WITH THE WIND IN OUR FACE – Chapter 2
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Today, if it is today, he feels lethargic, it's an effort to stir himself. His body has long lost its biometric clock, days and nights no longer have substance, the steady measure of time lost to the perpetual gloom and daily routine, only the latter helps to keeps him grounded, though he's fully aware that they could be tampering with his psyche, disturbing the patterns of his 'days'. The technique is nothing new, sensory deprivation with daily routines being carried out every few hours rather than each day, drug-laced food to make him sleep, stimulants to wake him up, three days could be made to feel like three weeks … except for his matted hair, his shrinking body weight, the ache in his bones … no, he doesn't think there's much manipulation of time going on here.
He makes an effort, both mental and physical to move, pushes himself up into a seated position, rest himself against the stones at his back, shivers as the cold seeps through his tattered shirt. He turns his mind with an effort to the temperature. It rarely varies, never too cold, never warm or even hot. There's no sound of pumps, no whine of machinery or rumble of generators. Day in, day out, it's silence. Silence briefly broken by creaking metal, jumbling keys and flashing torches, silence accentuated by the constant chit-chat and scratching of his watchers, their beady eyes and sleek bodies continuously making incursions into his perimeter, like wolves testing their prey's conditions, waiting for the moment when he will be too weak to fight back, too far gone to retreat into a corner and …
He shakes his head, berates himself for letting his mind run away with him and pushes himself up till he's standing. He's concluded long ago … or what feels like long ago … that he's underground. Not too deep, it's not cold enough for that, but far enough down to make the outside temperatures irrelevant. He bends his mind, not for the first time, to the problem. He doesn't know anything about his guard … or is it guards? They never talk, never show themselves. At first he'd tried talking to them, asking the obvious and then cursing them in anger before finally giving in to the pleading, anything just to hear another voice but his own. Silence had been the only response.
The flashlight blinds him, makes them nothing more than dark blurs against a dark background. He can't tell if they're short or tall, heavy or thin, male or female. Only his heightened sense of hearing gives him slight clues, unless they are being even cleverer and playing him, he muses. The footsteps as they approach and leave are his only clues, barely that, given that they must be wearing soft soles, sneakers or something like that; no hard, resounding footsteps, only the quiet pad of rubber on hard stone. But he has detected small differences, the slightly quicker padding of one of them, the slower cadence of the other … a question of strides? Of character? Is one shorter, needing to take more steps to reach the end of the passage, or simply more impatient, taking shorter, quicker steps?
Yesterday had been shorty … he smiles to himself as he applies the name. Shorty had seemed to be more impatient than usual, throwing the light around the cell yet failing to blind him towards the end. A ploy? An error? Carelessness? He's been through the stages; the panic, the anger, the denial, the acceptance ... they've deprived his senses, weakened his body, but his mind is still strong, has always been his strongpoint, despite his wild imagination. Given time, he's always been able to bend his intellect to the solving of the puzzle, the mystery, the enigma.
Again he smiles, he likes his words; they keep him sane. He begins his ritual, the slow stretching, moves onto the sit-ups, then the press-ups. He cheats a little today, doesn't complete the full number, he's not really up to it today. He completes the knee bends and let's himself drop to a seated position, waits for his breathing to calm down, licks his lips and feels their parchedness.
With his pulse rate almost normal he climbs back up onto his feet and moves over to the recess, carefully feels for the mug and raises it to his lips. There's barely enough to wet them, not enough to sooth the dry throat where rasping breaths have dried whatever moisture there was. He holds the metal to his throat, feels the coolness soothe him, hardly the best solution, but better than nothing.
Time passes and for the hundredth or thousandth … maybe the millionth time he tries to think of options, of possible outs. They allow him nothing useful, no cutlery, no glass, nothing that can be used to cut or dig or break. The first few weeks he had studied his cell in detail, run his fingers along every crack, every seam. Pulled and tugged and kicked at bars, let his fingers explore every centimetre of hinges and fixings, searching for and failing to discover any weakness, any possible chance of bending or snapping or pushing something lose. Nothing.
Then he had tried using the tin bowl, bending it and stamping on it till it had formed as sharp a point as he could make, had tried to dig around the stonework where metal bars were set, had tried the floor, even where they disappeared into the top of the wall. All he had managed was to blunt and wear the tin down … and to find himself without food and water the following day, for though he'd tried to straighten the dish out as much as possible, its contorted shape and scratched and damaged edge had led to punishment, silent, effective punishment. He hadn't tried anything as stupid since.
Time passes, too much, or so he thinks. Are they not coming today? Has he woken earlier than normal? Panic rises at the thought of being abandoned to his fate, no more water, no more food … no more contact with another human being.
He presses the palms of his hands to his forehead, presses as hard as he can till he feels the pain, pushes down the panic, forces himself to take slow, deep breaths. What would be the point of letting him die in isolation now? Why have they kept him alive so far, there has to be a reason, however crazy, however skewed?
The sound of the door opening in the distance, the sense of relief overwhelming, almost bringing tears of relief to his eyes, but he blinks them back, even they are too much loss of moisture … not to mention a show of weakness. The padding of feet … shorty again and he's already on his feet, back to the wall head bowed and eyelids tightly clamped closed, a shake of his head to clear his mind, the feel of hair on his face as the unruly matted strands fall forward.
The footsteps come to a stop, the light flares, hits his face, remains there a few seconds and then turns to highlight the bucket. He waits a moment, surprised. His eyes hurt, the sudden glare piercing through his eyelids though, not as painfully as usual. He slowly opens them, stares into the gloom, night vision mostly lost, but he can make out the vague shape against the dark wall behind, there's an impatient twitch of the flashlight and he moves, unwilling to tempt fate, puzzled, his mind catching onto this change and tucking it away for later analysis. Right now though, he needs to move, to carry out the usual routine.
The gate clangs shut and the soft padding footsteps move away, pause a moment as the grating metal sound travels down the passageway, quiet, then the distant thunk of finality.
He slides down the wall, stares at the bars before him, can make out the vertical and horizontal lines that cut the further wall into pale grey rectangles. He turns his head, glances at the bucket by the wall, puzzled, able to discern the shape, not perfectly, but better that usual at this stage of proceedings.
What has changed? Why isn't he as blinded as usual? His body demands liquid, begs for food, but sudden hope is stronger, more insistent. Weaker flashlight? Maybe the batteries were running low … would it have been noticeable to Shorty? Would tomorrow bring an even weaker light? Or would they be replaced, the light strong as ever?
He pushes his hair off his face, suddenly stops, lets it fall back, fingers it, greasy and gritty and dirty, clumps of it sticking together and almost reaching his cheeks. He sits still for several minutes, glances at the bucket which even now is visible, eyesight almost back to normal in this world of his. He shifts sideways, carefully removes the mug and lets the first fresh trickle of water run into his mouth, swirls it around, feels his pulse picking up as he allows it to slide down his throat. He takes a second sip, holds it for longer this time before swallowing it.
As always, with utmost care, he places his cup in the recess … 'the alter' as he thinks of it, an offering to life … his life. Sinking back down to the ground he lifts the bowl of gruel out of the bucket, lifts it to his chin and pauses. He lowers the dish to his lap, lets his fingers explore the contents, squeezes it between his fingers, feels the stickiness, stirs it some more. He leans back against the wall, stomach growling at the proximity of satisfaction, and he grimaces as he thinks of it as an unsatisfied predator being held back from the prey.
Licking his fingers clean, he reaches over and pulls the bucket to him, runs his hand inside, feels the rough plastic under his fingers … it feels damp, barely. Probably emptied and hosed out each morning, then left till the following one, to be handed to him with his daily ration, to be used for his needs. There's no smell of disinfectant, no smell of cleanliness, but his own standards are so far down that he doesn't care, probably wouldn't notice anyway.
Carefully he dips his fingers into the bowl, calculates by touch as best he can and returns them to the inside of the bucket, allowing the small ball of food to drop. He repeats the process a second time, then checks as best he can the small pile of gruel at the bottom of the pail. Careful to not upset the bowl still in his lap, he tips the bucket so that it rests at an angle against the wall, lining up the lip with a seam of stonework, hoping it will lock it in place. Then he returns to the contents of the bowl, and though ravenous as always, he still manages to savour each mouthful; chewing twenty times if possible before swallowing … and today it taste better than usual.