A Desperate Plea

This story is dedicated to Aapee.

It was cold.

So cold.

The howling wind and the hailstones hitting against the bars conjured up hellish nightmares of dangers outside.

Yet outside was the only place I yearned to be.

It was hopeless.

In this cold, dark, prison, hope could not stay. Whoever said that it’s the last thing left to man was wrong.

Dead wrong.

The last thing left to man was insanity. It ate away slowly until there was nothing left but to succumb to it.  It was consuming, overwhelming, thrived on the desperation that grew everyday I spent in this cell.

The room was tiny, cold and bare. There was nothing to dispel the boredom. Nothing. There was no bed, no chairs. No evidence that I’d lived here for the last two months. It would probably look the exact same to the next unfortunate soul who was tossed in here.

Unless it reeked of death. My death. Now ‘aint that a dark thought.

I chuckled humorlessly. When I was younger, Mum and Dad used to talk about how a positive outlook on life always made the world seem a brighter place. I had lived by that advice all my relatively short life. Now, I had no life to speak of. All I did, all day long, was sit in this tiny prison and eat whatever my captors deemed appropriate as food.

I got two meals a day: mid morning and night. Sometimes, the guards forgot the food as they did their rounds and were too lazy to go back all the way to the Headquarters. Those days I had one less thing to distract me from the monotony of caged life.

I don’t even know what I’d done, for God’s sake. They just barged into our house one day, lifted me off my chair at the dining table and dragged me screaming into a police car. 

They.

 Soldiers dressed in red and black with unreadable, emotionless faces. They were all the same.

I wasn’t unprepared. There was news of them flying all around the village. Of hard-faced warriors who tolerated nothing in their path. They uprooted homes and families: never took more than two members of a family at a time.

 Left everyone else hanging, not a word of what happened to the ones they took. I knew all this, even heartlessly participated in the gossip my friends shared. No soldiers had appeared in our village, so there was only uncertainty and rumors. Those two, I learnt are dependent on each other. Where there is doubt, there will be crazy stories flying around as everyone tries to produce their version of the future as they see it to be. But the fact is, nobody knows the future except its Creator so the effort is ultimately futile. In vain. Unnecessary.

I guess when we hear bad news approaching we create our own little bubble where everything will be fine and the disaster that is near will miraculously veer off in a direction other than our own, or it will completely disappear, while we remain unharmed. When your bubble is burst, there is always bad news that does it. Something heart-wrenching and traumatic.  Something like being plucked from your home and tossed into a prison.

 I never thought that one day I might be the victim of their cruelty. That one day I would be wasting away in a dark cell cursing their criminal-hardened lives. It just goes in to prove that you never know what’s waiting for you around the corner.

My classmates and I learnt about Hitler in eighth grade. Envisioning our reaction to the Holocaust, I shake my head at our naivety. We were so gullible, so delicate. So protected. Horror that anyone would do such a heartless thing had enveloped our hearts and we were curiously quiet for the rest of the day. But then we forgot. And that is one of the biggest mistakes of mankind. We humans forget about tragedy and despair so quickly, it’s shameful.

This is what we think: As long as this is not happening to me, I won’t care. Or perhaps we shed a few tears, let sympathy overtake us for a while. Then our loved ones surround us and we banish those unhappy thoughts from our mind. Thoughts that someones’s loved ones are getting murdered in front of their eyes, because we are safe. And as far as we are concerned, those people are not our responsibility.

I used to be like that. Selfish and uncaring. Whenever we discussed the misery of victimized nations forced into submission, I would try to change the subject, or discreetly sneak away. It takes all my control not to wince at my behavior. During those long, dark periods of solitude, alone in my cell, I sadistically torture myself with visions of my family, friends, or even a stranger, listening to me plead my story as they gaze with emotionless eyes, indifference in their heart. Then I cry at lost opportunities, milking out the tears until there are none left.

I don’t know if I will ever be free, just like I won’t be able to fit back into society. The pain, the loss, the misery is too hard to forget. I want to forget.

But I don’t.

I want to erase the fact that this ever happened. That my innocence is scarred for ever.

But I want them to know what I suffered. To feel my anger, my anguish, my terror. But in the end I can do nothing except put forward a few lines, in hopes that it will mellow the heart of the true.

Let this be a message to anyone with a soul: We need your help and your support so please, I beg you, do not turn away.

Author's Note

My first time writing anything from the dark genre. What do you think?

Reviews

[Philip Muls]

You captivate the despair of being locked up for absolutely no reason. And you self-reflect that until it happened to you, you could not really care. Are we not all like that, I guess it is human nature. Like how the holocaust first impacted you, you went quiet for a while but then you kinda forgot. Very much happens to all of us. Not to be proud of...it takes willpower to make yourself see it. I guess with this story you force yourself to feel what others experience, for example today's refugees.

Well done.

[Iris]

Thank you so much for your review. And, yes, we do forget, so fast it's sad. These prisoners can't speak for themselves, so I tried to speak for them. I think we owe them that much.

[Woody]

a moving and excellently penned write. perfect English and impeccable punctuation.
if people lose empathy and force themselves to forget, that's a sure sign that humanity is in deep trouble.
I really enjoyed the read, Iris.

[Iris]

Thank you so much. Your review means a lot.

[Katelin L.]

It's a bit of a different take on what I've seen of pieces like this. It was easy to sympathize with. I enjoyed it. Good job :)

[Iris]

Thank you. What did you mean by "a bit of a different take on what I've seen of pieces like this"?

[Katelin L.]

Your writing style effected the emotional level of the piece.

[Iris]

Was that good or bad?
(Sorry to badger you like this).

[Katelin L.]

Hahaha its no problem. Emotion is always good.

[Robert Parlange]

Sounds like dorm life.

Good narrative. You have a talent for descriptive details. Hard to do sometimes.
Just one suggestion, and it's only a suggestion. It would be a little easier to read if you would put it into a short story format. One huge block of text is difficult to follow sometimes.

Great story. Keep writing

[Iris]

Thank you for your review. Yes, I will try to put in short story format soon. Appreciate your input.

[Robert Parlange]

You're welcome.

[Jen]

This is good! It depicts in detail of what a lot of tales tell of those unjustly taken and held captive for reason other then expressing their rights to freedom. Good job, please keep sharing your talents

[Iris]

Thank you Jen!