She was so sick and tired of the goddamn suit, she thought, that she was going to change, period.  She yanked out her faded jeans and a soft T-shirt, and was about to leave when she remembered a co-worker telling her that American women were thought to be 'loose' and would be harassed if they went with any bare skin showing, so she rummaged around until she found a button-up shirt to cover her arms.  She then went and found the bus the hotel had sent to pick up its guests.  The driver was Arabic, and she thought it odd that he wore his native dress instead of the hotel uniform.  She also began to get worried when she was the only woman on the bus. . . and the men who got on after her kept eyeing her strangely.  One of them looked like he had even been on her plane, but she couldn't be sure. . .
When she awoke, he was no longer lying next to her body, but the preliminary exploration with her fingers found him still lying close by.  When her fingers brushed his body, his low voice split the silence of the dark.  
"Hey."
She felt those stirrings again, and it made her suddenly shy.
"Hi."
Why should she feel like this?  He was a complete stranger to her. . . yet she was drawn to him.  How silly!  She tried to let strict rationalization take control, but it wasn't working.  She was actually physically attracted to him - a man she had never seen before in her entire life and with whom she had only had the briefest contact.  She knew him only by voice, but she felt like she had known him somewhere before. . .  But, of course, since she couldn't even remember her own name, she knew she wouldn't remember him.  She thought about asking him, but figured now was not exactly a good time.
"How do you feel?"  she asked hesitantly.
"Better.  Not quite ready to run a marathon or anything, but definitely better. . . Uh. . . I wanted to say. . . thank you. . . for. . . you know. . ."
"Yeah.  I know."  her voice was strangely small.  "You're welcome."
There was a silence, but strangely not an uncomfortable one.
"Any luck yet with your name?"  he asked.
"No."  
"Well, mine is Andrew.  Andrew Lerner.  I used to teach at the university here."
"Ah."
"I know this sounds funny, but. . . I feel like I know you from somewhere. Does my name sound familiar to you?"
"No, it doesn't, but I feel like I know you, too.  I've just been dismissing it as our being thrown together like this, and our both being American. . . that sort of thing."
"Yeah, I guess that makes sense. . ."
"Yeah. . ."
This time the silence was a little uncomfortable.
"So," he said after a few moments, his voice mischievous,  "What is your favorite color?"
In the dark, she smiled.  "Plum purple.  Yours?"
"Green.  Did you say plum purple?"
"Yeah, I did,"  she said with a laugh, "Why?"
"I used to know someone else who liked that color.  It's odd."
"Who was that?"
"Oh, nobody important.  Somebody I don't think about much anymore.  I hope you understand.  Let's not discuss it. . ."
"Oh.  Sorry."
"It's okay; you didn't know. What kind of music do you like?"
And the conversation proceeded.  They found themselves telling stories, sharing secrets. Mostly he did the telling, and she would laugh.  She had no stories of her own, since she had lost her memory, so he told her to make some up as she went along so she could contribute to the conversation.  Sometimes after a story that she made up, she would get a sensation that it wasn't entirely fiction, and he would get really quiet for a moment before taking a deep breath and continuing on with the conversation as if nothing was different.  She had the feeling he was thinking about the somebody he'd mentioned earlier, so she left it alone and simply enjoyed his company.  They had been lying next to each other on the floor, and as conversation turned deeper and more intimate, she noticed their bodies had drawn closer and closer together, as if by some magnetic force.  Soon, they were only a couple of inches from each other.  The dark was so complete that even there they couldn't see each other, but every other sense had been so heightened by the lack of sight that they sensed each other more completely than they could have ever seen each other.  In the dark, she felt him reach out and place his hand on her cheek.  His hand was soft and tender as it caressed her face and moved down her side to her hips.  He pulled her against him and kissed her on the lips.  She immersed herself in that kiss, letting it's magic roll over her like waves of the ocean.  In the back of her mind, a voice asked her what she was doing, but she didn't care.  He seemed to know her body already, and each touch was the equivalent of a master musician upon his favorite instrument.  The cement floor of the cell, the cold, dank air, the uncertain fate they both shared all fell away.  He had a salty taste that reminded her of cloves, and his scruffy chin rubbed a raw place on hers as the intensity of their love-making reached its peak.  For the first time since coming into this god-forsaken cell she felt warm in every part of her body, and something inside her told her she had never been loved like this before in her entire life.  His lips traveled down her neck, pausing at the hollow at the base of her neck, and then going over her shoulder on their journey to the mountains of her breasts.  His muscular back quivered, and her thighs thundered their own response.  They fell asleep some hours later locked in each other's arms.
"I'm so sorry. I wish I had better news for you. . . they're shipping his ashes back on Friday, and they want to give him a full military burial on Wednesday, even though he was a civilian.  I. . . I know this must be hard for you to hear, but. . . just remember that he was a good man. . . a brave and loyal servant of this country, and we will never forget the sacrifice he had to make. . ."
The words droned on and on, but she didn't hear them.  She hadn't heard anything past the 'We regret to inform you that your husband was killed. . .'  She hadn't heard the particulars of the bombing, nor had she any desire to.  She remembered when another of the ladies at her church had been informed of her husband's death, and how the woman's first reaction was a state of shock, of denial. . . She wasn't feeling any of that.  She knew her husband was dead, and that there would be a funeral for her to attend on Wednesday. . . she was numb all over, and she couldn't think any further than Wednesday. . . Wednesday. . .
"Wednesday. . ."
"What's that?"  
"What?"  She was still on the edge of sleep.
"You said something about Wednesday. . ."
"Did I?  I must have been dreaming something. . ."
"Do remember what it was?"
"No. . . no I don't.  It was probably nothing."  She was still stretched out next to him, his strong arm around her in the dark.  He pulled her closer to him and squeezed her gently, playfully nibbling on her ear.  She smiled. Even though she couldn't see him - had never seen him - she thought that he was probably smiling, too.  
Suddenly, the militant march of the boots sounded their approach.  The two in the cell separated quickly.   As she was moving to her corner, his hand found her head in the blackness, pulled it to him, and kissed her hard on the mouth.  She was dazed, but still managed to get to her corner as their door was swung open.  Something was barked in the harsh Arabic language, and hands yanked her up from where she crouched on the floor.  A cold pistol barrel was pushed to her forehead.  She thought to herself, "Dear god, please..." as a bullet ripped through her brain, depositing itself behind her in the cement wall.
When the gun went off, the stranger cried out 'NO!'  At his cry, a dim light was turned on in the cell.  His hands flew to his eyes at the painful introduction of the light that he had been so long without.  He moved his fingers so that he could catch a glimpse of the woman with whom he had shared not only his cell, but also his heart.  He gasped in horror as he stared into a face he had never expected to see . . . the face of his wife.
The End

© Copyright 2000 Wendy Flora - All Rights Reserved
Chris Goodman
Member
since 2000-01-28
Posts 92
Issaquah, Washington usa
1 posted 2000-01-30 07:36 PM


Long story!  Maybe you are a bit like me.  More prone to write prose rather than poetry.
Well written..

Chris

Wendy Flora
Member
since 2000-01-11
Posts 182
Virginia
2 posted 2000-01-30 08:19 PM


Believe it or not, I am a poet first and foremost.  I've only recently started dipping my toes into the prose pool.   -wen

 "I am everything you want
I am everything you need.
I am everything inside of you
That you wish you could be
I say all the right things
At exactly the right time
But I mean nothing to you
And I don't know why."
-"Everything You Want"
Vertical Horizon

Dusk Treader
Moderator
Senior Member
since 1999-06-18
Posts 1187
St. Paul, MN
3 posted 2000-01-31 11:35 PM


What s story!  I really enjoyed this one, I got the idea that the man was her husband fairly quickly but the ending surprised me greatly.  I also like how the flash backs converged towards the end, very cool!

 In flames I shall not be consumed, but reborn. -- Abrahm Simons


Wendy Flora
Member
since 2000-01-11
Posts 182
Virginia
4 posted 2000-02-01 09:40 PM


Thanks!

Did anyone feel it was TOO obvious?  Or have any ideas on how to make it more subtle? (I never like giving anything away...)
-wen

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