Darkness Dissolves When the Door Opens

They Chopped My Fucking Finger Off!

Jules’ head spun around. He saw glimmers of lights, LED lamps passed every second, hurrying away from him.

They carried him around like a dead body, turning left and right. Jules didn’t pay attention where he was going, but he knew for sure that the place was bigger than his entire high school.

His head was throbbing. It felt like Jules’ brain tried to unleash itself by breaking and thumping his skull from the inside.

And they entered a small room at the very back of the building. There was a surgery table, and lots of drawers and other stuffs Jules didn’t even care.

The next thing he remembered was the stink of alcohol and bandage on his wound. He screamed again. He felt his bone cluttering one by one, his sweat turning into bullets. The pain overwhelmed him. It overwhelmed him until for the second time, Jules blacked out.

−

Jules woke up almost very suddenly. He felt better than before. 

But as the environment grabbed in, he realized there was nothing great about it.

He was still in the same bright, nauseating, smelly, and claustrophobic room full of alcohols and torture tools. He couldn’t feel the wound anymore, or anything he should feel. He felt basic and empty. 

Jules reached for his left pinky, but of course nothing was there beside bandage.

But then, his imagination sprawled in. He heard something from the corner of his ear. Children screaming, crying.

Jules stood up but the cuff did forbid him from doing so. The door of the room, brown and wooden, swung open, revealing the face he hated most on the planet. Yamako was wearing another kind of clothing, the more prestigious kind. Jules never understood the systematic ruling in the Japanese way of dressing.

“Feeling better?” He asked, trying to be sympathetic.

“No.”

“Good.”

“Where are my friends?”

“They’re fine. They’re sleeping down in the dungeon.”

“In the dungeon?”

“Oh yes, don’t be so surprised, you’ll join them too.”

The kids’ crying echoed again. It felt like they were from the very walls that trapped Jules.

“Are those kids?”

“Annoying creatures they are.”

“You’re a fucking monster!”

“No, I’m a realistic.”

“Whose children were those?”

“Farmers, resistances, children whose parents fought us. I mean, of course they deserve the worst torment ever.”

The image bobbled inside Jules’ mind. He realized these kids had lost their parents, and now Yamako tortured them.

“You’re the most inhuman person ever!”

“I get that a lot.”

“They’re kids! Just let them go and they won’t bother you or your dumb empire.”

“What? They will grow as resistances, as fighters. Of course I won’t let that happen. Also, they gave me pretty penny every now and then?”

“You sell these kids?” Jules couldn’t believe Yamako anymore. Every cell in his body felt like he just wanted to stab Yamako’s face three hundred times.

And how did Yamako answer? He just shrugged his shoulders. “I mean, I can gain money. Lots of them.”

“You know what, Yamako. You can just kill me right here, right now. You can also kill those kids and it will be way better than torturing them here forever. Why don’t you just do that?”

“Well, I don’t like killing. It’s way too simple. Life is an art. Life is something not everything has.”

“Yeah? Then why are you destroying ours?”

“I’m not destroying your lives. I make them more valuable for all of you.”

“Yeah, but I think I will prefer death.”

“Exactly my point.”

Jules stopped, unable to say more things. Yamako was a crazy man. He couldn’t be reasoned with, and the bad news was that he would be seeing him every day for God knows how long.

Two soldiers carried Jules through hallways after hallways. They were lit by torches and candles, unlike those sections in the front with LED lamps. The building felt like some colonial kingdom or something he read on fantasy books.

He passed three sets of doors on the way to his ‘dungeon’, and those doors were thick and made out of copper, maybe iron. The guard there was listening to the radio.

The cries of children could be heard coming from one of the doors. They screamed like their lives were drained little by little every second, resulting inevitable pain and agony which couldn’t give away. Shouting of men followed with their screams. Jules had no idea what was going on in there.

He later learned that those three doors were the three ‘above ground dungeons’ and that they contained low-fi criminals and treasoners. Those kids, though, were not criminals.

I have to free them. I have to free them.

But that thought slithered away almost instantly. Jules realized he was never gonna escape the place. Not in the future, not ever.

Downstairs, two more similar doors, but the soldier unlocked the second one and pushed him in there. Everything was dark and humid. It seemed that water transformed into air and infiltrated his throat and dried them up.

Inside, his friends were in different cages over each other, except for Ezra and Glenn which settled the same one. Those soldiers put him into the cell beside John’s and Blake’s, and in front of Jai’s. The two Japanese men joked around, spitted his shoes, and walked out of the dungeon.

Jules witnessed his home for the next few years. Dark, wet, disgusting, sewer-like room with two nailed planks for sleeping and two separate bowl and a plastic plate for eating and drinking, and the custom plastic bag for taking care of his belly businesses.

He realized the Japanese must’ve searched him, but he relaxed when he touched the head of Ava’s doll. They didn’t take it away from him at least.

Jules sat on the planks. 

“Sorry,” Asher said with the fastest tone ever after realizing his bandages finger.

“Don’t be.”

“You deserve to be mad at me.”

“Why? Because they cut my fucking finger off? Come on, Ash, Yamako deserved that spit you gave him.

Asher merely smiled.

Jules opened his mouth again, making entrance of a new topic.

“Those are tortured kids up there,” he said. “Those kids are tortured, guys. Tortured! Kids!”

“Yeah,” Roger apparently said it. “We heard when they hauled us here. Kinda fucked up that is.”

“We need to bust everyone out of this place.”

“And how do you propose to do that, Jules?” Jai asked.

But Jules didn’t know. Of course he didn’t know. That place was as secured as Nazi’s concentration camp with dozens of Japanese in every single room.

“I don’t know how.”