Holding The Line. Kierney Scott

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СКАЧАТЬ side of the fields. He couldn’t see them but he preferred it that way. When he was well enough to work the fields he saw the other prisoners, poor miserable fuckers, all of them, with all their crying and praying and promising Christ they would be better if they ever got out.

      Torres wanted to tell them all to shut up. Moaning just made it worse. But he didn’t because that would mean speaking to them and he wouldn’t. He wanted no part of them, the guards or the prisoners. He hated them both equally, the guards for the sadistic pleasure they took in beating prisoners until they pissed themselves and the prisoners for giving them the satisfaction of crying out when the lashings began.

      The boy cried out again. Torres lifted his head. He wished the guards would take him back to the clearing. He needed to be with the other prisoners, where he could scream and cry.

      “Please!” the boy screamed. “Please! Come back!’

      Torres clamped his mouth shut to keep from telling him to shut the fuck up. No one was coming for him, or any of them.

      “Please! Come back,” he screamed. A sob tore through his body, like an axe through a rotting carcass. His slim body shook with it. “Please!”

      Torres closed his eyes and focused on the sound of the frogs. He could pick out the individual sounds, like an amphibian orchestra, the low resonant bass, reedy croaks, and then a higher silvery timbre.

      But he couldn’t hear them tonight over the screams.

      The screams turned to sobs and then finally a whimper.

      *****

      The boy was screaming again. Every night for a year it was the same: pleading screams that turned to tears and then finally an exhausted sleep.

      If Torres could reach him, he would kill him.

      He would do it when the boy finally lost himself to sleep. He would lay his forearm against his throat and press until the life drained out of him. The boy wouldn’t know it happened, he just wouldn’t wake up. There would be no more screaming then, no more suffering.

      “Please!” the boy moaned.

      Torres closed his eyes. He could feel his arm on his scrawny neck, pushing down until his frail body gave itself over to death. Five minutes, that is all it would take. If the boy knew, he would probably thank him, for giving him the only freedom he could hope to achieve.

      The boy thrashed against his chains. A year and the boy still thought he could break free. Where the fuck did he think he was going to go?

      “Stop pulling, you’re going to wear away your skin and you’ll never get back to the fields.”

      “What?” The boy’s voice was pierced with shock. Torres never spoke to him, not even to tell him to shut up, so the boy had stopped trying to talk to him after a few weeks.

      “Don’t pull on your chains. If your skin rips you’ll get an infection. Just lay still.”

      “I can’t,” he whimpered. “I want to go home.”

      Torres closed his eyes. The boy wasn’t going home. But Torres wouldn’t torture him further by telling him that. “Just close your eyes and think about your home. Think about everything waiting for you. Think about what you are going to do.” The boy was going to die here, either at the hands of a soldier, or an infection, or, if he were lucky, Torres would do it himself. Torres would provide him the only humane ending out of the three so he hoped for the boy’s sake he had the chance.

      “I can’t,” he cried. “I can’t remember.” He started to cry again, sobs tearing through his slim body.

      Torres adjusted himself so he would see him but it was too dark to see anything beyond a dark shadow. “Yes you can. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. You just got home. Who is there waiting for you?”

      After a moment the boy responded. “My grandmother is there. She waited for me. She knew I would come home.”

      “Good,” Torres encouraged. “She hugs you. Feel her arms around you. Everything is fine now, you are home. Feel it. She is happy you’re home and she makes you a big meal. What does she make you?”

      “Pork with chili and fresh tortillas.”

      “Good. Taste them. The meat is tender. Feel it melt in your mouth. Taste the sting of the chili. It is hot but it doesn’t burn it just makes your mouth warm. Can you taste it?”

      “Yes,” the boy answered. His voice was eager, almost frantic with the need to believe.

      “Good. Think about your grandmother. Think about being home.”

      The boy was quiet for a long time. Torres thought he was finally asleep but eventually he asked. “What do you think about?”

      Torres did not answer right away. The place he went to in his mind was private; it belonged to him alone. The tastes and smells were his. Sharing them would taint them, make them part of this ugliness. He wouldn’t do that. “Home,” he said simply.

      “Who is waiting for you?”

      Torres’ gut clenched. That was a question he only asked himself when he was strong enough for the answer. He wasn’t sure who was waiting, maybe no one, but he lied to himself and let himself see her. He saw the deep crevice between her eyes that appeared when she frowned. He felt himself rub his thumb over the deep ridge and felt it smooth as her face relaxed into a smile. He smelled the apple scent of her shampoo. He felt her arms wrap around his neck and heard her voice saying “welcome home”. He closed his eyes.

      “Are you awake?” the boy asked.

      “Yeah.”

      “What do you think about?” he asked again.

      This time he did answer because the boy would be dead soon. “My woman,” he answered.

      “Is she pretty?”

      Torres smiled. “She is beautiful.” He vaguely remembered that there was a time when he didn’t think she was pretty. He thought she was plain, now he could not remember for the life of him how he had been so blind. How had he not seen it all along? She was beautiful. Even when he tried to be objective, he could not think of a more beautiful woman.

      “What is she like?”

      His smile deepened, requiring muscles he had not used in a very long time. “She’s not very tall but you wouldn’t notice because she is strong. Pound for pound she could take most men. You wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of her. She has a right hook that could shatter a jaw.” He warmed when he remembered her punching him square in the face, or more to the point the frantic needy sex that followed.

      “What’s her name?”

      Torres hesitated. That part he wouldn’t share. That was his. She belonged to him alone. He wouldn’t share her. “I call her Gatita,” he said instead. “Because she reminds me of a wild cat.”

      The boy seemed satisfied. No more questions followed and no more crying, just the cacophony of the nocturnal jungle coming to life.

      Torres СКАЧАТЬ