THREE DAYS AT THE END OF THE EARTH (First 5 Chapters of the complete novel)

Three days at the end of the Earth: Prologue and ending.

Prologue and ending.

The prisoner’s name was Ismael Horton, and he was scared. He knew by heart what was going to happen to him, and despite of knowing about the strong-arm interrogation that would come, the punches, the threats, the isolation and the menaces, he was still scared.

Or maybe he was scared because he knew.

A dark hood had been placed over his head, one of those iconic images he had seen hundreds of times before on news-clips, and among the smell of plane fuel and his own sweat trickling down his cheekbones, he thought he could also smell the scent of nylon or some type of synthetic material.

The man who had told him about the ordeals to come also warned him about how long the trip was going to feel, how longer the succession of never-ending hours was going to feel like having his sense of sight deprived. He thought he could make four distinctive breathing patterns next to him, which meant four soldiers, but likely there were more. These were good men, patriotic men (or women) who would gladly give their lives for liberty and democracy, and the pursuit of many dreams. None of them would question that the man in custody could be anything else but a traitor of the greatest caliber, a Benedict Arnold who the good old’ USA was lucky to have in chains and flying a direct charter to Washington DC, in order to debrief him.

The flight across the Atlantic lasted less than five hours. Upon landing, a soldier with a somewhat nasal voice asked him in a quasi-polite tone to stand up. “Man, you flight to your doom, and there are no lines at the ticket counter and no waiting for your luggage” thought Ismael to himself.

But they didn’t land in Washington, like the commander had predicted. Instead, they had taken him to a base in North Carolina, where he could hear the rhythmic jogging soldiers on the grounds and the sergeants chanting their drills. Sometimes he could notice some voices lowering their volume as he walked by, and he understood that they weren’t used seeing hooded prisoners being dragged around in handcuffs.

They x-rayed him, stripped him, and probed him, checked his teeth and fingernails, and when they were finished with him, there wasn’t a cavity on him left uninspected.

Again, just like the commander had told him it would happen, he was kept confined to a small room, with smells of cinder and sweat filling his nostrils, and hearing lots of distant slamming of doors, and… were those other prisoners? People screaming or arguing, feet shuffling over the pavement, and many more unidentifiable noises.

Time played tricks on him and, like the commander had told him, he just wanted it all to be over. The hood had ceased to bother him and he decided to immerse in his own thoughts, happy thoughts, about the time when he believed he was going to get a date with that charming anthropology student  in Spain, and that evening when he decided not work anymore, and spent the rest of the evening watching the sunset among the pine trees in the beach of Mogor. And the awesome seafood platter he ate at the eatery in the town of… what was the name of that town?? Ah yes!! Cangas… It was a little hole in the wall that he couldn’t find ever again, because by the time he left he was so stuffed, he forgot to write down the address….

By the time he was reminiscing about the dessert he heard the door open.  And just like the commander had told him they would do, they started interrogating him while hooded, using every intimidation tactic in the book. He also remembered the rest of the advice given by the commander, and acted scared. That part wasn’t hard to do.

At the height of the interrogation, one of the officers yanked the hood from him, and he finally got to realize that there was nothing remarkable about the three men doing the questioning. Just officers that once had been soldiers, that once had been kids in high-school, and before that had been the perfect sons to a good mother, and before that… a glimmer of hope in a young couple’s eye?