Captive

For the third time in two days, I woke up on a prison floor with Sidney Crosby. Though this time, he was sleeping quietly instead of crushing me or trying to break down a steel door. I don’t remember anything past blindly climbing into a car. They must have put something into the water they made us drink.

I shook Crosby gently to make sure he was alive. He sat up slowly and groaned. “What happened? Where am I?” he asked groggily. The meds they gave him were likely helping him calm down.

We both inspected our new surroundings. It was a new day and with it came a new prison.

I jumped up as soon as I spotted a large window. Metal fences separated us from the outside world, crushing any hope we may have of escaping. Outside the glassless window was a rocky mountain scenery. The arid land went on for days, days of emptiness. No sign of life or nearby houses could be seen. The air was so crisp, a complete contrast to the heat of Baghdad.

I gathered that we were quite high up in the mountains for the temperature to be that low in Iraq, unless we were no longer in Iraq. We’ve been unconscious for almost a whole day. It was enough time to transport us to China.

“Another fucking desert,” Crosby complained behind me.

I shook my head at him, “you’ve clearly never seen a real desert before.”

I left Crosby at the window grumbling and went on to explore our new cell. This place was quite different than the last. For one, there was no dirt. The floor was made of polished cement. There was a narrow metal bed on one of the walls farthest from the door.

Facing the bed, in one of the corners, a walled confinement caught my attention. I rolled my eyes at the sight of the hidden toilet. Nearby, and outside of the half-walls of the semi-private toilet, there was a not-so-private “shower.” The whole thing consisted of a basic showerhead with a small drain underneath, and an on-off lever handle that could have easily passed as a remnant from the Mesopotamian era. Next to the shower stood a small sink that awfully resembled the toddler ones at the daycare where I used to volunteer when I was 15.

I noticed Crosby looking outside an eye-level window in the door. “It’s just an empty hall with another door at the end,” he said when I stood behind him trying to peer through the tiny opening. I paced around, studying our outside surroundings from the window facing the mountains, to the door window. The other two walls uselessly met in the form of that miserable toilet, without any hint of what’s behind them.

“I think we’re in an isolated room. I don’t think there are other rooms around us,” I said as I banged on the walls, trying to get a sense of the structure. The walls were made of rough cement that bruised my knuckles the more I knocked. My head started spinning from the amount of pacing and inspection I did. I couldn’t even remember the last time I ate. My body was running purely on adrenaline.

Crosby seemed to have exhausted himself standing for that long. He slumped on the bed and held the edges too hard that his knuckles turned white. “What do we do now? Do you think we can escape this place?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said looking at my hands as I sat next to him. “I think they want to use you for something,” I told him. A look of horror crossed his face. “For who you are, I meant. A famous athlete that the government will care about if, say, he was kidnapped by terrorists,” I explained. “They could also be after your money, who knows. Either way, I think we’ve got a hostage situation at hand.”

“You mean they will try to ask for something in return? Like threatening the government to get something in exchange for me? For my life?” Crosby inquired. As I nodded, he ran his hands through his matted hair, breathing uneasily.

“What if the government doesn’t give them what they want? What are they gonna do to me?” he asked looking at me, and for the first time, I saw true fear in his eyes.

“How will I know?” I answered shaking my head. “We don’t even know who they are yet.”

“They’re ISIS. Who else could they be?” Crosby said.

“ISIS is not the only group here. They’re the most powerful, yes. Also, the scariest. But they’re not the only group. From the quick glimpse they allowed us, I don’t think they are ISIS,” I spoke as my hazy brain replayed our only encounter with the kidnappers.

A sound of a lock startled us as we both bolted toward the door. In the hall, a middle-aged dark-haired man entered through the main door. As he slung out a worn bag on the floor, wakening all the dust, a little girl appeared at his side. She must have been 12 or maybe 15, it was hard to tell with her veil and baggy outfit. She balanced two seemingly heavy gallons in her small hands as she approached our door. The man followed behind, carrying the items that he took out of the bag.

I wanted to ask who they were, where we were, but I silently watched. Crosby did the same, though his eyes were hard and fixated on the man. The little girl looked up at us with big green eyes as she settled the gallons on the floor. She made a gesture for us to move away from the door, but we did not budge. She turned around and walked out the main door after the man had given her what I assumed was some sort of instructions in their local language.

“You, move away from the door. Backs on the wall. I will open. I have a gun, don’t make me use it,” he said in a broken English accent. Crosby did not register what the man had just asked and remained planted in his spot. I pulled him away from the door with me. He reluctantly put his back to the wall next to me. The man unlocked the door and placed two boxes on the floor. Then, he brought in the gallons of what I assumed, or at least hoped, would be drinking water.

I watched the way the stranger carried himself, and the way he moved around, it was as if on muscle memory. He was like the mailman; daily jumping off his truck, tucking envelopes in the mailbox, then making his escape before the neighbor’s dog barked.

“Things you need,” he said what sounded like a rehearsed line, pointing to the large boxes. “Don’t do stupid things,” he warned.

With that, our mailman left, locking the steel door behind him and with it the small barred window. Crosby ran to the door immediately and tried to open it along with the window but failed. He started banging at the door.

Here we go again.

“Who the fuck are you? Come back!” he yelled.

Instead of engaging in Crosby’s futile efforts, I opened one of the gallons and drank without a second thought. Poisoned water was not a terrorist’s favorite weapon. I carefully closed the gallon, making sure we don’t lose any drop. I was not sure when will be the next time we get to drink.

I started opening the large boxes, hoping to find food. The first box had some sandwiches, toilet paper, soaps, paper plates, and cups. The second one had some clothes–men clothes–one towel and one blanket. Room service for one guest, it appeared.

Couldn’t they have put these in the room before we arrived? Did we really need that grand entrance by the mailman and his assistant? You are not at the Ritz, Mia, I reminded myself. And, this was not room service. Also, don’t expect a mint on that questionable pillow. I shook my head and chuckled at where my tired mind was taking me. I needed to eat.

When I saw the last items at the bottom of the box, I laughed, a true belly laugh this time. There, at the bottom of our gift basket, laid two toothbrushes and toothpaste. How thoughtful.

“Apparently, our kidnappers appreciate dental hygiene,” I said to Crosby who sat on the ground with his back hunched and his head in his hands.

“Hey, that’s not good for your wound,” I said motioning at his posture. He lifted his head up and if looks could kill, I would have dropped dead in that instant.

“What is wrong with you?” he asked, startling me with his tone. “How can you be laughing?”

“I’m trying to survive,” I shrugged. Though his reaction was the normal one, not mine, that was for sure. Crosby huffed at my answer. Ignoring him, I filled him a cup of water and took out two sandwiches. With a don’t-poke-the-bear mindset, I placed the food and water near him and remained quiet as I ate my pita sandwich.

Crosby stubbornly did not touch the food or the water. He stood up with some difficulties but managed to reach the toilet. He pulled a small drape that I haven’t noticed earlier. I have never been more relieved to hear a toilet flush before. It was a modern toilet. Well, modern was maybe an overstatement.

As Crosby emerged back, I said, “You should eat, or at least drink.” When he shook his head at me, I tried again. “You do realize that a hunger strike is the stupidest thing you could do right now. You're hurt already. Besides, it’s not like you’re doing them any favour if you eat or drink.”

“How are you not freaking out right now?” he asked, dismissing my speech. How was I not freaking out? I didn’t know the answer to that. It was plausible that my mind hasn’t grasped everything that was happening yet and decided to focus on my empty stomach and dry throat instead. That was a reasonable explanation.

I sat in silence and pondered Crosby’s question for maybe an hour, I had no way of telling. How can I be so chill? My friends are dead. They are gone, and I may be next. And there I was eating a hummus sandwich and wondering about how I will be sharing a toilet with Sidney Crosby.

As I said, contrary to popular belief, protocols are the first thing that comes to your mind as a military captive, not your loved ones, but self-preservation, your survival instincts, and all those months of training you go through before being sent to a war zone. Or so I have been telling myself.

This was for real. This was not a drill. The terrorists on the other side of these walls were real. I couldn’t believe that Crosby, a civilian, made me realize the state of denial that I was in. While I still believed that freaking out would not help, I needed to be thinking about how to get myself out of this situation, like that idiot was doing.

Overwhelmed by my sudden emotions, my stomach betrayed me and I found myself visiting that semi-private toilet for the first of many times.

Notes

I'm feeling inspired :D