Blinding darkness

Her fingers sank into the damp dirt as she held up the earth over her head, her arms quivering, sweat tracing a path up her face, her legs flailing uselessly towards the endless stretches of indigo sky below her. Finally, Lia couldn’t hold on anymore and allowed her muscles to release, feeling the wind ruffle her hair and the short rush of adrenaline pump through her veins as she let herself fall backwards.

She landed in the soft lawn and lay there with her eyes closed, blades of grass tickling her bare arms and calves as the warm sunlight caressed her skin. The chirping of the birds and the rushing sound of the small artificial waterfall next to her filled her ears with their lullaby. She inhaled the unique flowery scent of the garden and wiggled her feet. A smile spread across her face as the grass tickled her skin. 

The sound of heavy footsteps made her open her eyes and she squinted against the blinding sunlight. A shadow fell over her body as a large figure appeared above her. The light played funny tricks and for a moment she mused how strange the shadow figure looked from this perspective. Faceless, only visible as a dark shape against the brightness of the sun. With broad shoulders and a long dark coat the shadow loomed over her. She wondered what a stranger was doing in their garden when the giant already started speaking. 

„Are you Lia?“. His tone was harsh. It made her feel small, lying there to his feet like an obedient lap dog.

„Who are you?“, she asked while scrambling up. Her voice was higher than she would have liked. She rose to stare up into two pools of black, holding tiny, wide-eyed versions of herself captive. Behind the mirror sunglasses, she could make out the man’s features, they seemed like chiseled out of stone, a giant’s face, cold and unmoving. Behind him, she spotted another man, lurking near the garden gate. With their matching sunglasses and broad build, they almost looked like identical twins.

The man in front of her sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. 

„Why are there always so many questions?“ His form obscured the sunlight, casting her in shadow, as he took a step forward and grabbed her around the neck. Lia’s eyes widened in shock when a cloth was pressed over her mouth and nose. She tried to twist her head, to get free, to get air. But she was powerless against his overwhelming force. Finally, her senses started to dwindle. Before she was sucked into darkness, she heard her mother’s panicked voice calling her name. Then nothing.  

Lia was yanked to the surface of awareness by the feeling of imminent suffocation. Her eyes opened, but she could not see, she could barely breath through the cloth over her face. The ground shook under her and a constant humming drowned her ears. She tried to make sense of the situation, but her thoughts were playing a sluggish game of catch with her.

“The girls awake”. She heard a deep voice from right in front of her.

“Keep her and her mother quiet. We’re almost there.”, it came back from further to the front. 

Minutes later there was a screeching of tires and she was lifted up by strong arms. Lia tried to struggle, but it was no use. Shoes crunched across gravel and then wet stone as the air around them grew stale and moist and so very very cold.           

***

“Hello? Is there someone?”

The words echoed off the walls, creating a chorus of voices sounding eerily in the all-encompassing darkness. Only silence greeted them in return.

Against her cheek Lia could feel the words vibrating in her mothers’ throat before the frantic beating in her chest came to the fore again. She pressed herself tighter against the consoling warmth of her mother’s body, shaking with the cold seeping up from the wet ground. One of the icy steel bars surrounding them from all sites pressed painfully against her hip.

“Hello? Please…”. Her mom’s voice finally broke, strained from overuse.

They lay there on the ground - silent, shivering - just accompanied by the sound of water dropping off the moist stone of the ceiling. A dry sob broke free of Lia’s throat. She wanted to cry, but there were no tears left after the hours they had already spent in the impenetrable darkness. The faint splashing was the only distraction.

Her mind was filled with this monotone sound of small pearls of water meeting the ground. Drop, drop, drop. She involuntarily was reminded of something her grandpa had once told her. A torture method, where drops of water would continuously fall onto the same spot of the forehead, eventually driving the victim crazy; slowly but steadily. At that time she had laughed at that. How could mere drops of water harm anyone? Now, she didn’t feel like laughing at the thought anymore.

“Shh… don’t worry. They can’t keep us here forever”. Her mother’s trembling voice betrayed the soothing intention.

As if in response to her mother’s words, a sudden rattling noise came from the darkness behind the bars, making the two of them shrink in fear. A raspy laugh followed. The joyless sound let goosebumps rise on Lia’s skin. 

“Fresh optimism…”. It was a male voice, rough, like it hadn’t been used for a while. The words were slow and slurred, struggling against a heavy burden weighing them down. Lia shuddered at the disengaged, cold tone.

She felt her mother jerk up into an upright position. “Who is this? Please… help us to get out of here”

“Freedom…”. Again, he forced out a raspy laugh. He spoke louder this time, like his voice slowly warmed up.

Her mother’s breathing grew faster. Lia could feel her struggle to keep her voice calm. “Listen. If you can help us to get out of this place, I will pay you whatever you want. Just please, help us”.

“Sometimes… I still remember that feeling… - optimism. It's like… a faint memory… . On some days… I can... almost grasp it”. His sentences were unbearably slow with frequent pauses in between, like just these few words had taken away all of his strength. He let out a ragged breath as he finished.

Her mother’s body sagged against Lia.

Lia felt a warm breath on her face as whispered words left her mom’s mouth. “How… how long have you been trapped in this place?”.

Silence.

Finally, his voice could be heard again, only a faint whisper at first. “Time… passes differently in here. The darkness… swallows the hours and days… at other times… it spits them out again.”

 As the words sank in, the drumming heartbeat against Lia’s cheek accelerated. “Do you know who keeps us here? And why? What does this all mean?” The words seemed to tumble over each other, spoken too fast, too hectic.

“It is better… not to ask yourself… these questions. Afterall,… there is no point to ---”

“Please! Not knowing why all of this is happening drives me insane!” Her mother’s exasperation was almost tangible now. “I just--- This is--- We need to get out of here…” Her voice trailed off and her arms around Lia tightened.

His dry laugh felt almost familiar at his point. “You think you want to know,… but do you really?”. There was the smallest hint of an emotion creeping into his voice, bitterness. A rattling sound, as of chains, echoed through the darkness. “Believe me… better don’t ask yourself… too many questions. Just… let the darkness… embrace you, … let it… eradicate your mind.”. He broke into another dry laugh. “Doesn’t that sound… quite poetic?”.

There was nothing to say after that, no response that seemed fitting.

At this moment, trapped in the cold darkness with only that continuous drop drop drop of the falling water, she asked herself if her grandpa had maybe not been entirely right. Maybe it didn’t need the water actually beating one’s skin. Maybe even this never-ending, monotonous sound could drive one crazy. Maybe that had already happened to the man beside them who had been trapped in the darkness for so long. The drops of water were his tormentor - relentless and pitiless -, steadily driving him closer to insanity. At the same time, they were also his only companion, the only distraction from the endless, blinding darkness he was trapped in.

***

The blindness had taken away her eyes, leaving her there feeling unprotected, bare. But as it turned out, one could get used to many things. Now the blackness, the stench of urine and the pressing almost-silence felt more and more familiar. The darkness cocooned her, let her float in nothingness, cradling her with sweet illusions of her dad coming to their rescue. Only the occasional warm touch of her mother’s hand or the rustling of a chain from their cell neighbor pulled her back to the now and then, to the harsh reality they could not escape.

Days had passed, or maybe it had only been hours. The blackness had robbed her of any sense of time and substituted it with it’s own time measurement of gnawing hunger and infrequently falling water drops, seeming to ridicule her parched throat.. One. … two, three, four. …, …, seven, eigh--, nin--, ten, elev--, twelve. … , …, thirteen.

At 666 she heard a sound. Faint at first, only a dim beat in the distance. But constantly coming closer, sending ahead booming echos that seemed to reverberate in her head. Her throat pulled together tighter with every approaching footfall. As the familiar darkness started to recede to their left, her hand tightened in the textile of her mother’s dress and she felt a warm but shaking hand on her shoulder pulling her closer. Flamming orange spilled out of the tunnel that was now revealed to their sight. It got brighter and brighter until they had to turn away their eyes, not used to light anymore.

Finally, the steps came to a stop directly in front of them, behind the steel bars. Lia slowly lifted her head, her hand still shielding her eyes. Her gaze met shiny black shoes, a dark grey suit, a white dress shirt, and a cold smile. 

„Hello there“. 

She stared at the man crouching down in front of her, the flashlight in his hand throwing shadows over his face and drawing deep furrows into his already edgy features. 

Her mother’s grip around her shoulder tightened and her voice quivered as she spoke. „Who- Who are you and- and what do you want from us?“

The man studied her for a long moment. The color of his piercing eyes matched the steel bars perfectly that separated them from him. Finally, he spoke: „Your family owes a debt. And we always collect our debts“. One corner of his mouth pulled up into a joyless half-smile. “As to my name... Why don't you call me … Mr. Smith?”.

„Well… Mr. Smith. What debt are you talking about? I don’t know of any ---“

„Misses Black, I brought you a gift. “, he said while abruptly getting up and tilting his head towards the tunnel he had come from.

Lia had shrunk back at the abrupt movement, but now that her gaze followed his head motion, she heard it, another pair of footsteps. No, it was two pairs. The moments in which the echoing footfalls drew closer, seemed to stretch like chewing gum. Finally, two figures emerged, their flashlight illuminating their surroundings even further.

Lia could now make out a glimpse of the neighboring cell and the mass of lumps in the corner, what must be their mysterious prison mate. Then her gaze was drawn back to the two men coming closer, one limping and almost hidden behind the bulky shape of the other. Was that the giant who kidnapped her? Her gaze drifted to the other person with the hanging head and broken leg, and her heart skipped a beat. 

“Dad?”

The smaller man’s head snapped up and he stared at her with one bloodshot eye, the other was swollen shut and had taken on a blueish color. His body that already seemed strangely small deflated even further at her sight and his shoulders started shaking.

That… that couldn’t be her dad, the man that never showed a weakness, who always came to her rescue whenever she needed him. Lia looked at this fragile shell of the father she knew, the beaten man that was opening his mouth to form words, but nothing came out. His one good eye was wide with fear, but there was also something different hidden there, another emotion, was it.. guilt?

“Well, gentlemen, you have taken your good time” Smith said. “Now, Mr. Black, I am sure you are overjoyed to see your family, but before your happy reunion, we still have some business to talk about.”

Her father’s uncanny doppelgänger jerked his head up at Smith and looked at him with one pleading eye. “It is me who owes you, my family has no business here. Let them go and I’ll do whatever you want”.

“Ah, you see, Mr. Black, you have the illusion here that you still have some amount of power left. But…” Smith struck the prison bars with a loud clang, making everyone flinch, and closed the remaining distance to her dad. “You. Tried. To. Trick. Us.” His face was mere inches away from her father’s now. ”And-“

“I didn’t know who you wer-“

“Oh, you didn’t know. Well, all is settled then.” Smith’s smile was not deceiving anyone. “I am not Mother Theresa, Mr. Black. And your debts will be paid.” Although his voice was a mere whisper at the end, every word was echoing loud and clear in Lia’s ears.

“I- I- please let them go, I’ll do anything for you. Just… please let them go.”

“The problem is, Mr. Black, … you have nothing. You lost your company after the trick you pulled off and the leg injury that you unfortunately acquired during our … talk makes you all but useless to use. You can’t do anything for us” At these words he pushed her dad through the opening leading into the empty cell behind him and clanked shut the door with a thud. “But fortunately… your daughter can.” He gave a short nod to Jason.

Lia froze as she saw the giant turn towards her. The world seemed to grow distant within the second, leaving only the approaching menace in the focus. Only muffled in the background she heard her father screaming, felt her mom laying protective arms over her. But like in a narrow tunnel, her senses were fixed on what was directly in front of her.

The rusty turning of a key, the opening screech of the metal door, heavy boots meeting the slick ground, coming closer and closer and closer. Calloused hands yanking her out of her mom’s embrace, holding her in their iron grip without even a change to struggle. The feeling of utter helplessness, something wet trickling down her cheeks. A wailing cry behind her, the thumping of metal on metal, the key turning.

“Now, little girl,” Smith stared down at her with his disturbing iron eyes and spoke with a raised voice, to not be drowned out by her parents’ pleading. “Why don’t we leave your parents’ fate up to you? Train hard and become an asset to our organization, then your parents will get an upgrade to their ... living quarters. Turn out to be … unhelpful and, well, let’s just say, for your parents’ sake, try not to be.” 

A throaty laugh could be heard from the dark corner in the neighboring cell. “So, what… the orphanages are not … good enough anymore for new recruits? Looking for little spies you have… more leverage on, eh?”. 

“Oh, shut up, Jack. No one is asking for your opinion anymore.” Smith said.

He gave a wave to his giant assistant who started dragging her towards the tunnel. Lia struggled to look back over her shoulder, to throw a last glance at her parents who were rattling desperately on the metal bars of their cells, screaming her name. 

When a rattling of chains came from her right. She flinched as a hand grabbed her around the arm and yanked her against cold prison bars. A furrowed face, half-hidden by knotted hair and a dirt-crusted beard, was pressed against the metal, the body stench of the imprisoned man almost making Lia retch. In a whispered but urgent voice, he pressed out: “You will... never get out of this again. So... don't disappoint them... or you end up like me.” 

Then, Lia was pulled away by her prison keeper again who blindfolded her and pushed her into the tunnel mouth. Her parents’ voices slowly vanished in the distance, but only grew louder in her head intermixing with the last words of the strange prisoner. She was dragged through seemingly endless tunnels murmuring with the voices of forgotten souls, through narrow doorways scraping her skin and then finally out into the open.

Even through her blindfold the daylight almost blinded her eyes, and the warm summer wind took her breath away with its sweet caresses. Lia wanted to laugh and cry at the same time at this piece of normality she had thought she would never experience again. But a strong hand pushed her ahead onto a hot leather seat and they drove off, leaving behind her mother, her father, but not the memories of this place. 

Lia knew she would never return home again. But at least she had been given a chance. A chance to save herself, to save her family, if only she could turn into someone, something useful. So, she left behind the world that she knew and prayed that she would be strong enough for the new life awaiting her and the challenges ahead.