The Day The Sun Fell From The Sky (4 page)

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“Why are they leaving me alone?” I ask Hash back in the medical cell that they’ve been keeping me in. I’m not complaining about the lack of recent torture, I just want to know why.

“Because you need to be ‘presentable’ where you are going.” Hash explains.

“Where’s that?” I ask him.

“Away from the base.” He replies.

“Any idea where they might be taking me?” I continue to probe him.

He becomes quiet again and I know that he’s trying to dilute the answer.

“Let’s not talk about that right now.” He says.

“Why do you keep doing that?” I ask
, annoyed.

“Doing what?” He says,
taken aback.

“Not telling me.” I reply
.

“Because
I want you to heal.” He tells me.

“How does keeping me in the dark help me to heal, exactly?” I exclaim.

He sighs. “Negative thoughts delay healing. I’m not saying that what they plan for you won’t happen if you don’t think about it. I’m just saying that you might not want to worry about it until you’re in a better state.”

“I am heaps better. I’ve gone a whole forty eight hours without being tortured or abused.” I reply with added cheer.

“Very funny.” He says without smiling. “Actually you were out about this long after your surgery.”

“You’re starting to forgive yourself.” I smile.

“No I’m not.” Hash replies darkly. “The fact that you survived at all is a miracle. It doesn’t change the fact that I am a coward. If I was a braver person, I would have let them shoot me rather than agree to do something like that to you.”

He was being so melancholy that I had to laugh. “If you don’t do it, someone else will. If a
Venry doctor had performed the surgery, he would not have provided the post-operative care needed and I would have most likely died from the operation.”

“That’s a bit harsh.” He says
quietly. “Not all Venry are like that.”

“Yeah but if they’re not like that, the army wouldn’t hire them.” I remind him.

“You seem to be very aware for someone of your age.” He smiles despite himself.

“I’m studying journalism. I mean I was studying journalism.” I correct myself.

“You can always go back to it.” He replies.

“So what did you do before the sun fell out of the sky?” I ask him.

“Is that what you’re going to call this period in our history?” He laughs.

“You didn’t answer my question.” I reply.

“Guess.” He smiles.

“I know you’re a doctor but what was your specialty?”  I continue to probe him.

“Think how many doctors are also surgeons. Then think how many surgeons perform, as part of their job, the kind of surgeries that I am being forced to perform on you.” He replies.

I smile as I come to understand. “You’re a
gynaecologist.”

“I was.” He nods.

“You’re a very young surgeon.” I observe.

“I was practicing for one whole year before the army detained me.” He laughs. “I was not prepared for the kind of injuries that I now have to treat.”

“No one is prepared for
this
kind of trauma care.” I reply.

“Thank you.” He tells me.

“For what?” I look at him, surprised.

“Talking to you. It’s comforting.” He replies.

“Likewise.” I smile.

I know how he feels. In these small moments, we could have these almost normal conversations (still not completely normal when you consider that I am being chained to the
wall by my neck) and pretend that the sun hasn’t fallen out of the sky.

*_*

When the tides change, they change very quickly. My transport happens at night. When the soldiers unchain me from the wall, I find it difficult to move, considering I’d been forced to sit in the same position with very little movement for two days. I am marched outside and thrown into the back of what would been a small meat truck once upon a time. Seven other girls share the space with me.

We come to an agreement that it’s best for us to conserve our energy since most of us have no idea where we are going and we know what the soldiers are capable of doing to us. I fall into a state of semi-sleep as sudden vehicle movements by the truck and
random outbursts from some of the more nightmare prone girls keep me from slipping into a more immersive sleep.

After what seemed to us to be an endless drive, the truck door is opened and the light of the sun forces all of us to shut our eyes.

“One-Five-Seven.” One of the soldiers calls out.

The girl sitting next to me stands up and she is pulled out of the truck by the soldiers. Then the door is shut, plunging the truck into darkness again.

“Where do you think they’ve taken her?” One of the girls asks.

“It’s obvious isn’t it?”
Says another girl with a child-like voice. “She’s been bought. All of us have been sold to someone. I hope she gets a rich guy. They’re all ugly but at least they’ll have a nice place.”

I suppress a laugh as I seriously
start to wonder what planet the girl’s been on. She’s still having some sort of princess dream where her buyer will also be her Prince Charming and he might actually set her free from the kind of life that the soldiers had planned for us.

“I heard that they’ll move us to a different house every night so that no one ever knows where we are.” Says a third girl
with a husky voice.

My time at the base was mostly spent in solitary confinement of some sort – some more painful than others
, but always by myself. These girls seem to have already bonded with each other. I realize that my experiences over the past week have been very different to everyone else’s.

“What do you think
Myc?” The first girl asks me.

“Me?” I’m surprised that they would ask for my
input.

“Hash told us what
happened to you.” The girl with the husky voice explains.

“I’m very sorry but I don’t know any of your names.” I admit, embarrassed. They were all from different intakes to mine. I think their selections were more recent.

“Doesn’t matter.” Says the first girl. “We’re all going to be separated today so you probably won’t see us again.”

“But you all know mine.” I reply
, slightly uncomfortable.

“Who doesn’t know your name now?”
Says another girl from the back of the truck.

Great. This
means that by now, everyone has either seen footage of or heard about my selection.

“You guys were discussing where they might be taking us.”
I try to bring them back onto topic.

“Yeah but we’re all just guessing. You’re different. You know.” Says the first girl.

I’m beginning to understand some of the hesitation that Hash displayed when I had asked him the same question. I did eventually get the answer out of him but now I can see why he thought it better not to answer me at first. It actually has nothing to do with the guilt associated with being the bearer of bad news. It’s the complete lack of information that makes it even more difficult to be the messenger. He didn’t want to tell me a half truth. And since I know even less than he does, I’m going to have to tell these girls a quarter truth.

“I don’t know the specifics.” I tell them. “Like I don’t know exactly where each of us will end up. But I know the kinds of places that we are likely to be put into.”

“Which are?” Asks the girl from the back of the truck.

“We’re going to be institutionalized. There are no private buyers in any of this.” I tell them.

Institutionalization

I
am choking as ice cold water is being hosed into my face. This procedure has less to do with cleaning than it has to do with their need to keep on humiliating me. I am lying on the floor of the showers inside Hvin Prison which is just outside Hvin, the capital of Hven.

The prison guard is waiting for me to beg him to stop but I’m not going to give him the satisf
action. Eventually (due to water restrictions) he turns it off, leaving me to shiver with cold.

“Get up.” He commands.

I try not to make too much noise as I push myself off the floor. Of course I am not given a towel so I follow him, dripping wet, out of the shower. He leads me down the hall into an empty room with a desk and a chair in the middle. At least I’m given something to sit on this time. That’s actually an improvement to how I was treated by the army. He closes the door and turns the lights off, leaving me in almost complete darkness.

I take the opportunity to consider my current situation. I am still weak but my injuries have mostly healed. My most recent couple of days have been relatively quiet and I got to spend them in the company of people whom I could call friends. In this prison, it is clear that there will be no friends to speak of. There is also the chance that I could be treated worse than how I was treated by the army. They say that when you are hurt, you often don’t feel it until after because
sometimes adrenalin masks the pain. Now that the adrenalin rush is over and I am semi-healed, I never want to experience that kind of pain ever again.

*_*

Eventually the lights come back on and, after blinking for a moment, I can see that the guard who was present at my handover from the soldiers has come into the room.

“Good evening.” He greets me with feigned politeness.

“Hi.” I reply shortly.

He sneers before asking for my name.

“Myc.” I reply.

“I’m
Vyr.” He smiles.

I just nod, waiting for him to get to the main part of the evening.

“I’ve been told that you like watching videos.” He tells me as he presses a button and a screen comes down from the ceiling.

I try my best not to look at the screen.

“What do you think you are going to be shown?” He laughs at my reaction.

“Some things shouldn’t be shown.” I tell him.

“Perhaps.” He allows but presses play anyway.

The screen shifts to another room. There is a girl lying on the floor of the room on her side.

Another soldier walks into the frame. “What are you?” He asks her.

“I’m a pathetic piece of shit.” When she looks up, I can see that the light has gone from her eyes.

He kicks her so that she rolls over onto her back. “What do we do with you?”

“Whatever you like.” She replies. Clearly she has been through this many times before.

He lifts his foot and then digs his boot into her chest. Repeatedly. She does not protest as he continues to assault her.

“You like that don’t you?” He asks her as he rests his foot on her breast.

“Yes…” She whispers.

“What are you good for?” He continues to question her.

“Being fucked.” She says. Her answers have become automatic and ingrained. 

At this point, I have to look away because it’s just too degrading. This girl has no sense of self left. She isn’t just saying those horrible things about herself to please her abusers anymore.

“Please turn it off.” I tell him as the guards have started to rape her on screen and she thanks them.

“Are you scared?” He asks me.

“No.” I tell him.

He sees through the lie and smiles. “This is
Lyth. She has been with us for just two months. I could tell you her life story but I don’t think that you really need to know. This is who she is now.”

“Why are you showing me this?” I ask him.

“Because you are going to meet her.” He replies, switching off the footage.

“This is how the program works.” He explains. “Every girl that enters the program takes the place of the girl before her. It’s only natural.”

He’s going to kill her. And he’s going to make me watch her die. That’s what he’s trying to tell me – that when my time comes, another girl will be watching footage of me and then I will be killed before their eyes.

“Then I don’t want to be in the program.” I tell him.

“I don’t think that I was asking you.” He smiles.

It wouldn’t be the first time that I had
seen someone die since my capture and I get the feeling that it won’t be the last.

“After you.” He says as he stands up.

Knowing that I have no choice in the matter, I head in the direction that he indicates. He opens another door on the other side of the room. I am not surprised to see that the room we go into is the same room from the video. I am surprised to see that the guards are still using Lyth. At this point, I come to realize that I was not watching a pre-recorded video but I was actually being shown a live screening.

Vyr
does not stop them immediately, preferring to make me watch the rape. I wish that I could close my eyes but I can’t. Not when it’s happening right here right now. I know what they are waiting for. They are waiting for me to say something. They are waiting for me to try to stop them doing this to the poor girl. I don’t want to say anything because once I open my mouth, I probably won’t be able to shut it. I am also painfully aware that I am witnessing the last moments of Lyth’s life. I may be able to influence her suffering to some degree but I will not be able to change her fate. Should I try to stop something horrible being done to her, knowing that something worse is about to happen to her?

“You’re enjoying this.”
Vyr says to me.

“I can’t stop you.” I tell him.

“Everyone, meet Myc.” Vyr says loudly.

The other three guards in the room stop assaulting the girl and turn their attention to me. I keep my eyes fixed on
Lyth. She is breathing heavily from the assault.

“She will do the
honours for us.” He says as he hands me his gun.

I stare at him with disbelief. He doesn’t just want me to witness
Lyth’s death. He wants me to kill her myself. I don’t even know how to fire a gun. And if I did, I would not be aiming the bullet at Lyth.

“Considering that I don’t even know how to hold this thing, how do you expect me to be able to shoot it?” I ask him.

“You’ll work it out.” He tells me. “It’s actually not that hard to kill someone. It might be harder to forgive yourself after the fact but the act itself couldn’t be easier.”

I briefly consider dropping the gun on the floor to protest how stupid the situation is but it might accidentally set the gun off.

“If it’s so easy, why don’t you do it?” I ask him, annoyed.

“So you agree that she should die.” He replies.

“I didn’t say that.” I tell him. But I know what he’s saying.

“You have not once asked that she should live. You have only been concerned with
how
she dies. Not the death itself.” He smiles.

I can’t honestly say that I care enough for the girl to really feel either grief or remorse if she does die
– which is completely wrong. I should feel something. But I don’t.