Measuring time was next to impossible. No clocks, no sunlight, no signs from the outside world.
Smith had called out in his windowless cell, heard his voice echoed down the dingy corridor and yet there were no noises in response. No rumble of traffic, no coughing or shuffling of feet, no bellowing “to keep it down,” not even a crackle from the pipes or the creek of a floorboard. The silence outside was deafening and the only sounds Smith could hear were made by his own body.
He tried to remember what had happened before. An attack at the embassy, a rush of men in combat gear and woolly black masks. The gunfire, the screams, the shattering of glass. One man had rushed up to Smith, his firearm raised and…
Smith waited and waited, no food, no water, and as he brushed his chin against his palm, he couldn’t even tell if his stubble had grown.
Were they were going to let him starve or was he going to answer to someone in authority.
He’d slip into dreamless sleep, and when he’d awaken, he’d look up at the grimy, metal ceiling and listened to nothing. This was how time went by, days or hours or years until…
One day (if it was a day) Smith had had enough, he yelled out “Hey, help! Get me the hell out of here!”
And that plea, echoing around the cell was answered. The door swung open, and Smith squinting against the blinding light saw the man standing in the doorway.
Smith knew the man, had been told about him every Sunday and saw that the palm outstretched in greeting, was in fact bleeding. But Smith felt a loathing for the man’s presence and a lifelong resentment boil within him.
He had been told to love this man his entire life, refusal he was told, was not a desired option. But Smith feeling his very world had become finite with this revelation, didn’t rise from his barren slap, but lay there and scowled.
“I am your only hope out of here,” the man explained “there is no other option.”
Smith rose and grabbing a hold of the iron door handle, slammed it shut with a resounding bang before turning back to his bed and continued waiting again, in an airless, never-ending prison.
