Page 27 of Resistant

It’s not a refreshing briskness to the air. It’s a chill that enters my bones and lingers, becoming ever present. It’s colder everywhere now. I can’t see the treetops outside the walls of the camp, though most trees are dying and bare.

The Gray that permeates the landscape never dissipates or is burned off by the sun. Sometimes it snows ash.Am I breathing in bits of someone’s body? Will their soul be forever attached to me in some way, now that I have breathed them in?

One night I gaze at the night sky, and I don’t see anything, no stars and no moon, a muted glow low in the sky where the moon should be. I’m living in a constant fog, one that blankets the landscape and another inside my mind.

This camp was converted from an old prison, which is laughable because there was no rehabilitation of anything.

Each woman lives alone in a cell. We are not allowed to talk to one another. The few men who are left from the resistance are here at the camps too, in different wings of the facility. We are always kept separate. Sometimes I see them in the distance, the men, working shirtless day after day.

The women here talk to each other in gestures and smiles. Sometimes I hear them whispering about the Gray and what the New Reform is doing to bring the sun back. But I don’t pay any mind to them, no one knows. It would hurt too much to make a friend when she is taken away; everyone is always taken away.

I’ve seen women from the camp disappear sometimes at night, I don’t know where they go or what happens to them. Sometimes they come back the next morning, sometimes I never see them again. I have an idea that they may be subjected to trafficking corporations. Every day is a new struggle not to give in to the New Reform and to survive my own grief.

Normally, I work in the greenhouses underground, digging in the raised beds, feeling the dirt scrape beneath my fingernails, replanting seedlings, and sweating under the bulbs shining over me.

It’s dark everywhere except for the lights that are powered by wind in the greenhouse. I don’t notice it much anymore, but in my first weeks here I was always distracted by the constant humming and whooshing of the gigantic wind turbines.

Today, I am wringing out wet sheets and linens in the tiny laundry room by hand. I’m covered in sweat, constantly pushing my hair out of my face. It’s strenuous work that leaves my hands raw and aching.

The room is hot, and there are ten of us in here working on top of each other. I’ve noticed that many of the women communicate here, it’s too hot for the guards to stay in here continuously, and cleaning linens by hand is loud work.

Whispers and murmurs tend to go unnoticed. When the bell rings, we’ll be shuffled into the food line and into our cells like cattle in a chute. That’s what the prisoners and guards call the cafeteria, the chute. We each enter the line, get served our meager one portion a day, eat in silence and return to our cells. There are no clocks, and we can’t see the sun in the sky, so I don’t know if the day is close to over or if I have hours to go yet when the unexpected happens.

There’s a scuffle across the room, a guard pulling on the arm of a woman and she’s screaming. Her voice is hoarse and cracking from disuse. I hear the thud of fists on flesh, and I see her lash out at him with the pole used to stir the laundry in the huge, heated cauldrons.

There’s an ear-splitting gunshot and silence. My ears are ringing, and I can vaguely hear muffled gasps and sobs when another guard grabs me by the arm and pushes me in front of him.

He is shorter than I am, which is saying something because I’m average height for a woman. He’s muscular and the smart ass inside me deems he’s overcompensating for something else with his workouts. His hair is arranged carefully and doesn’t match his pinched face with dark beady eyes. My skin crawls as his hand tightens around my arm.

He takes me through the chute, to my cell and slams the door and says, “You got picked, I’ll come back for you after lights out.” which is stupid because there are no lights.

I sit on my cot. I am exhausted and numb. The guard’s nasal voice is the first voice I have heard other than my inner monologue in a long time. It seems like only a few minutes before he comes back, but it’s now dark. So, I know I’ve been sitting here in a stupor for a while.

He slides his baton and flashlight across the bars of my cell and sneers in at me.

“Come on little lady, you are someone’s dessert for tonight.”

I wince and stand looking down at my toes. I swallow down the bile in my throat.

I know better than to disobey if I want to leave this place alive, if I ever leave.

He unlocks and slides the door open, and I stumble past him. He grabs my wrists and locks them into a twelve-foot chain, a crude leash they use frequently in the showers which are far enough that he can stay dry, but close enough that there is no privacy, and no escape.

He drags me behind him through a maze of halls to a dilapidated shower room. This room reminds me of pictures I saw of tiled asylums from the late 1800s.

He turns on the main water valve and I step up to the closest shower head and turn on the cold water. I wince as it assaults me, the spray is hard, and it stings and drenches my skin and uniform. I only have one set, so I know I’ll be cold and damp for a few days.

He reaches into an alcove and pulls out a bar of soap and shampoo, hands it over,

“Hurry the fuck up. I don’t want to babysit your ass all night long.”

I want to ask him what is happening. My body has dissolved into a constant tremor, my teeth are chattering, while I try to wash beneath my clothes. Disobedience will lead to a beating or worse.

He grabs at the worn material of my uniform and rips it right down the front.

“Fucking wash, hurry up!”

Before the last of the soap has rinsed off, he hands me a towel and pushes me out into the hallway. I don’t know what he’s done with the flashlight because we walk in the darkness and stop at an old pulley elevator I’ve not noticed before. He shoves me inside. I’m dripping puddles onto the floor, leaving little pools around my feet.

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