The moral query

     I wake up with a stabbing headache and a blurry vision; the first thing I notice is the chilling cold hitting against my poorly clothed body, I blink several times trying to get a look around the room, but it’s almost impossible without my glasses and from what I can see I’m inside a barely lit cabin in the middle of a snowed forest. How did I get here?

        I reach for my cargo boot, where I normally keep my phone, thank God whoever put me here didn’t find it, I squint at the bright light, I can’t really see, but enough for me to call for backup, my partners should know how to locate me. I find out soon enough that there is no internet, no signal, no nothing.

        I groan, searching for my gun, of course it’s gone. I stand-up, examining the room for anything suspicious. “Who’s here?” I demand, walking around the small cabin, it’s almost impossible to hide, “I have backup coming!” I falsely warn.

        I hear a female laugh resounding through the room, coming from little speakers on the roof. “Lucía, I know there is no way you could have contacted your partners here.” A woman slowly remarks. I frantically look for her, for any possible hiding places where this woman could be, but I find none.

        “Who are you?” I scream at the roof, attempting to distract whoever my capturer is and try to find the door, which is becoming hard at my lack of vision.

        “Just someone whose life you have ruined, detective Ruiz.” The woman answers me. I start thinking about the arrests I’ve done throughout my career, but I can’t think of anyone who’s escaped.

        “Why am I here?” I inquire, feeling an uncomfortable sense of panic washing over me. I shake my head, I am a detective, I shouldn’t be panicking, I should be planning the persecution of this woman.

        “Here’s what’s going to happen, detective, since there is no electricity, this speakers’ battery will last for five more hours, during this given time, you have to make a decision.” The woman indicates, making me curious.

        “What decision?” I spat, throwing my hands in the air, getting colder by the second.

        “I am glad you asked, detective, you remember Jacob Peterson? Well, I’m going to need you to pin his felonies on somebody else, for every hour you don’t do so,” she scoffs, “well, let’s say there will be a surprise waiting for you and if by the end of the five hours you haven’t agreed yet, you will die, and one of your partners will have to undergo the same process and so on.” She threatens. Jacob Peterson, of course I know him, I caught him, and he was just assigned a death sentence for rape and murder, I cannot let him out.

        “Why would you want a man like that back on the streets?” I claim, still looking upwards, pressing record on my phone.

        “He is my son.” The woman confesses, making me recognise the voice, I think her name is Madeline, she showed up at the station, screaming like a maniac, we had to use some pretty tough security to make her leave.

        “Madeline Peterson.” I mutter, closing my eyes.

        “Oh, I see you remember me, detective, well, your five hours start now. Enjoy.” The woman states, before there’s total silence in the room.

        Despite my many years of training or my experience facing dangerous situations, I feel cold sweat trailing down below my t-shirt, my heart pounding. Fear. I have never been in a situation remotely like this one, and the heavy pressure of her words, rests on my shoulders. My death would mean death for my partners, freeing Jacob, would mean the death of hundreds of more women.

        I start taking deep breaths, if I want to leave before the first hour is up, I have to keep a clear head, reason must rule above everything. I sit on the floor and with my hands I tap it, looking for my glasses. I give up after a few minutes, Madeline must’ve taken them away from me, but that’s fine, that must mean there’s a way to escape she didn’t want me to notice.

        I stand-up, walking to the walls, passing my hand throughout the perimeter until I can find some kind of handle, I feel logs and logs of wood till my fingertips touch something cold, something metallic, the handle.

Knowing that this is too easy to be true, I wrap my hand around it. I scream as my eyes tear up, there are pointy elements around the handle, and I feel like my hand is on fire, I look at its blurry silhouette, it’s covered in blood, my body starts shaking and I try to focus on the handle, after a few seconds I realise it’s filled with some kind of needles. I suppress back another scream when I start tearing a piece of my t-shirt, my hand still freely bleeding and once I manage to get the piece of cloth I attempt to clean the blood and put it around as a bandage.

I take another deep breath, cleaning the tears that escaped me, I must fight the pain, I stand up straight and I start repeatedly kicking the door, trying to break it down. After ten kicks I know this isn’t wood, it’s something else, something that’s impossible to break through human force only. I have to constantly remind myself not to panic, that there is a way out of here. I walk towards the tiny window which earlier made me realise I am inside a forest. There is no way I will fit through there, but there might be some signs of civilisation nearby, I squint, looking through it, but I can only see blurred trees. I take my already injured hand, basically numbing it and break the window, I see that my knuckles are slightly bleeding, but the pain is nothing compared to the rest of the hand. “Help! Is somebody out there?” I yell again and again. I scream until I am out of air and realise that there’s no one coming for me, that I’m the only person out here. Breathing is getting harder, and in spite of the cold I feel too hot, like the air around me became unbreathable. No. I must get it together, there is someway I got in, then there is someway I can get out.

I walk around the little cabin again, analysing whatever my blurry vision and the little light let me, until I hear a ding, like the ones you hear when you enter a store, I jump back startled at the sudden sound. “Your first hour is up, detective Ruiz, have you made up your mind?” Madeline’s voice is resounded through the speakers.

I shake my head no. I will not work with her. “That’s a shame, Lucía.” She tells me, meaning she saw me, there’s someway she is watching me, and because of the lack of electricity it can’t be cameras, she must be here.

A second later I hear something moving behind me, I turn around to see a big, masked man dressed in black, his dark eyes on me. How did he enter? I have to find out, there probably is some kind of hidden room around here.

I don’t look away from the stranger’s eyes, I will not be intimidated by a man who has to hide his face. “Are you here to torture me or for what?” I spat at him.

He nods. He doesn’t want me to know his voice. He approaches me and I proceed to fight him, putting in the fight everything I’ve learnt these years, but the man takes me off guard when he places a cloth with a stinging smell over my nose and mouth for a while and I black out.

I wake up tied to a chair, inclined a little bit backwards, I try to escape it, but I am too weak, too dizzy and everything is even blurrier than before. The same masked man is looking at me, he has a very damp large cloth on his hand and this sense of lacking control is starting to terrify me, being one hundred percent at the mercy of another person.

The man takes the cloth and presses it against my face, and I feel like I’m drowning, he’s waterboarding me and every time I try to breathe water enters my mouth, my nose, my lungs, the water in the cloth starts combining with my tears. I can sense my heart rebating in my throat, my head losing its capacity to process what’s happening, indicating me that I might die. Then I breathe.

The man lets go of me, and I start coughing everything out, taking the most desperate whiffs of air I have ever taken, I’m just starting to feel slightly more calmed when the man puts the white cloth on my face again. I try fighting it, shaking my head, but the man and the ropes are tightly holding me in place, forcing me to breathe water, to drown in it and in my own weep. Very time I gasp, struggling for air, water is welcomed, until he stops again, and I feel air entering my lungs again, the more intense feeling of relief I’ve experienced. I close my eyes as I cough and gasp, as if breathing harder would make the drowning sensation disappear. When I open my eyes the man is gone.

I breathe for a few seconds or few minutes, I don’t know, I have completely lost track of time, is this what every hour awaits me? I’m not sure I will be able to withstand it. I just start noticing that my whole body is trembling, my clothes are damp with water and the cold air entering through the window I broke is makes me feel like my face is getting stabbed by little knifes, as if the water on my face were threatening to turn into ice.

Lucía Ruiz, you are stronger than this, a soaked cloth will not be your downfall, that will not break you, I repeat to myself, trying to convince myself, I have one more hour to try and find a way out of this chair and this cabin, before the man comes back. I close my eyes, I can endure one more waterboarding, if I haven’t figured out a way to escape by the next hour, this time I will pay attention to wherever the man comes in from. It might be my way out.

I spend the whole hour, searching, looking, my soul breaking with every minute I don’t see anything, getting frustrated by my lack of vision, by my probably bloody scratched wrists and my already numb hands tied behind my back. I then here the bell again, this time Madeline doesn’t speak, but I feel utter terror pass through me. I swallow it down, it’s now time to pay attention.

Something is heard quickly moving behind me, I try to turn my head around, but I cannot turn it enough, at least I know the exit is behind me. With every step I hear behind me, my heart beats faster in anticipation and the same blurred masked man is now standing in front of me, the white clothe inside a bowl filled with water. “Have you decided, detective Ruiz?” Madeline’s voice asks through the speakers.

With my body trembling even more, I shake my head no, in cue the man tilts the chair back, takes out the cloth and drowns me with it, forcing me to go through that panic, through that terror again, making me feel as if I were in a river and an invisible force kept pushing me against resurfacing, against living, against my own desire to keep living. As soon as the second waterboard is finished, I gasp with all my forces again, just to be surprised by a third round, taking me completely off guard, this is the worst one yet, with every drop of water that goes into my lungs, the closer I feel like I’m visiting death. I realise, that with every hour I don’t agree to this, another round of waterboarding will be added.

I again dementedly try to get as much oxygen into my lungs, and as much water out of them until I am fully throwing up on the floor, feeling my throat getting ripped.

The third and the fourth hour pass, and with each the chilling sound of the bell and the masked man with the cloth, it gets worse every time, with more and longer rounds, each making me feel that I’ve died for a moment, each making me feel that in any moment I will break.

I am currently shaking more than in the last few hours, the smell of my own puke strong in my nostrils and my tears freezing on my face, my strength close to none and I gave one more hour to figure out an escape, one more hour before I’m killed or before I have to put a murderer into freedom, although I know already what I would chose in the last of cases, I can’t let my partners, my family go through this. With the little force I have left, I start slowly turning my chair around, I have to visualise how that man keeps entering and leaving; it takes me a while, but I’ve finally done it, I am contemplating my escape. As much as it hurts, I fight the ropes again, keeping my tears and moans in from the constant scratching of my currently bleeding wrists, I fight them until I feel I have no skin left, until I finally am free. Yet, I stay this way, hoping that there will be an element of surprise.

I hear the fifth bell ringing and with that, Madeline’s voice, “I’ll have to give it to you, Lucía, I did not think you would last this long,” she starts, and I hear and see the wall opening, the blurry image of Madeline coming through it, there’s something shining on her hand, I’m thinking it’s a knife.

I don’t waste a second and with the little force I have left, I run towards her, not allowing the door to close by throwing myself over her, I know she’s not really young, probably sixty, so she doesn’t have a lot of force to fight me back. I see her trying to escape my grasp, attempting to stab me with her knife, I manage to take it away from her, and panicked she starts crawling, making her way into the cabin, I stop her, pinning my body on top of hers.

“P-please,” she stammers, “I-I’m just a desperate mother, Lucía.” Her voice is shaking, and I know that I should only arrest her, immobilise her, but I don’t think when I grab the knife and start stabbing her with it, feeling and hearing how the knife repeatedly enters her body. In all my years as a detective, I have never killed anyone, I’ve always limited myself to arresting them, but an alien force has taken over me and I stop until I she ceases screaming, until she ceases breathing.

I stand up to only see a blurry silhouette covered in red, I’m still shaking when I enter into the annexed room, where I see my glasses and my gun on a little wooden table, I take my glasses and put them on, finally seeing, I’m no longer in the dark. I look around the little room, looking for an exit, but I only find a costume, the masked man, she was the masked man, a little recorder, I push play and start listening to the words she previously said to me inside the room, I pause it right away, and a telescope-like device, connected to a tiny hole in the wall, allowing her to see me. I start panicking again, how am I going to leave this place?

I move the costume form the little chair and sit down, trying to analyse the situation, if the exit isn’t here, then? I know, when I took the knife from Madeline, instead of coming back here, she entered the cabin, she was looking for the exit. I step out of the little room, my gaze actively avoiding Madeline’s corpse, just following the trail of blood, which leads me to the spikey handle.

I look at it, from every possible angle and it’s not until I sit down, when I see that the bottom part of the handle is completely smooth, I push it up with my fingers and the door opens.