It's dark because I have my eyes closed, Sam told herself. She squeezed them tighter and willed herself to believe it. She wasn't really trapped in all consuming blackness, she could see in front of her, she could see every part of the brilliantly bright room if only she opened her eyes. She chanted it to herself over and over again until it became a whisper inside her head, repeating itself without her having to control it. For just a snatch of a second she believed it. The light would reach even the furthest corner if only she opened her eyes.
But then she tried to and remembered.
It enshrouded her, pulled her in so deep it was impossible to imagine a world without it. It was inside her too; it'd crept in while she wasn't paying attention, in one of the growing moments when her mind had slipped and had forgotten to guard itself. Now it festered, the rot spreading further and further.
The only company of the darkness was the steady, persistent drip, drip, drip of a leaking pipe she could not find. She wished she could, her tongue was so dry it stuck to her lips, but her better instincts told her she shouldn't drink it anyway. It could be anything. But that was a hard rule to follow when she opened her mouth and felt her lips crack.
They hadn't been for days. At first it had been every day, but then the visits had grown less and less frequent. They were punishing her silence with silence. So she kept her eyes closed because it was easier. It was easier on her weakened body, easier on her fragile mind, easier to cope with the darkness that paralysed her to the far corner of her tiny cell. So she hunched in the furthest corner from the door and kept them closed, her head buried in her knees for the excuse of no light behind her lids and she held in her scream.
They wanted her to scream, they'd told her that from the first day. If she would scream for them, beg, they might show her some mercy. Days had blurred together, one crushing into the other. It had been a Thursday when she was taken but it might have been Friday by the time she opened her eyes to the darkness. Saturday even. Or maybe it had still been Thursday. She had no way of knowing and without the sun the time that passed had no meaning.
She shifted and felt the dirt move with her. It was everywhere, impossible to escape from. Dirt clinging to her clothes, staining the uniform she had once been so proud of, dirt smeared to her face, creeping into her eyes until she blinked it away, dirt embedded underneath her fingernails, dirt crumbling from the walls, a colony on the floor she slept on. It crawled over her skin, even inside her mouth, taking what barest moisture it held.
A banging on the door that rang through all four walls of the cell made her want to both leap to her feet and shrink further into the wall, but she didn't trust her legs to support her and settled for glaring at the door, both wishing them away and willing them to come in. There were so many conflicting thoughts in her head that she wished her mind would finally cave to the lingering oblivion so she wouldn't have to make any decisions. But it was taken out of her hands as there was a creek and a crack of light spilled across the filthy floor. She couldn't help it, delight soared inside her at the tiny splash in her dark world.
A long figure stood at the doorway, nothing but a shadow to Sam's scrunched eyes. She blinked hard and forced her eyes open, refusing to let her natural reactions spoil the few glorious moments she had away from the dark. She didn't care who it was or what he wanted with her. It was a break in the silence. She saw him bend and then something rolled towards her across the stream of harsh yellow that looked to Sam as inviting as the sparkling sun on a mid-summer's day. "Can't have you dying on us now can we." She couldn't see him, the light was still too hard on her adjusted vision to make out anything absolute, but she knew he was grinning and not to be friendly. "At least not until we decide you should."
Sam caught it before it as it bounced off her foot and started to roll off back where it came from. Immediately she unscrewed the cap and raised the bottle to her lips, barely bothering to sniff it out for poison before gulping it down. It was only when she drained the last drop from the bottom and the plastic crunched under the pressure of her sucking mouth that she realised it should have been saved. She had no idea when they were going to bring her more. He'd said they weren't going to let her die, but now she was back under their control, relying on them to give her what she needed.
She'd just been so thirsty. Even as she stared down at the empty bottle in dismay she could hardly bring herself to regret it and she thought she was finally beginning to understand Dylan's drinking. Before she'd been taken she'd been thirsty. At the end of a long shift without time for a water break she'd been gasping for something to drink, but never like this. It wasn't an ache but a fire in her throat. Flames licked at the back of her mouth and all the way down to her chest where her heart ached.
Then he was stepping further into her prison, leaving the door propped open behind him so they were still bathed in the yellow glare. As Sam grew more and more used to the sudden banishment of the dark she was able to make out his features. A turned up nose that looked as if it had been broken, a small, circular scar on his right cheek, the tuft of black hair that made him look like a schoolboy whose mother still styled his hair. And blue eyes as vast and empty as the pit of the ocean.
She'd seen him on the day she'd been taken. He'd been there, his gun poised at Tony's temple so Sam hadn't dared to reach for her own. His bottomless eyes had mocked her as someone's hands had run over her body, taking every weapon and twisting her hair through their fingers to drag her along for the ride. She hadn't seen Tony again.
He pulled out another bottle from where it had been tucked into the pocket of his scuffed jeans and Sam reached for it instinctively, but he chuckled dryly and yanked it back from her feeble snatch. "You can have it if you give me something in return," he murmured, one side of his mouth curling into a grin that looked more like a snarl. Hunched against the wall she was eye-level with the growth in his trousers and immediately the burning in her throat intensified as the thirst was joined by a rush of bile. Sam choked it down and drew back her hand, holding it in a tight fist against her side.
Wonky Nose chuckled again. "Whatever you want, Princess," he said, spinning around and sending up a small cloud of dirt as he retreated with the water. She couldn't help the whimper that crossed her still parched lips when the door swung behind him, plunging her back under the cloak of blackness as if it had never been lifted. Her throat ached again, but that time with the impulse to call him back, if only because it meant she could have the light back for just a few more minutes.
But then she thought of what else she would have to do and she bit down so hard on her tongue to stop herself that she felt blood seep between her teeth. One more stain on her wrecked body.
She scrunched her eyes shut again and pressed her forehead into her knees, conjuring an image of Dylan to her mind. He would be the easiest person to have with her. He wouldn't insist on constant conversation and keeping up the mood and staying motivated, whatever torture was inflicted upon them next. They'd always been happy to sit in silence if they had nothing to say and fill it if they did. They'd never tried to force what wasn't there and it had both made and broken their marriage. But if he was there now he wouldn't mind if she locked her fingers through his in the dark, even if she wouldn't admit it was because she was struggling to hold off a panic attack.
But then she thought of the crushing dark, the men that came to drag her into a room she dreaded almost as much as her prison and the constant burning in her throat and she was so glad he didn't have to suffer it too. It was just her. That was both the sparkle of hope and the blackness that crept closer towards her every day.
She wondered, too, if he knew. Had she kept him as her next of kin? She couldn't remember. Their relationship was a blur of harsh words and pieces of paper she couldn't recall the titles of. If he didn't know would he think of her anyway? Perhaps he'd wiped her from his memory as soon as she'd walked out of the ED. If he did know, did he think of her? Or perhaps she'd become such a spec in his mind that she'd been obliterated from his life long before she'd throw herself back into Helmand.
Hell Land.
Look I wrote a thing. I'd call it a one shot but it's not, more a snippet of a longer story that I may or may not write depending on my mood/schedule/plot bunnies and general laziness. Also reader interest. So I'd love to know what you thought.