The Prisoner

 This is the one and the only place that I have no desire to recall, there lived not so long ago some men who had spent their entire lives in imprisonment inside this bunker. The bunker was an ancient building which was nearly falling apart when I first saw it. There was a couple of lances laying near the pathway toward the bunker, a skinny horse, and a grey, skinny hound who could barely chase a rabbit. The odor was unendurable, it smelled like a mixture of rotten flesh and heavily burnt coal. Scraps of food and other refuse piled against the wall beside the entrance. There were two sentries guarding the entrance to make sure that no prisoners escaped, or that there were no break-ins. However, I guess nobody who was still sane would try to break into this place, so, most of the time, the sentries just leaned against the wooden, piled off wall and dozed into a sleep.

 I was a photographer and a journalist and I was close to my 30s when I first visited this place, a place which even Jesus would abandon. It was 10 years ago, and I was desperately looking for materials. To me, this place was more like prison or hell rather than a bunker. People who were enslaved there have only little flesh on their bones, their faces were spiritless, lean and gaunt. When I asked the guards the reason why these people were enslaved and being treated even worse than animals, these guards told me to stay away from them as far as possible.

 “They were descendants of Satin, you need to stay away, you read the Bible don’t you, mate?” This was the guard’s response to my question. When I questioned about the reason why these people were noted as “descendants of Satins” , the guards became impatient, “You better go see it yourself if you got the nerves. But I told you, mate, these people were horrible, both internally and externally.”

 I still couldn’t speak out the reason why I walked into this bunker that day, but I did. As soon as I walked in, I could felt the freezing coldness crawling through my veins, I could hear noises, terrible noises. A man slamming his head against the door and screaming curses, children’s high pitched wailing. This smell, unendurable smell of rotten meat and coal fulfilled the room and it was driving me nuts. But all of these means little so far as my story is concerned, there was the boy in the 5^th cell against the right side that really caught my eye.

 He looked no more than 17, his head was dropped and his eyes were spiritless. His long black hair covered his almost half of his face but I could still see the tears traces on the left side of his face. He was leaning against the wall with his face buried into his knees. Clothes that were already shattered covered only half of his upper body. I still wondered how these people can live under the venomous touch of the cold inside today, but I could never found out why. When I met this boy, I could just walked by and ignored him. However, I did not, and only god knows why I choose to stay instead of leaving this wretched place at once.

 The boy seemed to took notice of my appearance, he slowly raise his head and brushed his long hair with his filthy hands to the side of his face. I was dumbfounded because the boy was beautiful, even with these terrible surroundings, he still was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in these years. His appearances reminded of a puppet who has its strings broken, only this time, the puppet’s eyes were red, bloody red.

 The boy backed away from me when he saw me staring at him, looking at me with fright and hatred. I guess at that time, my wits were gone beyond repair, and I came to conceive the strangest idea that ever occurred to a madman like me. I slowly walked toward the boy and tried to smile to show that I held no hostility against him. However, the boy continued to back away, his back slumped against the wall and when he saw me still moving slowly toward him, I began to scream.

  I was startled for a second but I quickly regained my conscious: “Hey, I am not here to hurt you.” But the boy continued to scream. I didn’t know what to do. The first idea that came across my mind was that this boy was a total lunatic, but it appeared that I was totally wrong afterwards. I backed off a bit and the boy stopped screaming almost immediately. When he finally found that I really held no hostility against him, he began to observe me with his pair of red eyes.

 At that time, I got a million questions crossing my mind, but the only one that came out was: “Who are you?”

 The boy still didn’t speak a word, his eyes fell upon the biscuit that I held in my left hand and gulped.

 “You want this?” I asked and carefully walked forward and placed the biscuit in front of his cell. The boy immediately lunched forward, gripped hold of the biscuit and plunged the biscuit inside his mouth with such great force he nearly choked. I didn’t speak, I just watched him gulping down the biscuit that I gave him.

 “ I dunno…”

“What?” I was both surprised and excited when I heard the boy speak, “What did you just say?”

 “ I dunno, I spent all my life here, I not have name.” He could spoke English, but it was shattered. His voice was soft but high pitched.

 “That’s okay,” I tried to keep my voice mild and calm so that I wouldn’t scare him, I had earned his trust with just a biscuit. This experience could be an excellent piece of material for my journal. I was known to be excitable and I was excited and surprised that I was actually talking to a prisoner that spent all his life in this hell like place, “You have a family?”

 “I dunno.” The boy shook his head and repeated, “I dunno.”

“They called you son of the demon out there, have any ideas why?”

The boy raised his head a bit, and finally shook his head again: “ Dunno, for all life, I here. I dunno anything.”

 “What did you do here?” I tried to make my questions much less complicated so that the boy could understand. At the same time, the prisoner beside the boy’s cell screamed and banged his fist against the wall. I was surprised how calm the boy was toward this kind of horrifying action because he just held his breath until the banging stopped.

 “Coal, work, dirt work.” The boy responded, “No even a meal, only scraps.”

I nodded slightly, reached into my bag and pulled out another biscuit and placed it slowly in front of the cell. The boy grabbed hold of it immediately and gobbled it up. I waited until he had finished. He had caught on that he would be rewarded with food if he answered my questions properly.

 “You ever seen the world outside?”

The boy shook his head and said nothing.

 “How do you learn your English speaking?”

“En-gli-sh?”

 “I mean, how do you learn to speak?” I asked again, adjusting my words, realizing that he couldn’t understand my questions.

 “Listen. To people.” The boy shrugged: “No, never no outside, just stay here all time.”

 Sympathy crept through me and I did something that I would later regret.

 I took out some pictures that I took in the tropical forest and placed it in front of the boy, before thinking better of it. The boy’s red eyes stared at the pictures, at the trees, the mountains and the water. His eyes watered and he began to cry, he buried his face in his hands, backing off toward the wall and burst into small sobs. He tried to hold them back but his efforts were worthless, great tears began to trickle from his face and his sob soon turned into a wail.

 At that time, I was both confused and a bit scared: “Sorry?”

 The boy took no notice of my words but continued to cry. His wailing provoked a lot of other prisoners inside the cell. Soon, the bunker was fulfilled with the sound of screaming, shrieking, sobbing and wailing. If I stayed here any longer, I was sure that I would completely lose my mind. So I quickly stuffed the pictures inside my bag and ran off.

 “Well, mate? Told you.” One of the guards grinned at me he saw me running out of the entrance, “Hell inside there.”

 “Indeed.” I breathed, completely out of breath.

 I didn’t realize what struck that boy at that time, but afterwards, his cries kept wandering inside my head.

 The boy had never left that bunker and he never will. He would never see the world that was worth living and the world that was full of song.

What happened to that boy? You ask. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.

 God high above, please hear my prayers. In my need, you have always been there. He is young, he is afraid, make him rest, rest from all the eternal suffering that Satin brought him. Bring him home with the blessed of heaven. Bring him peace, bring him joy. He is only a boy, let him live. Amen.