Page 7 of The Darkness Within
Day 7 of captivity
“I can’t feel my foot anymore. The lower half of my leg is numb.”
Gutierrez sounded too weak and tired to be upset. Maybe he’d given up and just accepted his fate.
I could smell his body rotting. The stench overpowered the urine and the feces, now dried and hard. His skin was flushed and hot and he was covered in sweat. Sepsis. If he didn’t get out of there soon, he’d die from the infection.
“Are they going to come for us?” he whispered in a small voice.
“You bet. They’re just figuring out how. But they’re coming. We’ve just got to hold on a little longer.” I wasn’t sure if I believed the words I promised, but what else could I say? We were fucked? We were going to die there and the dogs would eat our dead bodies? All I could do was give him hope. Even if it was false hope.
“Hey, remember a few weeks ago when they served spaghetti at chow hall?” Gutierrez didn’t respond. “Do you remember? I sat with you. You were pissed because Whittemore stole your bottle of hooch and finished it off without you. Do you remember the spaghetti that night? It was fucking terrible,” I recalled with a forced laugh.
His chest heaved. “I remember. It wasn’t cooked all the way, and it stuck together like pasta nuggets.”
“Yes! And the sauce was so watered down it looked like Kool-Aid.” His shoulders shook with silent laughter before his body was racked with a deep, wet cough.
“If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?” he asked, clearing his throat. He spit a green-tinted loogie on the dirt floor.
“I don’t know, maybe Chinese food. There’s this all-you-can-eat buffet back home outside base. They serve the best crab Rangoon you ever tasted.”
“I know the place. Wok Choy. It’s your favorite.”
“What about you? What are you gonna eat when we get back home?”
He blew out a deep sigh. “My mother’s paella. She puts these fat shrimp and scallops in it, and seasons it just right. You’ve never tasted anything so good in your life.”
“Hell, that sounds fucking delicious.”
“We’re gonna get back home, right?” His voice broke on a sob. The tortured sound gripped my heart, squeezing like a vice.
“Yeah, G, we’re going to get back home,” I lied through my teeth.
A guard, accompanied by two dogs, hurried over, speaking in dire tones with the guard currently watching us. Then he grabbed me under the shoulders and began to drag me away. Desperately, I reached out for Gutierrez, clutching onto him like a life preserver. Angry, the guard grabbed fistfuls of our hair, knocking our heads together twice, which made my skull ring like a bell. Momentarily dazed, my hold on Gutierrez slackened enough for the guard to drag me away.
“Nash!”
“It’s okay, G, hold on man. I’ll come back.” His anguished sob followed me down the tunnel, and I called out, “You hear me? I’m coming back. Hold on!”
They dragged me to a room even darker than the tunnel I had called home for the last week. Two guards manhandled me into a large plastic crate filled with freezing cold water. My heart and breath seized as every nerve ending in my body tensed from the icy bath. Was he going to drown me? Waterboard me for intel? Or was he simply cleaning the urine and feces off me?
The filthy fatigues clung to my body like a second skin, and I held my breath as he pushed my head below the surface of the water. It was a mindfuck for my senses; the dark room, the freezing cold water, and not knowing what was coming next. The whole experience was completely disorienting and terrifying, and all I could do was hold on, hold my breath, and hope that I survived.
Are they doing the same thing to Gutierrez right now?
What if they don’t reunite us? What if they keep us apart?
What if they kill him?
I just don’t want him to die alone. I fucking promised him I would come back. I promised him his mother’s paella.
They allowed my head to surface before I ran out of breath, and just as quickly, they pushed me back under, with my lungs only half full of air. The tightening in my chest grew heavier, the primal urge to breathe, to feel my lungs expand with air, was overwhelming. I could feel a pulse behind my eyes, the pressure in my head growing to be too much, until they finally let up and allowed me to breathe. I sucked deep breaths into my lungs, my chest burning with the effort, and tried to brace my knees against the bottom of the crate, to leverage my body and keep my head above water. The guards grabbed my arms and hauled me from the bath, my clothes dripping wet on the dirt floor, making a muddy puddle. They tied me to a chair and shoved a piece of flatbread in my mouth with their dirty fingers. I was desperate to spit, but reluctant to let go of the food. So far, they hadn’t poisoned the water or the bread, and as much as I hated to accept anything from them, I knew that the food was vital to my existence.
They taunted me as I chewed, poking me in the ribs with the butts of their rifles, kicking my legs, laughing at me like I was the brunt of their joke. I would burn every one of these motherfuckers to the ground, rip their bodies apart with my bare hands, and piss on their fucking bloody remains if I had half the chance.
Fuck them. Fuck their joke.
More voices sounded outside the room, echoing down the hallway, and then three more faces appeared in the doorway, dressed in muslin robes covered with camouflage jackets. They surrounded me, speaking to each other in a language I couldn’t understand, and then their filthy hands grabbed my arms and my legs, and they carried me down the hall. They deposited me in a small dark room with barbed wire fencing serving as the door. Two armed guards stood on the other side of the razor wire. My body hit the ground and rolled, the dirt floor sticking to my wet clothes, making me filthy again in a matter of seconds. I lay still, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness before I tried to move.