Fox Wilde - Variant Exchange - A Punk Rock Spy Fiction Novel

She couldn’t breathe… oh god she couldn’t breathe! “ I can’t … I c-can’t…” she howled inside her skull, “ I can’t … my throat doesn’t work anymore. My throat doesn’t fucking work! Oh God… oh god … this is how I’m going to die… my throat doesn’t work! ” It wasn’t just that it hurt—it did, of course—but her throat had simply swollen shut, as if welded and stitched at the same time. She gasped, taking painful, desperate little breaths, trying to force air down her esophagus; but it was no use. Within seconds Lena was suffocating and there was nothing she could do about it. “ Oh god … I can’t breathe … I can’t breathe … I can’t… ”

As her vision blurred over, she barely saw the boot slamming into her belly. What little she could see through her shredded, dislodging pupils was too full of murky mist to spy anything more than the limbs of her assailants. Immediately she doubled over and hit the dirt hard. What little wind she had managed to force into her lungs by sheer will had now been forced out again, accompanied with no small measure of acid from her pummeled stomach. All this burned, of course—but nowhere near as bad as her lungs.

The shouting around her was like a scene from a B-rated slasher movie. Harsh male voices muffled by gas-masks hurled commands and insults as younger voices progressed from screams to coughing fits… then back into screaming. Feet stampeded in all directions as booms , kicks and the sound of a door splintering off of its hinges forced Lena underwater into the black of vertigo. She intuitively knew which way was up; yet that knowledge meant nothing to her anymore.

No matter how hard Lena tried to pass out or die, she couldn’t. Once she tasted blood, however, she really gave it an honest effort. It struck her as odd that she could manage to taste her blood through the overpowering taste of throw up, military-grade pepper, and ruined atmosphere. She could, however, and this provisioned the distinct impression that she had lost something precious—if not an innocence, than certainly the integrity of some important organ she required to live.

As she writhed in agony on the ground quivering, throwing up and choking on the air. Every now and then another black boot would kick her, or one of her escaping friends would trip over her only to find a boot of his own. She had never known she could feel this much pain.

She was helpless as she watched Hans and the beating his face was taking from baton-wielding thugs. “His face was so perfect…” Lena thought to herself as she watched his nose explode from a well-placed punch. Blood spurt everywhere as his eyes lolled uselessly back up into his skull.

“Leave this one pretty.” Lena heard someone say, and then, she finally and thankfully passed into oblivion.

“Clang clang clang clang clang clang…”

The machine-gun fire of a heavy metal stick hammering on Lena’s cell door jarred her awake. She had barely fallen asleep, catching precious seconds of sweet relief, before a surge of adrenaline and fear overtook her slumber. She jumped up, did a confused and awkward defensive dance, then fell to the floor covering her face. She couldn’t see yet—she just knew that she was in imminent danger.

“ Sleep time is now over!” a male voice shouted at her through a hole in her door. “Terminate sleeping position! Sit against the back wall! Hands behind your head! Legs crossed! Eyes straight forward! Head at ninety-degree angle! Posture will be…”

The orders went on and on for almost an entire minute. She never saw the one who shouted. He simply beat on her door with his baton and yelled very specific instructions on how to sit, how to sleep, how to eat, where to look, how fast to breathe—anything you could possibly think of, he had instructions on how it was to be performed. She had tried ignoring the commands once; but after getting sprayed down with a fire-hose for what felt like an eternity she decided against trying that again.

She had been sleeping in the back-sleeping position today—on her back with her arms crossed over her chest, right arm over left arm, with left ankle crossed over right; her face pointed directly at the ceiling, eyes closed with absolutely no blinking allowed. She dared not lower or raise her chin, lest her very life be forfeit. Perhaps an hour later it would be side-sleeping position. There were two versions of this and if she were lucky, she would be allowed to bend her knees and move herself so that she wasn’t struggling to stay balanced on her arm (which after a few minutes would be getting much more sleep than her). If she wasn’t lucky, well, she would probably earn the fire-hose.

She had to be very careful, though. The fire-hose was but one sadistic punishment in a long line of options spanning from bad to unimaginably worse. She could be denied rations, switched to ‘ loaf des Elends’ (affectionately referred to as either ‘punishment loaf’ or ‘cheerful loaf’ depending on the guard), force-fed aforementioned cheerful loaf through a tube, denied chamber-pot cleanings, or simply have her clothes taken away (a punishment often used in tandem with an overflowing chamber-pot). If she really messed up, they would shoot tear gas into her cell. That had only happened once, but Lena had passed out and begun to drown in a pool of throw-up and saliva after a few minutes of choking. She had to be removed from her cell for reviving while her cell was (poorly) cleaned, and even then, it still made her eyes burn terribly. She didn’t remember what she had done to earn that—she just vowed that whatever it was, she would never do it again.

Her cell was small—perhaps five feet by six feet wide, and fifteen feet tall. The walls, floor, and ceiling were a dark gunmetal-concrete color and they were arranged in a sort of hexagon shape. The only notable feature (comparatively, at least) was the cell door. It was a massive door for the size of the cell. She had only seen the breadth and depth of it once, but no man or creature could ever pound its way through. Certainly, Lena’s 90lb frame would never pull that off. A hole for her food was present as was an eye-hole that almost never opened.

She had a small sleeping pad with holes in it, and a wormy hair-cloth blanket that smelled like piss, fear, and diarrhea. These ratty accouterments provided almost no warmth at all and served to further the impression that she was human refuse—a mere imposition to be discarded when it suited her jailors.

Nights (if days and nights existed normally in here) never seemed to last more than a few hours. She had no windows in her cell so her only way of determining time of day was the lone light-bulb in her cell that seemed to click on or off at random. When she was awakened, it was the morning-stretch position first, with her back against the wall. After this, it would be the first contemplation position, wherein she would scoot forward two inches and sit with no back support, her face tilted down at precisely 45-degrees with her hands resting on her legs; and God help her if her eyes were pointed anywhere but forward. She hated this position. The wall was so close to her back, but the sweet support might as well have been a mile away for all the good it did her. This position would be followed by the breakfast-eating position where she would kneel, tray on her thighs (with the tray always trying to slide off of her lap) and eat to the tempo of her taskmaster.

“ Spoon up!” he would shout. Then she would place the spoon inside of her mouth to gobble up what food she managed to fit onto it. “ Lower spoon!” he would shout again, followed by, “ Spoon food!” If she followed any of these instructions too slowly, her food would be taken away from her hastily, followed by minutes of those dreaded batons clanging on her cell door over, and over, and over, and…