Jeremy Birkline Houston, USA
Freedom in Captivity
It felt like my new captor’s eyes were burning holes in me. Then again, I could only get glimpses of him from my position on the floor. I wasn’t even sure he was looking at me, let alone staring at me. Maybe it was the drugs. I felt like barfing. It could be disastrous if I wasn’t fully aware and functioning before I started this next confrontation. I dared not glace up toward him for more than a second, and through my blurry vision, he looked more like a blob than a man anyway, so what was the point of risking it?
It was only through the constant, repetitive footfalls that I could tell he was pacing. I tried to keep my shoulders relaxed and let my limbs fall as they would. To the untrained eye, it might appear as though I’d rolled up in a ball and used my own body as a pillow. If he thought I was asleep, I wasn’t going to lead on that I wasn’t. Then again, who was I to tell if I was awake? The things that had happened in the last few weeks were so impossible. Maybe I was asleep right now and having some kind of terrible nightmare. Maybe escaping from the Military Academy had been a part of that nightmare.
But I remembered it all so clearly! Flashes of violent attacks, of planning our escape, of everything going wrong so fast flooded my blurry vision. Damn, how had I gotten into this mess? Despite the odds against us, I remembered escaping the Military
Academy. Veronica and I had gotten out and even managed to get off that cursed planet that had held us prisoners for so long.
Our only hope for survival now was to run, as fast as we could. Every chance we got, we stowed away on transports. Sometimes, we would just walk on like we were passengers. After we took our seats, Veronica would walk up to the conductor and speak silent words to him and he would never bother us. In this way, we found ourselves moving fast from one space station to the next.
I remembered all too clearly the moment between transports, when we were supposed to be resting, that Veronica looked at me gravely. Her bright blue eyes stood out against our dirt and grime filled surroundings — the tumble of her golden curls, matted and filthy evidence for the way we’d been living. The dust and sweat across her otherwise flawless face echoed the past glory of the now discarded alleyway we found ourselves in. She had the look in her eyes that made me know I was about to agree to something I would never normally agree to.
“We have to separate,” she told me, and like the coward I was, I agreed to it.
I knew that she was right. We stood a better chance of getting away if we only had to worry about ourselves, but that first night she was gone was the loneliest I’d ever been. I was still on that same space station where she abandoned me when I realized I had stayed too long. The Military Academy could be right behind me. I searched the catalog of docked or docking ships, but there was only one on the docked list, and none on the docking list. Then I was met by a shock bigger than Veronica leaving me. The one ship that was docked was the same ship that my father was stationed on. I should have taken it as a sign, but I didn’t.
It was a deep space warship being sent to patrol the border of the Intergalactic Court’s influence. If I could manage to sneak aboard and stay hidden until we reached the border, I might have a chance to steal a shuttle, or sneak off on a friendly space station on the other side of the border. In a funny way, it was poetic. This ship was the cause of my captivity at the Military Academy. With my father serving on it, he had no choice but to finally give the Military Academy guardianship over me. I didn’t know if he had known what they were going to do to me or not. It seemed fitting that it would bring me to my freedom.
It surprised me how easy it was to sneak aboard an Intergalactic starship. All I had to do was hide under a crate that was being moved through the docking area and wait until they brought me into the cargo bay. A few buttons later and all the ship’s sensors could detect was the false reading I was feeding it.
I kept out of sight until everything was brought back and forth from the cargo bay before I made myself comfortable. The cargo bay was by far the largest area in the ship. It spanned three decks up. I couldn’t even see the end to it. Crates of varying sizes were stacked up across the entire are, making it simple enough for me to manhandle the crates into a position that concealed me from someone just walking into the bay.
The sound of the ship during disembarkation was loud, even more so in the normally empty cargo bay, but for me it was like putting my ears on fire. Then the lights turned off, leaving me in pitch blackness. I looked to the hands that I knew should be right in front of me, but there was nothing! Where were my hands!? My heart was beating faster than it did when I was in a fight! I closed my eyes and tried to take a deep breath, reminding myself that when I opened my eyes they would adapt to having no light, and
the outlines of my surroundings would become clear. They always did – every time I woke up as a child in fear of what might come after me, every time the Military Academy would leave me in that dark, minuscule room.
Time seemed irrelevant in the darkness. It could have been hours later when the lights came back on, sending my eyes into a new adapting faze. It took me too long to figure out what was happening. A man had come in. He was typing at the console next to the door, probably seeing if the supply he needed was in here…. But if he was doing that, then why was I suddenly getting dizzy? Why were my eyes watering? Why was the guy rushing out? What had caused the world to go upside down?
When I woke up the first thing I did was vomit in a conveniently located trash can. I could feel the residue of the drugs in my system. It almost felt as if my guts were trying to expel themselves from my body. I knew that the urge to throw up would slowly fade as my body expelled the toxins, but it would seem like hours to me.
After I was finally able to look away from the trash can without wanting to vomit some more, I noticed that my vision was blurry. My muscles were stiff. I could still feel the lingering nausea in the back of my throat, the burning acid bubbling up in my stomach. Before I went into another fit I curled myself in a protective ball, which eased the tension in my stomach a little bit.
“Sit down,” my new captor said as he caught a minute jerk of my arm.
I took a brief glance up and was surprised to see the chairs and tables in the room’s center. I didn’t want to risk showing too much awareness just yet, so I continued to listen to his footsteps. His weight banged on the floor plating. I doubted that it was
because he was overweight; more likely he was muscular. When he was forced to repeat himself, he got louder.
“I’m quite comfortable here,” I retorted after a short time. My voice broke halfway through. My voice sounded harsh from not being used for so long.
I looked up to see his reaction as I spoke and got my first good look at him. He was bald, but seemingly by preference as he seemed to grow plenty of hair elsewhere (his eyebrows and nose especially). His cheeks were red with anger. His hazel eyes looked at me with disgust. I was neither surprised nor intimidated by his huge stature. There were few people who could do much damage to me.
“Sit down!” the bald man shouted at me.
I thought of a sarcastic response, but bit it back and replied, “Sure, dude, whatever floats your boat.” Maybe it was a mistake, but I can’t help but say what comes to my mind, especially after what men like this guy had done to my friends and me over the last few months. I stood, and the drugs washed over me with a new