Kenny
When your body is given just enough calories for your consciousness to survive and your body to fail, you resort to creating a new world within your mind. A happier one. One with family dinners and walks in the park. One with natural light and a breeze. One where I can stand and walk. One where I'm not being tortured.
One with my Sofie in.
When everything good in the world is gone, you learn to relish in the bad. Days with only fists and feet are better than days with knives and needles. Days that I'm simply left in the dark with no one to maul my body are better than those that are filled with multiple of Adriano Bianchi's men taking their turn to land a few punches and open a few old wounds. Because there's bad and then there is worse. The problem is, you never know what the worst is. You think you've hit the apex, the absolute most evil, terrible thing they can do to you, and then the next day comes, the next guy arrives, and you suddenly wish it was yesterday. You wish the last guy was standing in front of you with his bloodied fists instead of the man before you with the bloodied knife.
When there is no light, there is no time. There are no nights nor days, no breakfast, no lunch, no dinner. Just the time you get fed and the time you get beat. I get fed every other day; I've been fed twenty five times since Adriano Bianchi had me taken away from civilisation- that's seven weeks of torture. Seven weeks of starvation, dehydration and pain. Seven weeks of no Sofia.
On meal six I begged them to kill me. I offered then thirty thousand dollars to stop it all. They laughed and threw the next set of punches harder. On meal nine I stopped eating. Without food I would surely die, I hoped. However, they found a doctor who would fit a tube feeding device to ensure I had no control over any aspect of my life. Still, they only shoved just enough calories in me to stay awake and experience the torture. At meal twenty, I left the container. My mind fled elsewhere, to a new place with birds and trees and a clear sky. My body may remain there, but I never returned. Not the Kenny that entered the prison, at least.
Two hours after the last guard left, I hear footfalls. I hear a hand being trailed along the outside of the container and then a loud clang of a bolt being severed in half. Silence follows. My head finds just enough strength to pull it off the sticky floor. A screech ripples through the stale air and the familiar vibration of the mechanical door being opened flows beneath my body. At this point, I would usually cry. I'd probably shrink impossibly smaller and beg for a particle of their mercy. But today I don't. Today I don't fear the person that walks in because I know I'm far worse.
"Kenny?"
The voice calls from behind the final door. They're new, young and timid. Their steps are nervous and slow, full of trepidation. They repeat my name as I catch the silhouette of the door being pushed open. There's a blinding influx of light behind the figure, flooding in from the main door he was meant to shut before opening my cell. It leaves the sound proofing sealing the container shut completely useless. And so I yell. Well, I try.
"Shhh, shut up!"
The person, a boy, whisper shouts. He moves fast, dashing out of the doorway and crouching to my height in a mere second. His hand muffles my yelling. But suddenly the light is reflecting on his face instead of his back and the figure is no longer an enemy, it's Luis.
A grain of adrenaline fires through me, enough to drag my body onto my elbows. His name leaves my lips in a rushed whisper. He nods, hooking an arm around my torso and dragging me to my feet. Seven weeks ago, his slight frame would have crumbled beneath my height and weight. However, after weeks of malnutrition, he barely struggles.
"What- how, how did you know where I was?"
I stutter on my words, my voice sounding foreign. Luis drags my useless body out of the container and into the metal forest. I realise it isn't day at all, it's much later than I imagined, the sky a piercing black.
YOU ARE READING
Before the Sun
Romance'"Who the fuck do you think you are?" I yell, tears bubbling around my waterline. The masked man stops, his body freezes, his back to me and his hand hovering above the door. My feet are planted firmly on the ground, numb legs full of icy cold blood...
