The Strange Confinement

I clearly remember the day they brought me into that place. It was cold and raining. It happened all of a sudden and before I could do anything or say or protest, I found myself in the back of some vehicle with my hands tied, blindfolded and my mouth covered with a piece of cloth which tasted like metal and sweat. All I could do was listen to the rain pattering on the window and sense the speeding up and slowing down of the vehicle every now and then, trying to figure out where I was being taken. For some reason, maybe they had me injected with something because I couldn't move nor scream for help even though it was something I wanted to do. I felt like an inanimate object, not capable of movement, almost stationary as these unknown people took me somewhere, not knowing what they were planning to do with me.

There was no trial, of course. There was no one I could go to rest my case. No one to tell that this was a mistake. I didn't know what I was imprisoned for nor I knew the crime I'd committed, which I was pretty sure of that I hadn't. I worked, at that time, in a small restaurant near the football stadium. That was my life or at least that had been my life for a few months back then. Before that I worked in a cafe not far from there but then it got shut down. But that was all. And then one rainy night some masked men barged into my apartment and without saying anything, took me with them to an unknown place.

"What did I do?", I asked them as I tried to make sense of what was going on. But there was no answer. And the next thing I knew, I felt a stinging sensation in my neck and that was when everything turned into a sudden stillness. Outside everything else was mobile - those men moving stealthily to make sure no one saw anything, but inside me, everything felt as if all had come to a sudden standstill. I couldn't move as I watched my perpetrators cuff me and then at some point blindfold me and force a dirty rag into my mouth to prevent me from being heard. And oddly enough I could watch this all - witness my own kidnapping without trying to protest against what they were doing. I clearly remember what had taken place that day for it was the same dream I kept having day after day for some time. It was the only thing that woke me up every morning from my sleep covering me in my own sweat as my body trembled in fear.

I never saw the face of those men nor did I knew where I was taken. The room I was kept in was something I could hardly call a prison cell but that is what it was. But unlike in the movies, this one was way smaller, even smaller than my apartment bathroom. I couldn't even spread my hands fully in that tiny hole. There was a small toilet squeezed in a corner along with an equally small sink beside it. Attached to the wall was a bed like thing for me to sleep on. It reminded me of the ones on trains but this one was even smaller than that. I wore a beige gown like flimsy thing which barely covered my knees and I had no undergarments on. For a woman it was a pathetic condition to be living in but that was how it was going to be from then on.

The cell, which I found out much later, had no atmosphere, or at least it felt that way - neither cold nor hot, something I found very odd.

There was a small opening on the metal door from where I got my food and that was the only time I got to have some sort of interaction with someone else besides myself. It usually was the same person. A man who was there at the time of my taking and even though he was wearing a mask like everyone else I'd tell, how I don't know, that it was the same person. He came to my door, opened the small opening at the foot of the metal door and slid a small paper plate with some food on it which looked like it had been ordered from a small restaurant nearby for the food was always warm and tasted like the one they served in small restaurants where I'd usually worked. It wasn't much but at least it wasn't bad as I'd expected I'd get in a prison.

At that time, and this happened almost everyday, I asked him why I was being kept here to which he never replied. But then I kept on asking and every time before leaving he always said that, "you'll know eventually." That was all he said before leaving.

After five days or so I was taken to get a bath and then had a change of clothes of that same flimsy gown like thing which I guess they had multiple pairs of. And this was the only time I got out of my cell. But then this too was done in a room similar to my cell. I didn't know what was happening in the outside world and sometimes I feared that I'd eventually forget what it looked like. Fighting or protesting wasn't an option, not that I hadn't tried, because every time they took me out I was surrounded by these giant armoured guards with masks on, holding either guns or some sort of blunt weapon if at all I tried to escape or injure someone in some way. After a few failed attempts I gave up, deciding not to get myself killed.

I spent my days either reading or exercising. I was allowed to read, which at first I found surprising, but I wasn't given a choice to pick any book I wanted. I read whatever they'd give me. At the same time they were very careful not to give me newspapers or magazines for they didn't want me to know about the world outside. I was mostly given novels or books on poetry or, at times, on essays. That was the extent of it. In no way, which I noticed quite sooner, had they given me a book which had something to do with prison escape. The Count of Monte Cristo came to my mind and I even insisted the guards about giving me that, if they had it of which I was sure that they had, but only to be denied immediately.

Exercising was something I'd found proving very useful for it being the first time I'd tried it, ever. Now to begin with I wasn't someone, in my previous life, who'd go to the extent of doing any extra physical work in order to stay fit. But in that tin can I had to make sure that my body didn't grow weaker day by day, if a moment arrived where I had to defend myself from being taken advantage of or being molested. And so I made a routine to which I followed quite religiously. I even asked them if I could get a book on the subject but that didn't help and so I had to rely on my own memory, doing those exercises that I'd once seen or read somewhere at some point.

The early days weren't easy and I even thought of killing myself, which I guess is the first feeling one gets in a place like this, after I couldn't find out the reason of my imprisonment. But whenever I tried that something inside of me would resist me in doing so. It wasn't that I was afraid of doing it nor I had many options in that tiny place but then I could always strangle myself to death or somehow suffocate myself in some way. But that never happened. The thought crossed my mind every so often in the beginning but whenever I tried executing something like that my body would suddenly feel lifeless and I'd had to lie on my small bed to regain my strength. Even my mind would begin to get foggy and numb and after a while I'd forget about what I was going to do entirely only to be reminded of it again after some time. Maybe it had something to do with what they'd injected me with, something that was designed to keep me alive. Either that or somehow my kidnappers could control my body according to their will from the outside, rendering me as their puppet, making me live my life according to their rules.

My initial days there, the ones I hadn't counted, all by myself with no one to tell me for what I was imprisoned for, I spent crying and wailing and shouting as if that'd be enough to prove my innocence or in some way help me get out of there. But they couldn't hear my screams or they simply chose to ignore my torment. When I wasn't crying, I spent my time trying to figure out why was I kept here and went through my days prior to my kidnapping, recalling, trying to think about something that'd make sense or in some way help me know about my current condition. Had I done something terrible, something unspeakable, of which I had no memory? Or was I falsely implicated of a thing that I hadn't commited? It didn't matter how much I racked my brains because every time I came up with the same answer - I was innocent. I knew it in my bones. I tried to negotiate with the guard who brought me my food. I cried, begged and even told him one time, quickly holding his hand firmly in an inappropriate way, that he could spend the night with me in my little cell and could do whatever he wanted to, something, I told him, I wouldn't mind. At that very moment this sudden shame gripped me, making me come to my senses, reminding me how low I had gotten to get my freedom. But that trick didn't work either. I spent the next few days just crying and crying, hating of what I'd become in that place.

I gave up the idea of getting out of that place but every now and then I would get these panic attacks, suddenly gripped by this fear that I was going to be here for the rest of my life. That I was going to, one day, die in that cell which smelled of my own shit and piss. These attacks would render me helpless and at times were suffocating so much so that the guards had to come running to my cell to get me out of there and splash cold water on my face to bring me back from the ordeal. And it was at that moment I came to realise that they were keeping an eye on me even though, as far as I knew, there was no camera in there. Maybe they had other ways to see.

I had no idea about the extent of the place I was kept in. Had no idea if it was a huge facility built for confining people, innocent or guilty it didn't matter, or was it just me in there all by myself while the rest of the people carried on with their lives without knowing my absence. All I knew was my cell and a small room where I was taken for bath and to get changed. Apart from that there was no place I was sent to nor was there any visitor or any message for me from the outside world. I was stranded in that place, locked up, against my will and that was all there was to it.

And during all this time, one day, out of nowhere, I began to record my days in confinement as if it was something that suddenly dawned on me. It felt like something I should do. It was a sudden urge I couldn't tell from where it came. Maybe it was because I had, a few days ago, gotten hold of a sharp object while taking my weekly bath. I'd found it on the floor near the water plug. At first the thought had occurred to use it as a weapon but seeing that it wouldn't do any harm to the heavily armoured guards, I decided to keep it as a keepsake. A souvenir of my imprisonment. Someone, or something, to keep me company. Afterwards I began marking my days, I don't know why I chose to do it the way I did, in the form of tally marks. As I said, I still don't know why I chose that instead of sticking with numbers - 1,2,3... I guess the vertical lines reminded me of the bars in a prison. And even though I wasn't imprisoned behind bars but a heavy metal door, the feeling was similar. It was the first thing I did everyday before going to bed and it was the only thing that was in some way a proof of the passing time in that hell hole. My little cell had no windows so it was not possible for me to tell what time of the day it was. I was locked away from the outside world into a different realm where the rules of my world, of which I'd been once a part of, didn't apply.

Each day I began marking my days which soon slipped into weeks and then months. A month had passed. Two months. Three. Four. Five. Six. Soon I found out that my little mural was something I wouldn't be able to hide from being seen during the gaurd's next visit for half of the wall to which my tiny bed was attached to was covered in these lines, like my personal calendar.

I felt that at some point this very thing, the tally marks, might get me in trouble for trying to reconnect with the outside world I was disconnected from. I felt I'd broken a rule of which there was no record anywhere. I even feared of being hurt by one of the guards by doing something like that. But thankfully nothing happened. At least not to me.

I remember being taken, one day, for my usual bath and when I came back to my cell, those marks were gone. Now after living there for a very long time I knew that it was my cell. I was sure that I wasn't somehow sneaked into another one without me noticing. It was the same cell but the marks I'd made on the wall were gone as if they never existed. I ran my fingers across the cold cemented surface but it was even and there was no trace or residue of a sharp object being used to mark the surface.

And then two days after that incident something did happen. And it wasn't something I was expecting to happen anytime soon.

The next day when I woke up I found myself back in my small apartment. I couldn't recall being taken back to my place nor in any way I could remember anything said about my release. I was suddenly back into the world that I was taken away from.

It felt strange and almost like a dream. And if it was a dream then I didn't want to wake up. At first I panicked and even thought if going to report what had happened to the police. But then I didn't know where I was taken or how my perpetrators looked like and feared that I'd be laughed at or worst my actions seen as a violation, wasting their time. And so I never said anything to anyone about my sudden imprisonment.

But what was more strange was that when I returned back to work the next day my boss asked me why I hadn't turned up yesterday.

"I hope everything is alright?" she said as I stood in her small office.

But I was locked up in that place for more than six months!

I told her, after gathering myself together, that there was an emergency I had to attend to and apologized quite a few times telling her that it won't happen again.

Every time I think of the incident nothing at all makes sense. Why was I even arrested, or kidnapped might be a better word, in the first place? Why was I taken to that strange place and kept in that small cell with no windows. I don't know. And whenever I think about my time there I'm sure that it wasn't just one day but excruciating six or so months. Maybe even more, I'm not sure. I was indeed in a different world, in a strange confinement.

I'm glad that I'm free. But every now and then when I hear someone knocking on my door, I fear that standing outside are those people and that they're here to take me back. Maybe I escaped from that place, I don't know. I can't remember. And when such incidents happen, I think of moving to a different place away from this one. Leaving behind all the memories of that time in that strange place and starting anew as if it's possible. Not telling anyone as to where I'm going so even if those people came back for me I won't be there.

But I've decided to stay. And everyday I mark my days on my bedroom wall just the way I did back there. Using not numbers but tally marks. I don't know for how long I intend to keep on doing it but whenever I do it, I feel a sense of calm. I feel like I'm safe.