The Soldier

OWNERSHIP

I wake, briefly.

A cell. Two corner-mounted spotlights. I lie on bare concrete, still naked. My wrists are pulled behind my back, locked in handcuffs. I am gagged. There is a single saline bag hanging from the ceiling-ring, its intravenous line plugged into my arm. I try to move, and pain flares through every joint, instantly paralysing me, drawing an empty groan from my throat as sweat breaks out over my body.

The pain still rages in my broken body, and consciousness leaves me.

Later, I wake again, to see Rachel crouching over me. She is pinching the line of my IV bag, halting the flow of sedative. She smiles to see the look of horror and fear as I recognise her face. "Hello, Kirsten," she says. "I just wanted to share my new acquisition with you."

I am unable to speak, but I look about in terror for some new torture device. Rachel shakes her head. "Silly girl. I mean you. We found where your troops are, you’re no longer needed. I’ve been told to execute you. The thing is, I don’t think I want to get rid of you so soon, not when you’re such a pretty victim. So your body belongs to me, sweetie."

I shake my head, overwhelmed with misery and fear, but I am still handcuffed, and Rachel simply releases the IV line. Sedative flows once again into my body, and unconsciousness descends before I have time to even think.

When I next come around, I am lying on the floor of my original cell. I move my head, try to move my weak arms, feeling my wrists locked in handcuffs. I am aware that all I have in the world is my own body: I am naked, vulnerable. I am so dazed that I barely hear what is being said. But I recognise the flask put to my lips, and I drink, and drink, until my belly feels swollen with water.

Then, one of Rachel’s soldiers unlocks my handcuffs, and re-cuffs my wrists before my body. Then, a the end of a long rope is tied around the handcuffs’ chain. I watch, disbelieving but unresisting as they haul on the rope. My hands are jerked up over my head, my body dragged about on the floor, and a moment later I am hoisted into the air like a carcass of meat. I cry out, my entire body hanging by two rings of steel locked about my wrists, but my captors don’t care. The rope is fastened with my bare toes half a metre above the floor, and they leave me there, hanging.

It is easy, for Rachel and her men. They put me in handcuffs, they hoist me, leave me. That is all they do, and they get on with their lives, have lunch, whatever. For me, every moment is a nightmare of pain, in my stretched arms, my cuffed wrists. The cold air invades every intimate crevice of my naked body. The goosebumps creep over every centimetre of my bare, pale skin, and the fine hairs stand on end. My toes swing high above the floor, my body’s entire weight on my poor, stretched arms.

After six or seven hours, I am woken from semi-consciousness by the arrival of half a dozen soldiers, who stand looking at me. I can do nothing: I hang there, helpless.

One of the soldiers comes close to me, circles me slowly. His face is level with my ribcage. He stares at my stretched, taut, naked body, from my dangling feet to my drawn arms. He walks behind me. "She’s sexy enough."

"Well, I’m gonna fuck her," one decides.

Then, chaos. Shouts, from elsewhere in the complex.

"Evacuate!" A solider calls, running past. "We’re leaving now."

"You heard the man," one of my visitors says.

At once, my eyes are open. "Wait!" I call, weakly, and one solider turns. "What about me? Don’t leave me like this! Please!"

"Forget her."

The soldiers go. I call out. "Please! Don’t leave me like this!" But I can do nothing, I am hanging by my handcuffed wrists from the ceiling, beyond reach of anything, helpless, naked. I call out again, but within fifteen minutes, the base is deserted.

I hear the rumble of airconditioning. The door, in front of me, stands open. I can see about a metre of corridor, no more. I am alive, I am no longer being tortured, but this is just as bad: I am hanging by my wrists, alone, down here.

For a time, I hang motionless, dazed by what has happened, unsure of the reality. But as the truth slowly sinks in, and the horror of my situation hits me, I find a new lease of life. I begin to kick my feet frantically, yelling and shouting.

"Hey! Help! Please, somebody! Help me!" It hurts my wrists, it is agony on my stretched arms, but I thrash nevertheless, swinging my bare legs through the air, twisting my body, as if I might be able to break the cuffs or free the rope by that motion alone. For perhaps five minutes I fight my restraint, but finally weakness overcomes me. I go limp, and burst into tears instead.

This lasts longer. For maybe an hour I hang in the handcuffs, my head drooping, my feet swaying slowly. My tears drip onto my chest, some splatting on the concrete floor below my toes. I can see my body’s shadow on the floor, separated from me by my elevation, shimmering in the fluorescent light. I can feel the grating of the handcuffs on my wrists, unforgiving steel holding me aloft. Even so, I am used to the pain of such restraint.

Finally, even the tears stop, and I just hang, silent, alone. I am cold, naked, suspended in this cell by my wrists. The door is open: I suspect that, if only I could free myself, I could walk out of here a free woman. Why did Rachel do this to me? Why the restraint? If she had not, in her sadistic way, decided to hang me by my wrists for sheer cruelty’s sake alone, I would be gone by now!

Anger, resentment, what-ifs. I am helpless to them, thoughts and hopes and frustrations swirling about my dangling body, taunting me, driving me half insane. I do not even bother to tip my head back and look at the rope suspending me, I know I am helpless here.

The one thing that has not abandoned me is my sense of time: I am acutely aware of every moment, of every hour. For perhaps five or six hours, I hang silently, not uttering a sound, not moving, just stretched, naked, cold, drawing shallow breaths into my lifted ribcage. My hands are shapeless claws above the handcuffs, numb, useless.

After about seven hours, new thoughts begin to circle me, thoughts that raise the hairs on the bare nape of my neck. The realisation that I am going to die; that, hanging here, I will simply fade from existence, lose consciousness and never wake up. What will happen then, I wonder? My naked body will remain suspended by the wrists, growing cold, skin grey, then slowly beginning to decay. How long will it take before the flesh tears from my hands, and my corpse flops to the concrete floor, half a metre below?

I become acutely aware, now, of my thirst and hunger. Mostly, it is thirst: a desperate dryness, an urgent need for water. It is thirst that will kill me, I know, and it is an awful way to die, but what can I do about it? I have been carelessly left here, hanging by my wrists, prevented only by a pair of handcuffs and a single rope from ever seeing daylight again. It is that simplicity that drives me mad, the ease with which I could get free, if only!

It has been eight hours. Slowly, a new realisation seeps through the fog of thirst. If I am dying, what have I to lose? Survival instinct is a powerful force. Surely the thought of death will be enough to get me free? For the first time, I tip my head back.

My arms stretch above me. My slim wrists, encircled by the gleaming steel handcuffs, my purple dead hands beyond them, the rope knotted simply about the handcuffs’ chain. For a long time, I look, though it makes breathing hard. The ceiling is only half a metre above my cuffed hands, a simple metal ring through which the rope runs, secured by rivets. I know I cannot dislodge the ring, nor break or undo the handcuffs. But a desperate woman might find a way, with her teeth, to unpick the knot of rope, or even chew it through!

I let my head tip forward again, my heart pounding. I have hope! I may not actually die here, I may be able to save myself! I consider, for a moment, trying for it, making my shot, but I realise that I need to conserve my strength. So, instead, I let myself hang, let my eyes half-close, feeling the cool air embracing my naked body, feeling the hard-edged cuffs encircling my wrists. Consciousness drifts, I hang by my wrists.

Another eight hours.

I realise it is almost twenty-four hours, in total, since they hoisted me up. A full day that I have been hanging by my wrists in this cell, dangling from the handcuffs. Once, a single hour hanging by my wrists had been an ordeal beyond endurance. Now, it is nothing to me, just time, endless time.

But as my grogginess subsides and I become more or less awake, I remember my plan to free myself, and hope prickles with fear over my body. What if I fail? But what if I succeed? I give an experimental swish of my feet, and it sets my body swinging a little, the rope creaking. I tip my head back, look up my arms to my cuffed wrists, the rope from which I hang.

I can do it. Gritting my teeth, I begin to haul myself up. I tense the muscles in my arms, my shoulders, put all my strength into raising myself up towards those cuffs. I can almost feel the rope between my teeth, biting it, tearing the knot. I manage to raise myself five centimetres: six, my arms bending slightly, muscles shaking.

Then, nothing. My strength is gone. My muscles go slack, I jar back to a full-hang, pain flashing from my handcuffed wrists and sending sparks down my arms. I gasp, swinging in a slow ellipse, stunned by my lack of strength.

Again. I try, harder this time, but I cannot rise even a centimetre. My arms have no power at all, I cannot draw myself up, all I am doing is hanging here, tensing my muscles, wasting valuable energy.

Perhaps there is another way? I have seen gymnasts swing their feet up to the bar: I lift my feet, tucking my knees up towards my breasts, lifting my hips. But my legs have no strength, either, and I kick uselessly in mid-air for a moment before my feet drop back down, half a metre off the floor, my body swinging from the handcuffs again.

"No-o-o!" I call, my voice a hoarse echo. "No, no, no no!!" The tears spill freely, again, because crying is all I can do. I cannot free myself, I was not even close to freeing myself: I am completely helpless, hanging here by my wrists, pathetic, useless, naked, alone. My life depends on one simple act, and I cannot even do that.

I cry. My sobs echo off concrete walls. Limp, I hang by my wrists, crying for perhaps two hours, for I have nothing better to do. But even crying loses its meaning, and at length, I stop, and do nothing. What can I do? I am nobody’s prisoner, suspended in this cell, unattended, alone, restrained and helpless although nobody wants me so.

Another day passes.

For the longest time, I have dangled from the handcuffs without moving, barely breathing, aware only of the weight of my suspended body, and my feet dangling without base in the air. I no longer seem to have any emotion: I know that I am going to die, but I do not seem to care. I can do nothing to delay it, nothing to hasten it. I have no choices at all. My only reality is that my wrists are trapped in steel handcuffs, and, by them, I hang half a metre above the floor. I have not worn clothes for weeks. I have not bathed for weeks.

I have been hanging, naked, from the handcuffs for two days, and the lights go out.

No sound, no sign that it was coming: just sudden, complete darkness. And why should it matter? Nothing has changed. I am still hanging by my wrists in this open-door cell, helpless, naked, cold, alone. My feet are still high above the floor. The only difference is that I can no longer see the confines of my cell.

Time creeps. I am waiting to die, hanging in the handcuffs, alone, in darkness. My eyes sometimes see phantom flashes of light: I wonder if that is the approach of death. I try to remember what it was like before this. When my hands weren’t merely the means by which I hung. When I could touch my own skin, scratch an itch, set my hair. When I could leave a room, if I chose, rather than being held in it, hanging above the floor, helpless.

How long was I Rachel’s prisoner? I guess about six weeks, most of that time spent unconscious, drugged, fed through gastric tubes, my body always cuffed or bound, always naked, always vulnerable. Rachel had only woken me to torture me. My body, my life, had belonged to her. Now, for what it was worth, she had gone, but she had forgotten to have me unbound, and but for a simple key or the knot-picking ability of a three-year-old, I would be free.

Another day passes.

Three days, and I have been hanging from the ceiling by my handcuffed wrists. I am in agony, but I am numb. My arms rage with pain, fires shooting along my nerves every moment of every hour, but I am so used to it, I endure without crying out. I have even stopped wishing for freedom, or a release from pain: I know that I am to die here, so I wait silently, patiently, hang motionless.

Is it me, or is it warmer in here? The constant chill has gone, I feel almost comfortable. Perhaps the airconditioning died with the lights? At some point on the third day, I hear the buzzing of a fly, and I realise that my captors must have left the main door open when they fled. The irony does not escape me, that there is no barrier between me and complete freedom outside, bar these two rings of steel about my wrists that keep me hanging here.

The fly lands in my armpit. I kick my feet, set my body swinging: it takes off, circles, lands there again, attracted by the salt of old sweat. I feel it crawling. I am disgusted, but I can do nothing. I cannot lower my arms, I cannot brush it off, there is nothing I can do about it.

It is an eternity since I last heard a human voice, last saw light, last did anything but hang by my wrists, waiting to die.

Four days.

Thirst has come, and gone, in waves. Cramps spear my body, but I am helpless to them, as if, knowing that the cramps would come, Rachel deliberately hung me by my wrists. There is an invisible tormentor giving me electric-shock torture. Sometimes, the cramps are so bad, I cry out, my voice thin and weak, echoing distantly. I do not move, though, and hang limply by my hands. Dehydration is making my head ache, my world spin, and I am spending longer and longer periods of time in unconsciousness. Sometimes I realise my eyes are open: I blink, wonder how long I have been staring blindly.

How long does it take, to die of thirst? Surely I should be dead? I wonder if perhaps I have died, but somehow remain tethered to my own useless, dangling, lifeless body? It is purely academic whether my heart beats or not: to all purposes, I am dead.

My mind is in another place, not so far from here. On patrol, creeping through jungle. Marine helmet clamped onto my head. My khaki tank-top wet in half-moons under each arm, a ragged patch down the front. Creeping ahead of me, Amy, blonde, muscular, beautiful, a combat rifle held close to her muscled belly, sweat making her bare arms look oiled.

Bullets. They buzz and whiz like angry wasps, and, as if in slow motion, one thwacks into Amy’s shoulder with a burst of blood, knocking her into a stumble. She screams. In fear, I throw myself to the damp ground. Amy is turning, her eyes full of pain and confusion. A second bullet kicks through her belly, jolting her body, and she jerks, flinging her rifle. The third bullet hits her thigh, and she drops to a kneel, reeling, coughing blood, too dazed to react any more. The next shot bursts open her tank-top, blows away part of one breast, and she clutches the bloodied wreckage with red-wet hands, looking down at herself in grief and shock. The next bullet claims her chest, smacking into her breastbone and plunging inside her with such force that she is flung to land on her back. I am looking into her blue eyes as they glaze over.

I wake, on what I guess is the fifth morning since being hung here. I am suddenly, acutely aware of everything: of the painful grip of the steel handcuffs about my wrists, of my tautly-stretched arms, my drawn-out body, my feet suspended in air. I try to groan, but there is no voice, I try to move, but I have no strength. Slowly, as the long hours pass, my sense of awareness fades, my mind merges with the blackness.

Kirsten Smart

July 2000

kirstensmart@yahoo.co.nz