A Hopeless Journal for A Helpless Man

Chapter 10: The Village

I begin leaning to my left side. The truck has began moving. Through the gates, I suppose, since I didn't feel we turned or made any readjustments. As I said, we're right where we're supposed to be.

My ass regains complete contact with the bench. A key has been turned counter clockwise so as to cut the ignition and fuel intake of the truck. A door opens with a creak. Another opens smoothly but makes something pop. They both slam shut and make the truck shake lightly. I hear footsteps growing clear, then faint, then clearer than ever on the truck's bumper. Someone is untying my blindfold. I assume it's not Ros, on account of the silence. It was Ros. He looks at me. Dead. In. My. Fucking. Eye. Again. I lose myself in worry and in thought. My stare is ineffective. It's like I'm not even there. He's staring right through me. If it weren't for his hand placed on my knee anyone would think he hadn't been perceiving me. He is though, I think. They say you can see the weakness of a man right through his iris. It's one of the pathways to the soul. The chakra. The spirit. The core. The electric transmitters as neurons. The organic thinking machine. Ros is looking directly at it. I feel naked.

The second passed and Ros pulled me up from the bench and down from the bumper. With my limbs tied and useless, I stayed as such while the other guard watched me. Ros continued untying blindfolds from the other captives at the bench opposite to where I sat. All the while the other truck had stopped behind us and the two pirates were exiting the front seats. They assisted Ros in lowering the precious human cargo. Emmet, Tony, girl, and guy. I haven't cared enough to take milliseconds of my time to ask for names. We organized in single file again and were herded through this fenced place. I looked around and the tire tracks and lack of grass told me this was where vehicles were to be stowed. I viewed across the fence and saw a couple of guard towers that seemed to be about 30 feet high, each with a porch, stairs, and a large stage light at the top. This all looked as if it were made from scavenged parts. Everything was amateurishly looking, but professionally functioning. Ros herded us through a space no wider than a two lane road. No asphalt though, just dirt. Surrounding this asphalt lacking road were houses made partly or entirely by wood and straw, which looked to have been gathered locally. These houses were open, some even had people chatting inside. Some houses looked like pirate private quarters, while other had 'Delicious Caribbean Fish' signs and a wooden stockpile of fish. For 12 dollars you could get two 4 footers. This place also has an economy, great. I might as well be displayed in window casings along with my other captive mannequins. We kept walking and the asphalt lacking road was alined and paved at the sides by more and more coinciding wooden houses. I figured, with all the concentrated jungle hidden stores and shops, that this was a black market. There was a weapons store to my right. A bar to my left. A bathroom to my right. A poultry shop to my left. A whore house to my right. A herb store to my left. Fuck my neck hurts.

We walked and walked some more. Distance is getting so difficult to perceive. Ros led us into a hut through a small passageway beside the herb store. It was a shady place, shadier than the black market I just split in half walking. We went through the door and all I saw was a desk, a chair, a barely hanging drape alongside one of the windows, a few cots around the corners of the room, a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling by it's copper wiring (classic), and a small corridor to my left that seemed to either go down, up, or further back. It went down. It was a basement. Ros left two guards upstairs doing what their noun suggests. I took some steps down the stairs and automatically looked to my right. I wish I hadn't. There were cages and inside these were chains hanging from the ceiling and two other pairs buried in the ground. They had cuffs in the end. Again there were traces of dried up blood on the ground, hay to soak everything up, a smell of something burnt, traces of ashes, piss, shit... To my left I saw a table with instruments of sorts. Knives, jumper cables, gasoline, pots and pans. Fuck. Ros hadn't said a word, but our thoughts were ablaze. I could see it in everybody's face, except Ros. He was dead. If there were a frequency that allowed thoughts to be heard, this basement would've been unbearable. Ros led us to the cage. Since there were two, he decided to seperate us. Emmet and me. Tony, girl, and guy. Ros turned the lock and stowed the keys in his Velcro calf pocket. He commanded the last remaining guard to take watch of the cages. To the right of these very cages was a red door with a thick, opaque, 10 inch tall, 6 inch wide window. The door seemed to be of a sturdy steel nature. Ros went through it and as he opened the steel door I heard a solid unlocking sound accompanied by a whiff of cold air. As Ros made his way through the esteemed door, I managed to get a glimpse of a hand preceded by a black suit sleeve. There was someone in there with Ros. The door took two and a half seconds (more or less) to close itself shut with slight difficulty, with another hiss of pressured, escaping air, and with a solid locking sound. The room was air tight. Pressure sealed. Compact. It was the air conditioner. There's one in there and it's pumping too much air into an underground room. Gaseous particles are starting to have difficulty expanding and filling space, since everything is already filled, which is causing the door to have difficulty closing and to let out whispers of cold, pressurized air. Someone must really like the cold in there. I imagine this tropical heat would do a number on a guy with a suit. He's not from here. He's probably a stranger. He's accustomed to cold or likes it so much he decided to only include an air conditioner in this only shitty part of the shitty house.

I can't hear any conversation from that room. It's ziplock sealed. Keeping the meat in the suit and the meat in the fucked up clothing fresh for months, even years. I did, however, hear some keys jingle. Metal to metal. A quick burst of a high pitched sound repeated almost simultaneously by two more bursts. Jingle. Jangle. Someone is walking. I look at Emmet, his ears are sharp on the sound as he looks back at me and mouths: 'Keys'. I don't think Tony, girl, and guy heard it. Their cell has one more wall of cement to restrict their hearing. While I only have one. The ceiling. The guard that was told to look out after us was now sitting beside the door, perpendicular to Tony's, guy's, and girl's cell. I grab Emmet and talk to him on possible options. He says that if we could just somehow get those keys down here. I say that there are steel bars restricting any type of fighting. Emmet differs. He tells me I should check if the guard has a gun. I casually stroll through my cell and take a glance. He has a gun holstered on the left portion of his hip. Emmet has a plan, so he punches me. I scream.

'Fuck!', I yelled

Emmet spat out some words of his own incoherent fake invention, 'You little asshole! It's your fault we're in this mess!'

We fight. I punch him back in the stomach. He kicks me in the calf. I rush towards him and receive a nasty cross punch. I shove him and pin him towards the wall. I punch him in the stomach. Why are we actually fighting? This is no act, but I know it's fake. In between our exchange the guard gets up from beside the door and walks over to the cell and while he puts his hands on the bars I'm punching Emmet to that same side.

The guard says we're dumbfucks. He says we should stop before he comes in here and shoots our shins out. Ha! Malfunctioning threat. He doesn't have the keys.

While the guard gets lippy, Emmet is falling back towards the bars naturally acting on account of the punch that was thrown moderately well at best. Emmet leans back on the bars and in a millisecond he turns around, pushes his arms in between the bars, grabs the guard's arms, and bends them sideways to opposite sides against the bars breaking his elbows making the guard scream. I rush the scene and go for the guard's gun. I unholster it and fire it off. That room better be air tight or have more to it than I think. I hear keys. Jingle. Jangle. I hear desperate steps. I'm still hearing a scream. The guard is helpless. The two other guards arrive. The first on rushes towards the scene. Jingle. Jangle. He has the keys. The fist guard is still screaming. The rushing guard comes up the and pulls the initial guard away from Emmet's grasp. He didn't succeed. Emmet is clawed into him. I act. I don't think. I act. I'm stupid. This isn't another life. It's my own. It's Emmet's. It's Tony's. It's guy's. It's girl's. I shoot the guard trying to pull the other away from Emmet. I shoot the key master. I shoot the sentient being holding a piece of metal that unhooks another piece of metal from a parallelogram inside a cube that holds the sentient being with a metal instrument that causes explosions in one direction using barium nitrate engulfed in sulfur with shreds of charcoal. The key master breaks down while holding the middle of his chest. The keys go down with him. Jingle. Jangle. What a good shot. I should pat myself on the back. I think I even have time for that considering they can't maim their precious cargo. That's what we are. And we're irreplaceable unless Ros says otherwise, but he's not here to call the shots. I wish I had time to say that out loud. The guard keeps screaming. The third guard is still near the stairs, now rushing, closer. Bang. He drops, just like the other guard, but without the jingle. Without the jangle. Emmet let's go of one arm and punches the guards face out. The screaming finally stopped. I think that door is soundproof.

Emmet gets on the floor and extends his arm. He's going for the keys and they're close too. He reaches. Reaches. Got'em. We open out cage, swiftly. We open the cage next to us. Tony, guy, girl. Run. We all run upstairs, but not before Emmet and me decide to take the guard's weapons away. We keep them. We exit the house, as quietly as possible. Emmet and me have the lead. I see a corridor. The one we're in. I peek through the corner. I only see the way we came in from and more pirates, guards, gang members, traffickers, etc. They're all mostly guarding the fences. I retreat back to the corridor and I look at Emmet and the rest. From the corridor, at least a foot higher than my vision, someone talks to us.

Whispering roughly, 'Oh shit, hey... Over here... Climb in through the window.'

A second passes and we're confused.

The whisper resuscitates, 'Hurry up, I ain't got all day. Now get up here if you wanna live.'

We obeyed the voice's orders and climbed through the window. Me, Emmet, Tony, guy, girl. Special herbs. 100% natural. No chemicals. No taxes. Black market prices. You don't need a license. Try a sample. Herbal therapy. Sweet Cranberry. California Love. Tropical Joint. Mary Jane Special. Top Pot. My mind is slower than this entire situation.