Interrogation
By gcharlesworth
- 300 reads
Breathing is something most people take for granted. It's only when you are unable to breathe you miss it entirely. The dark can sometimes restrict ones breathing to the point where it is almost impossible. In the darkness you sometimes feel the air hit the back of your throat more than during the day. The burning sensation of inflating the lungs becomes foremost in your mind and it feels like drowning without water.
Sat in the deepest darkness, hands and feet bound by dirty oily rope, lips swollen from constant beatings, breathing is a missed commodity. Light creeped in from the doorway. Silhouetted in the doorway was a man. Tall, muscled and sweating aggression. There would be more bruises and burns today.
The ropes became slack. The hands were free. Now the feet. Forced to stand, pulled through the door, the light burned his half shut and swollen eyes. It had been months since he saw this site. Maybe years, there was no way of knowing. Time moves strangely when in solitude with no way of seeing the sun. It can fly by, or move stand still. It felt like an eternity in this small, dirty room.
A voice came from nowhere to reveal something. It's hard to assimilate information when your senses are overloaded with sensation. Light, smells, sounds, all too much to bear. He felt his knees hit the ground, hard and sandy. Again he was pulled up, this time by two men.
"Take him to recovery"
The two men bundled him into a vehicle. There he was laid down on a stretcher. Things were becoming clear now. Two weeks. Interrogation. Pain.
Memories came flooding into his mind. What felt like months or years, was actually a fortnight. He had agreed to this treatment as part of his training. They needed to make sure he wouldn't break. He hadn't. He might have done, if he remembered the information he needed to keep secret. This wasn't good. If he couldn't remember the information, he failed. That would mean going through it again.
Two hours later he was in a hospital wing, recovering. The department head walked in.
"You have something to tell me?" He wanted the information. He had his clip board ready to mark down the response.
Speaking was a struggle. He wanted to say he didn't remember. To tell the truth, but he didn't. He felt the words leave his lips before he even thought about them.
"They attack..." there was a pause to breathe, "at midnight..." another pause, "from the east."
He remembered. How he didn't know, but he had. There was a wave of relief. No more interrogation training.
"Well done cadet. You have two weeks recovery, then report to your unit as usual."
The air tasted sweet. Sweeter than ever. Two weeks without pain, without temperature fluctuations, being able to breathe easy. He felt the air sting his lungs. This was a welcome pain. He would never take breathing for granted again.
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