“Taken Prisoner”
It was early in the evening, my food had just arrived, chicken cordon bleu, a side of soup, and ice cream smothered with star fruit sauce for dessert. I have the creepy feeling, you know the one you get when someone is watching or following you? While being conspicuous I quickly scan the area for any suspicious figures. Just as I was preparing to take a bite of the tantalizing food sitting in front of me I stop; three huge forms are moving through the crowd from the other side of the villa. They look as though they are searching for someone. They quickly scan the crowed, until their eyes land on me. I look behind me thinking surely they can’t be looking for me. As I look back at their terrifying faces and spot the knives in their hands and the guns on their belts I make a run for the nearest mob. Shoving my way through all the people one thought is burning brightly though my mind, ‘DO NOT LET THEM CATCH YOU!’
Running my zeal and the danger behind me began to blind my view of the danger ahead. Looming up ahead is a huge cliff dropping off into the sea below. Now as I reach the edge, I leap not knowing how to react as I speedily descend through the air about to crash into the quickly coming sea. Only moments before, I meet the sea I remember to straighten out so as not to kill myself. Upon impact I start to black out, the last thing I see as I pass into the darkness are the three scary figures looking over the edge of the cliff at me.
As I slowly come to I start to get a splitting headache that throbs through my whole skull blurring my vision. I begin to stand and get off of the cold, hard… Wait, how am I still alive? I should have drowned, unless… Yes that must be it. It all must have been a terrible and vivid nightmare and I am just on the floor of the living room in the house where I am staying, having rolled off the couch in my sleep hitting my head on the ground. Which would also explain my splitting headache? Again I try to stand this time reaching for the couch to help me up. To my horror however my hand finds the cold, hard, rusty bar of a jail cell.
Suddenly, someone is coming, I can hear their clunky, probably over priced combat boots stomping closer and closer. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. They stop. “You there, stand up!” someone orders. I blink a few times and my eyes focus on a tall man with a cut along his eye brow and a right hand, the hand closer to me, missing it’s pinky. Again he orders, “Stand up now, before I make you!” Realizing he was talking to me I scurry to my feet using the cell’s bars as support. Putting on what I hope is a mask of courage and defiance I demand back, “Who are you? Why am I here? Where exactly is here?” The man just gives me a creepy smile that seems to say ‘as if you don’t already know’ then turns and walks away.
A few short minutes later I hear footsteps again. This time two sometime three sets. Two guards come into view half dragging half carrying a third man who looks vaguely familiar. I watch the two guards lock the man into a cell across from mine then come for me. Although, my mind screams at me to fight against being take without my consent to who knows where my body is too weak to stand let alone take on two fit guards with weapons. After walking for what feels like a millennia we come to a small square room and they sit me in a chair. It’s a very uncomfortable chair too. I am just about to ask, nay demand for a more comfortable one when the first man, the tall menacing one walks in. He sits in the chair across from me and asks me my name. I’m not really listening however, I am thinks about how much more comfortable his chair looks compared to mine. Not even stopping a second to think about it I ask, “Could be switch chairs please? Yours looks more comfy than mine.” The man takes a second to think it over then trades’ seats with me. He now continues to question me asking for my full name again. I start to answer him when, well, when I realized I couldn’t recall my own name!
“I cannot recall it.”
“What do you mean?” The man demands slightly mad.
“I do not remember my name, sir.”
He then continues, “Fine then, where were you born?”
“I don’t know, sir”
As a last resort he asks me my age, the most basic of questions.
“I am sorry, sir, however I am un able to answer any of you questions due to memory loss.”
“Stop lying and give me an answer now!!” He screams at me, I just look at him silently. Finally, he continues now talking to the guards, “Take him away we’ll continue this conversation at a later date.”
***
Back in my cell I can see the man again. He is staring into space in the direction of my cell with the most haunting look on his face, I sit across from him and start back trying, willing myself to remember. Something. Anything! Suddenly I know where I know that man from and why I recognize him. I saw him everyday growing up, the man is my father. I laugh out loud thinking of the Star Wars reference I just made. The moment I stop laughing at my little inside joke a hundred more questions pop into my head. It is as though someone has poured a gum ball machine filled with a variety of gum balls into my head. Unable to bear the haunting look in my father’s eyes one minute more I walk over and lay on a cot the sits in the corner of my cell, drifting off to sleep without realizing it.
I awake some time later to the sound of agony. I jump out of my bed and look into the hall for the source, only to find that is was my own father. Unable to do anything to ease his pain I go and lie back down and focus on remembering everything. This task however proves hopeless, however, since, I can ruminate on nothing but my father just out of reach twitching and twisting being torched by his own mocking madness. A madness forced onto him by those wretched men who held up both prisoner. That’s when it hits me. Like a flood, filling me, consuming my whole being so that was nothing else just all my memories and me. Memory after memory presents its self to me, starting with my early year, my name, who my best friend was, where I grew up, all the way up to the last few weeks when before I was kidnapped.
Finally I know why I am here and what those men want from me. Well, I know one thing, no two things, they aren’t going to get any information from me and I’m getting out of this prison and my father is coming with me.
