Problems
'Well this was not where I expected to spend my evening.' Sarah thought sarcastic to herself. The cell she sat in was barely big enough for the small hard bed she was sitting on, a naked light bulb that hang so low that if she was not careful she would hit her head on it when she stood up lit up the room.
The most striking thing was the big steel door that took up the whole west side of the room. It was a very hostile door Sarah had decided, and it was very good at its job, to keep people inside the room it guarded.
Sarah had been in the cell for maybe two or three hours by now an she was already deadly bored with it. At the same time she knew it could be so much worse than this.
At the same time she had done nothing wrong, even if she had known as she accepted the job that is was a dangerous country she would go to, but she was there to help, and she was a member of the red cross, a citizen of the United states. She was supposed to be immune to the precariousness that was politics.
The men in sand colored uniforms had came for her in the rented apartment she and three other Red Cross workers shared not far from the building where they worked. The men had said that her visa had gone out, and when she went to get it to show them that she still had a month left they just grabbed her and dragged her out the door.
There had been some very boring hours of waiting then maybe half an hour of interrogation that had been terrifying and then they had dragged her in to this cell and left her.
Right now she tried very hard to not think of all the stories she had heard of people in her situation that had been captive for years and even harder to not think of those who just disappeared and never again was seen alive if they were seen at all. She had spent the last hours counting the bricks of the wall and trying not to worry about if her fellow red cross workers had made it out of the country or not.
She really should have gone home last week when the offer came. but there had always been problems the politics and they had newer drawn in the Red Cross workers before. The men in high places knew that the organization helped everyone equally and they gained too much to care that they helped the rebels too.
Sarah flinched as the door suddenly opened whit a creek. A guard came in and took her back to the brightly lit room where she had been interrogated earlier but now there was a different man sitting in the room.
"Miss Williams?" The man asked. he had a suite and a pair of round glasses, gray hair and a big mustache. As Sarah nodded to his question he continued."My name is George Brown. I work on the embassy of USA."
"Can you get me out of here?" Sarah started to desperately hope that this was a terrible mistake. That it would all be over now. She would go home and get herself a less dangerous job.
"We are doing our best but I am afraid that the situation here are running out of control. I must be frank with you miss Williams. This country is about to blow up. I'm not sure how much I can do for you. The regime may fall tomorrow or be in charge for another decennium. It is all very unstable." The man looked genuinely sad as he told her this and he seemed over all very strained.
For a few minutes Sarah just sat there and tried to quietly take it all in. The hop she had earlier disappeared and left a horrible empty feeling of despair.
"I realize this is not what you wanted to hear. And that the so called accusations are entirely made up. Your arrest is a show of strength from the regime and it is against your country not you."
"Can I call my family?" Her voice sounded frail even to herself.
"That I can arrange." Mr. Brown handed her his own satellite phone .
She quickly entered the number to her parents house and quietly wished that her brother would be the one to pick up the phone. Toby was eleven now and even if he could be a pain he was the one in all the world she cared for most. She rose up and went to a corner of the room to get herself some imaged privacy as the phone connected and started ringing. After a few signals she heard the voice of her younger brother.
"Hi Toby" she was a bit proud that she had not sounded on the brink of crying cause she felt that way.
"Sarah! Are you alright? Mom said you were in trouble." Her brother sounded worried and happy at the same time.
"I'm alright Toby, but Karen was right, I am in trouble."
"But you'll be fine right? You'll go thru dangers untold and hardships unnumbered and come home, right?" Her brother had always loved it when she told him of the Labyrinth.
"I don't know Tob's, I honestly don't know. But Toby, do you remember when you where younger and said that you had goblins in the closet?" Sarah had a wild and mad idea but needed confirmation before she tried it, she also needed to tell some things to her family in case she never got the chance again.
"Yes, you use to tell me to keep it a secret, cause mom would not see the fun in it."
"Right, Toby are they still there? Are the goblins still in your closet now and then?"
"Of cores! I have to hide my socks so they don't steel all of them."Toby said irritated.
"Good, well not that you have to hide your socks. But Toby, If I suddenly disappear, ask them about it. Okay? And don't tell Dad and Karen they won't understand." Sarah talked low and fast and hoped that Mr. Brown did not listen to closely.
"Sarah what are you going to do?" Toby sounded confused.
"I may have to do something desperate. Just remember that I love you Toby. Is Dad there?"
"He and Mom are talking to some men in black. But I did not see any aliens."
"Oh well then you will have to tell him and Karen that I love them, and I trust you to take good care of Merlin, can you do that for me?" Sarah drew a shaky breath and wondered if she had said to much to her brother, but surly it would be worse if she tried to make it all sound alright and made promises she was not sure she could hold.
"I will! I love you to big sis. Try to come back home, for me?" Suddenly Toby sounded half his age and very sad. Sarah hoped he would not cry cause then she would probably start to.
"I'll try Toby, I'll try. I have to go now. Good bye." She hardly heard the faint bye from her brother and not what Mr. Brown said to her later either. She was taken back to the small cell and given a tasteless stew for dinner.
She sat there staring at the wall till the light went out. She wondered what she should say, and if it would even work.
Someone screamed in a cell close to hers. That made her wake up from her thoughts.
'thru dangers untold...' she thought to herself.
"I wish the goblins would come and take me away right now." She said as the sound of guns and a large bang that must be a bomb going of made her ear drums hurt. Then everything turned black.
No one found the body of the Red Cross worker Sara Williams in the ruins of the prison after the rebel attack. The press of coarse told the sad story of the saintly girl who died so far from home and family. Paparazzi pictures of Linda Williams and sad pictures of Robert and Karen replaced each other on the news papers.
Karen worried about her son not understanding that his older sister was gone, some nights she thought she heard him talking to someone in his room but when she checked on him he was just staring in to a mirror. When she asked a counselor about it he however assured her that pretending to talk to a person you lost actually was a good way to come to terms with a loss.
That she at one time thought that she actually heard her stepdaughter answer back she did not say and firmly told herself was only wish full thinking from her own mind.
