Captivity

Casablanca, North Africa

July, 1943

The room was small, cold and dark, save for a slithering flaw in the ceiling’s back-right corner - which allowed fleeting shards of moonlight to dance across the sandy floor. His sense of time was a mystery, and he had absolutely no idea where he was. His shaved head throbbed from dehydration, his bruised stomach writhed from lack of food, and his blackened bones pulsed from the daily beatings.

He slept along the back wall on a bloodstained mattress that seeped white stuffing from every surface. A two-foot wide, rusty tin bucket in the opposite corner of the cell acted as his bathroom, and a small metallic tray, swarmed by red and black ants rested at the base of the room’s only door.

A muffled commotion from the hallway jostled his heavy eyelids open. Ghoulish murmurs echoed off the walls, and were sliced through by gurgled cackling.

He quickly wiped away the dried grime and sand from his eyes with the heels of his hands, and sat up as straight as his spine would allow on top of the dirty mattress.

A piercing pop of shifting gears consumed the entire cell, then a massive flood of warm sunlight ignited the black dreariness of solitary confinement.

He was immediately blinded from the sudden change, and moaned in agony as his pupils burned, making his already searing headache intensify.

Multiple shadow figures entered, and the muffled murmuring transformed into a multi-lingual argument.

He could identify German, Arabic and Spanish. But one shadow, which remained in the hallway, seemed to speak a different language. Something that sounded older than the others, almost archaic. It was a tongue he had not heard before.

Four strong hands latched onto each of his arms, and he was roughly hauled out of his cell by two Arabic speaking men.

As he was dragged down the long, narrow corridor, he craned his neck and adjusted eyes upwards to admire the blue hues of the sky. This didn’t help him identify his exact location, but the gulls, terns and distinct aroma of salt water told him that he was near a coastline.

He grinned at this small win.

His captors would routinely interrogate him within his cell, then beat him bloody once they were finished with their questions. Today they made the mistake of letting him out.

Mulling over the newly discovered details of his situation, his military training kicked in and he immediately began paying close attention to his surroundings. Studying every inch of the compound for weakness and possible escape points. But there was another complication. Before he could make any daring attempt to escape, he needed to first find his wife.

They were captured together at gunpoint by a mixed group of German and Moroccan soldiers after leaving a post office in Bourgogne, but their captors decided to separate them once they arrived at the prison camp.

He hadn’t seen her since.

He fought as hard as he could to get to her, but the daily interrogations, beatings and hours spent confined in a solitary cell took their toll and he melted into the haze of his capture. He lost track of time, as well as the details of his mission in Casablanca, but he could not forget his wife, nor his family.

While his toes continued to drag in the sand behind him, carving out lines the other guards distorted with boot tracks, he counted the number of other cell doors he passed along the way. Eye-balling each door as best as he could, he was semi-confidently able to agree that they were all around three feet wide.

Calculating the width, and number of doors, he was able to estimate how far his cell was from the officer’s quarters he was now approaching. A rough estimate.

The guard gripping his left arm used a fist to bang against the bunker door three times. As they all waited for it to open in response, his attention was caught by a strange rustling sound coming from within the last prison cell in the hallway. Craning his neck to the left, he looked closer and saw the door was slightly ajar.

A moment passed, before the door fully opened. A rough looking man with blonde hair, in a green military uniform, stepped out of the cell with both of his hands clasped the buttons on his pants. The man’s face was glowing with red hues, and covered in sweat. The room behind him was a black pit, and nothing, or no one could be seen.

A faint moan of pain, and shame suddenly seeped its way into the hallway, making the other guards laugh, cackling their approvals to one another.

He stared at the man who was fixing his pants in disgust, then had his heart removed when the man winked, licked his lips and grabbed his groin at him.

He instantly feared the worst and tried to fight off the guards who were pinning him down.

An accurate whack to the back of the skull with the butt of a rifle prevented him from making any successful attack. The tainted image, and unconditional love for his wife rattled around his brain in a frenzy as darkness once again consumed him.