Week Fourteen (Jan. 27 - Jan. 31) - Topic: Captive
Winner: Daniel
Story (No Name)
By Daniel
He sat in the damp room counting the cracks on the wall, just as he had done for the past three years. He could see a single ray of sunlight where one of the cracks was thicker than the others. It was all the sunlight he ever saw. He looked at the cracks a lot. It was really all he had to do, he might have gone insane if he hadn’t kept his mind on such things. Of course being in captivity for so long, he was no stranger to insanity. When he first arrived he had a fellow prisoner in his cell. The old bat was crazier than any man he had met, but when the man had told him that he had been in there for thirty years, he quite understood why. The old man had died some weeks later leaving him in complete isolation. That’s when he had realized how bad it really was being alone. He had taken to talking to himself and drawing on the walls. He had come up with so many escape plans he could not count, but again ‘they’ never let him out of that cell. “All people at some point in there life are crazy,” he would think to himself, “its just that the insane have given into that voice, but I won’t”. Yes that voice, I’m sure that you have heard it before. The voice that exists in all of us, the voice that tells us how inadequate we are, how pathetic we are; the darkness that lives in all of our hearts. When your sitting alone that voice can become overpowering. Yes Leo was no stranger to the insane. But he had strangely never himself become insane.
No he clutched to his conscious self with all his might. Maybe it had something to do with who he was or maybe he drew on the hope that he had, that they would find him. His companions, his friends. They had always stood beside him and fought for what was right. Leo had been a politician, but not in the sense that you are familiar with. A politician who actually believed that change could exist and didn’t lie his way into offices. He had really been the only honest politician in his country at the time. His country had originally been under an oppressive dictator. When a coup had succeeded in killing the villain, people lauded them for their efforts. A new government was set up by the rebels. It had started as all ideas do, good on paper but bad for reality. When massive massacres in the streets and kidnappings became a daily worry for the average man, Leo knew he had to do something. He had been only a boy when the dictator ruled, but now was his chance to do something. He had started smart and small and worked from there. He rapidly gained acclaim by all the left over free speaking networks, but condemned by the Government approved ones, he was becoming the new face of the underdog.
Leo had been speaking at a rally when a carefully orchestrated assassination attack, by chance, failed. He had fled to the underground of rebels and quickly became their leader. Leo raised his case through any way he could. He would put up illegal posters all over the country, speak to the desperate people of the nation through the radio. Always planning the eventual take over of the country. Many times he would ask himself if he was doing anything different than the original rebels. Would he end up creating a government just as bad as the one he was fighting? His answer was no, the original rebellion had been ruthless. They had bombed innocent people ,saying they were traitor to the rebellion. They had murdered the dictator and all of his officials, even when they had been begging for mercy. His rebellion was different, it was with words that he would conquer and peoples trust that would be his weapon. His plan was for the government to wake up one day to discover that it no longer had any people to control. Leo had come so close to this goal, people were in the streets speaking out about the change. Leo had decided that if the coup was going to be peaceful then they would need help from other countries. Against his friends advice he decided to take his case overseas. The night he was supposed to be waiting for the ship he had completely disappeared off the face of the earth. Some speculated that he had been assassinated, others believed he had made it overseas and the government had hushed it up. But in reality he had been taken, beaten within an inch of his life, then tossed into a eight by ten foot cell
Now he was here staring at a gray colored wall, fighting for his sanity. He had many times prayed for death and if not death then maybe another chance to change the world and finish what he started. “All of these things I have done, have to have been for something”, he always thinks desperately. When he had been taken, they had tortured him for where the underground was. They had continued to torture him for all three years. It was rally the only time they let him out. In all his time there he had not spoken a word to them, until now. The night we find him in his cell, counting wall cracks, is his most desperate hour. He is hours away from breaking, if he breaks then all he did will have been for nothing. So you see how sanity factors into it all?
Leo sat in his cell waiting for the door to open. Tonight is the night they will torture him, but tonight will be different. Tonight he will not endure all that pain. As the door creaks open, he closes his eyes waiting for the beating that they normally give him. For what reason? He doesn’t really know. All he knew that tonight it all was over. He had decided to end it. As the men come in to beat him he lays down and takes the beating, he used to fight but years have taught him otherwise. The men drag him to his knees and start pushing him toward the door. Leo completely collapses going limp. The men look down at him in disgust and kick him. Then one of them bends down to grab Leo’s hair. In one swift motion Leo grabs something that was hidden under his cot and smashes the guys face in. The men hadn’t notice a single rock missing from the wall, they were to busy beating Leo. Before the other man can act Leo throws the stone into his stomach and leaps at him. Wrestling the gun away, he pounds the man’s head against the cold stone floor. As Leo gets up, holding the gun steadily in his hands, he hears a shout from the end of the corridor. Without turning he ducks around a corner, firing two shots. Leo hears the man fall yelling in pain. He sees a door at the end of the hall. Running towards the door, he burst through it, catching the would be torturer by surprise. He doesn’t even wait for words and puts a hole between his eyes. As he exit’s the room he sees the rest of his way is clear, men lying cold on the floor. At the door that says exit he pauses a moment, then walks out the door into the moonlight. The stars are shining brightly. There is the car waiting for him. His men sitting in the front seat. He gets in the back of the car.
“Apparently you got the message?” says one turning.
“Yes”, he replies smiling.
“Pushing a note through the one crack, that was brilliant”.
“So are you ready to finish it?”
“Yes”, says Leo with a fire in his eyes
Read Daniel's other writing here: (link could not be acquired)
Read other stories from this contest here: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/9935...
