Pugatory

Chapter 6 - Prisoner

Light seeped through his closed eyelids, slowly creeping into his awareness. Agony engulfed him as his head pounded with pain, in sync with each throbbing heartbeat that sent blood rushing to his skull. His tongue felt fuzzy and thick as he licked his dry, cracked lips, feeling and tasting the dried blood encrusting them. As consciousness continued to grow the pain became more acute. He kept his eyes closed for fear his captors would start the process all over again if they knew he was awake. He mentally searched for a place on his body where pain had given him a reprieve, but no such placed existed. He hurt … everywhere! He lay still, not moving, listening to his breathing as it caught and hitched with each breath, reacting to the excruciating pain pulsing throughout his body.

With his eyes still closed he mentally mapped the small cell, about 10 feet square by 8 feet high, which had been his personal purgatory for – he couldn't remember how long.

A new feeling began to nudge its way to the front of his consciousness – cold. He started to shiver. He could feel nothing covering his skin as he lay on the bare floor. He grimaced at the rough concrete underneath him. He was naked, as he always was when they took him into what they called the 'classroom' for his 'attitude adjustment lessons'. He was regaining consciousness, which meant they had just finished another 'lesson' and had thrown him back into his hell-hole.

At first the 'lessons' focused on intensive psychological interrogation techniques – basically mind games involving lies within lies within lies. His prisoner survival training had served him well in resisting their efforts.

As he proved harder to break the lessons had progressed to deprivation techniques, including food, water and the most difficult to deal with – sleep. His captors had removed the sawdust filled bag serving as his bed leaving only the cold, concrete floor to lie down upon, his ragged jeans and ripped polo shirt providing little padding. A bright light recessed behind a mesh metal grate that served as the cell's ceiling was left burning at all times. After what must have been several days – he wasn't sure because he had lost all track of time - the weariness of his body began to overcome the intensity of the blinding light and he had started to succumb to his lack of sleep.

That's when his tormentors started piping painfully loud and random music over a speaker system hidden somewhere behind the ceiling grate. At one point he remembered so desperately needing relief that he tried knock himself out by hitting his head against the wall of his cell. That's when an old metal desk chair had been delivered to his cell and they had zip-cuffed his wrists to the chair arms and his ankles to the chair legs. He thought for sure that he would go mad.

Then, one day, the music stopped and the light went out. He arms and legs were un-cuffed from the chair and rags and water were provided which he used to clean the urine and feces from his body which had collected during his time strapped to the chair. His exhausted and weakened body trembled at the slightest effort and it took him a painstakingly long time – he thought it must have been hours - to achieve what he considered was a minimal level of sanitation.

For several days following, small amounts of water and food were delivered to his cell and he was left alone. All he had strength to do was drink and eat, and sleep - still on the concrete floor - but sleep, none-the-less. After a while he became guardedly optimistic that perhaps his captors had changed their minds about driving him to his death.

But that changed one day when a new tormentor arrived at his cell. He was stripped and taken to another room, one he had not been to before. This new man's ministrations included the old style technique of pummeling him with a heavy phone book.

When that didn't yield the desired results they brought in a livestock water trough, filled it with water, strapped him on his back to a piece of 2 foot wide by 6 foot long plywood board and begin tipping the end of the board where his head rested backwards into the water, which made him feel like he was drowning. After these sessions he started to pass-out, every time – predictable – like clockwork. When regaining consciousness he was always back in his cell, naked and cold and hurting all over.

He heard the room door creak open. A cold blast of air washed over him starting a new round of even more intense shivering. He heard the thump of something soft hitting the floor next to his head.

"You're disgusting," a gruff voice said. "Get dressed. He wants to talk to you." The man walked out and closed the door, the clacking sound of its deadbolt sliding into place.

He cracked open one eye and spied the bundle of clothing the man had tossed to the floor beside him. Slowly, painfully he rose to his knees and unfolded the bundle – a single jump suit, much like a flight suit. He rose to his unsteady feet. Staggering slightly he stepping over to the wall and leaned against it for support while pulling the jumpsuit over his battered and bruised body. When he finished his was breathing hard, sweat pouring down his face, his body racked with pain. He placed his back to the wall, sliding down to sit on the floor.

Not too long after, a man – he assumed the same one that had thrown the jumpsuit on the floor – came to collect him, guiding him down the hall. Each step was slow and uncertain as he staggered along leaning against the wall to keep from collapsing. With every breath a sharp pain shot up through his left side and into his shoulder – a sure sign that his tormentors had cracked or broken a rib. Every movement was a labor of pain and he continued to sweat profusely.

His vision, still somewhat blurred, was clearing now and he could see his destination - the door at the end of the hallway. As he approached, the door opened and another man stepped out, roughly grabbing his upper arms causing the pain in his shoulders and sides to flare white-hot at the thug's abusive grip. The man dragged him the rest of the way into the room and forced him down onto a metal chair sitting in the room's center. Grateful to be sitting down and that the thug's hands were off him he slowly surveyed the room. The only other item present was a chair identical to his, situated six feet in front of him. It wasn't long after his harsh delivery to the room that the door opened again and another man entered. He walked over to the other chair, sat down, leaned back and crossed one leg over the other, looking as relaxed as if he was sitting in his own living room.

The man was tall and slim, probably in his early 50's, with a gaunt, lean look to his face, neck and arms. His pale skin was almost paper white. A generous amount of gel slicked his long, jet-black hair over his scalp, temples and down the back of his head and neck ending just above his collar line. Dark brown eyes peered out from narrow eyelids under thick eyebrows, the same jet-black color as his hair. A long, sharp nose was set noticeably off-center to the right, undoubtedly the consequence of someone breaking it for him. His mouth was large - too large to fit the rest of his face – with thick, oversized lips which were currently turned upward curving into a barely noticeable smirk. His excessively long ears stuck out from the side of his head, another part of him that was too big for his face. He looked like a villain from one of those black and white graphic novels that McGee favored.

He locked eyes with the greasy haired man, meeting his unspoken challenge, silently and openly defying the man and his continued attempts to break him. This bastard had come to meet with him twice since he arrived in his purgatory, each time touting the futility of resistance and the rewards of cooperation. He guessed that because he had not succumbed to their torture yet that the man was there to make another attempt at brow-beating him into cooperation. The tall man called himself Rathburn. He knew if the chance presented itself he would kill Rathburn with his bare hands. But, even though it was only he and Rathburn in the room, there was nothing he could do because his weak and pained body would barely support his own weight as he struggled to sit upright in the chair.

Rathburn must have finally tired of their staring match because he broke the silence with his nasally, high pitched voice that perfectly fit his graphic novel villainous persona.

"Well, Mr. Gibbs, how are we doing today?"

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