Thirst

A tiny ray of light hits my eye, pulling me from a terrible sleep. I turn my head towards the window and open my eyes. Another day. An even day. I look back to the sandstone brick next to my bed and dig my thumbnail into it. Today should be an X day. My fingertips graze over the other marks, twenty-four of them neatly marching along the same brick. Twelve of them with an ‘X’ hovering above. Every other day without fail. X days are the worst and best days all at once.

I stretch my arms as far as I can, one side only reaching halfway, and I grab the waste bucket. I let my morning business go, holding my breath against the putrid stench wafting up at me. As soon as I am finished, I push it away as far as I can but still within reach. I look to the window again, letting the sun warm my face for as long as I am in the harsh square that travels across the room. I cannot reach the window. It’s too high up and on the other side of the room, along with the table and chair. I wonder if I am in a basement.

I sit on my bed, taking in the space for the millionth time. ‘Bed’ is a generous word for this cot mattress on the concrete. It has 18 stains on it. Well, that I can see. I haven’t flipped it over. I assume there are even more on that side. Maybe the stains run all the way through. On day one, the thought bothered me. Now, I don’t care what color the mattress is. Or if it’s stained.

I begin my daily ritual. I stand. I sit. I do sit-ups and push-ups, and scissor kicks. I can’t do much with the chain on my wrist, but I can stand and sit easily. I need to keep my strength up. I can’t do as much as I usually do today because I’m thirsty. I don’t want to push it. I look across the room at the source of my dilemma and curse those men once again.

The last X day was scarier than the previous ones. Two men had entered instead of just the usual one. Two men held two sandwiches and two bottles of water. The food was typical. The man with the sandwiches threw them at me, bouncing them around on the mattress in front of me. Then swiftly kicked me in the ribs. I cried out, panicked, and crawled as far as I could away from him. This was not typical. This is it, I told myself. This is the rape or the murder. Or both. The other man set a bottle on the table and tried to reign the other in. The kicker rampaged around the room, speaking Portuguese, I think, and making threatening gestures. The other tossed the last bottle down on the floor and tried to control the wild man. They scuffled about, yelling. The Kicker grabbed my face with both hands and spat directly into it. I shut my eyes, held my breath, letting my body go stiff. Rigid. Unmoving. Maybe my body thought I was already dead. The calm man smacked the kicker and pulled him from the cell, slamming the door closed. I laid there in the sandwich mess, smoothing my hair down my face, shushing myself. I used my dirty T-shirt to wipe the spit from my cheeks. Calming. You are fine. You are fine. I breathed back into my kicked lung. One Breath. Small. Two Breaths. I rebuilt my sandwiches, taking care to get every scrap of food. I reached the water on the floor with my foot, but I couldn’t reach the table to access that one.

At the time, I was thankful that was it. Food, kicking, spitting. No rape, no torture. When I make it home, everyone will say how lucky I am. Fortunately, I wasn’t damaged. Ruined. What a joke. I was already destroyed in other ways. When I get home. I breathe in some hope. I will get there. I think of Grammy and shudder. She must be so worried. I sit up, shaking off my thoughts of home that won’t help me here.

It’s just sitting there. The bottle of water is on top of the table. Just there. Full to the top. Untouched. It’s been there, untouched, for two days now. I stretch out on the floor as far as I can, my wrist pinching in the tight handcuff. I kick my feet out once more. Again I try to hit the leg of the table. Again it’s too far. It’s just out of reach, maybe a foot too far away. I blow out a frustrated breath and begin to cough, choking on the dust in my throat. I did too much movement this morning. It’s an X day today, however. So maybe I will get three bottles. Maybe they will give me the bottle on the table that is just out of reach. I only have to wait, and the bottle will be carried to me. It will come today.

I begin my daily counting, my entertainment. One bottle of water. One chair. One table. One cot mattress. Eighteen stains on the mattress. Four walls. One Tiny window. Thirty-four cracks in the ceiling. Forty-eight cracks in the walls. On crack 23 today, a cockroach pops out as I count it. Oh, hello, little guy. I take a few crumbs from my sandwich reconstruction project and line them up halfway between the crack and me. I can eat him. I wait. Watching.

I wake up several hours later, facing the gap with no cockroach, the crumbs gone. An awful pain is shooting up my back, through my neck. A low headache is pulsing. I sit up, looking at the moon. Wait. No. No. No. I look around me, no food, no water brought in. The bottle is still on the table. This can’t be! I check my wall of cuts, my crude calendar; it was an X day. No food came. Two suns passed by, no food or water. I try to calm down. Maybe tomorrow. Of course, tomorrow. Calm, soothe. Rest. Tomorrow.

I wake to the sun caressing my face again. I draw my line in the sandstone. Odd day. Maybe it will become the new X day. It has to be. I stretch, but my mouth feels dry and dusty, and I’m exhausted. I forgo my morning strength movements. I need to conserve now. My tongue feels heavy, my head pounding. I stretch above my head, but my joints are stiff, sticking and locking up. I need to get that water off the table. I stare at it. One lone source of life. One bottle of water, warm. It would be dusty as soon as it was cracked open; a tiny dribble would slide over my fingers as I opened it in haste. I would lick the drop off my hand if it didn’t absorb instantly into my dry, leathery flesh.

I kick my feet out again to hit the table, attempt 963. The handcuff slices deeper into my wrist; the bruise is at least three inches wide now. The blood has slowed but will start again as I thrash about more. I lick the blood off my wrist. I stand. The room tilts for a minute, wobbling and turning around me. I sit. I need to go slow now. I look at the empty bottle I still have and pull it back in my hand to throw it at the bottle on the table. But just before I toss it, I realize it will be too light to knock the other down. So I pull it under me and pee into it. I aim and toss the weighted bottle at the one on the table. It soars right past it, an inch too far to the left. It rolls to the back of the table, lodging itself against the wall. I cry out but immediately choke on my dried-out throat. My tongue feels dry and oversized. I swallow, try to swallow, dusty air into my throat to calm. Soothe. Breathe. I lay still again. I can’t even drink the pee in the bottle now that I threw it across the room.

The afternoon sun is setting now, and no one came today. I decide to piss into my hand to drink. That’s what the survival tricks say to do. Drink the waste a body kicks out. I spill half of it, trying to get it up to my mouth. I train my eyes at the water bottle on the table to help pretend, hold my breath, and tilt my piss hands up to my lips. The warm salty fluid swishes my mouth, filling it with bitter, pungent warmth. I choke it down but immediately puke it back up. I squat, dry heaving a few times, covered in piss, as I stare at the table. That fucking bottle of water I could use to swish out my mouth. Soothe my throat. Wet my tongue. I push the mattress over the puke to cover it. The Mattress now has 20 stains. I curl up into the urine wet spot and sleep.

My dreams are strange lights filled with slamming music. My Grammy is in her wheelchair, spinning on a dance floor filled with bodies. This feels unsafe. I jolt awake. I am on my side, draped over my wrist attached to the hook in the wall. That was it, the last memory. I have spent the entire time in this room trying to remember how I got here. I was at a club with Bethany. We didn’t have cocktails this time; we didn’t have the cash for it. The music pulsed around us; we danced, giggling, holding hands in tiny dresses, and grinding on each other. When a guy stepped behind Bethany to dance, I took a break and grabbed a glass of water at the bar. That is where the memory ends. I wonder if I finished it. What I would give now for a glass of water. What I would give for the water on the table that I cannot see in the dim moonlight. But I know it’s there, silently waiting for me to take it. It’s taunting me. Three moons now since my last water. It’s ok; it’s ok. One moon at a time.

My tongue feels thick now, heavy. My wrist clanks in the handcuff, and I realize it's not as tight as it once was. I pull and pull on my hand, but the skin across my knuckles tears easily with each yank. The bones are still unyielding. The blood pools across my hand, sluggish and slow. I lick it off. My tongue absorbs the tangy metal taste, relaxing a bit into the comfort of wet ooze. I suck my knuckles until the bleeding stops. I think back to day one, so sure of the sandwich and bottle I would get the next day. The energy I wasted that day. I should have worked harder with a clear head, free of headaches and exhaustion. I hate myself for not trying to get that bottle then. The thoughts are harder now to chase; the situation is difficult to grab hold of.

As I see the first hints of the fourth sun, I slide my thumb into the sandstone. The weight of my finger pressed into the brick lifts my nail from its nail bed, pulling at the soft wrinkled flesh under it. I pull my thumb away quickly, stuffing it into my mouth even though no wetness lingers on my tongue to comfort the torn flesh. I look at the light line marked in the sandstone. I’m getting weaker. Today is sandwich day. It must be. At this point, I would take the rape in exchange for the bottle. Maybe that bottle is supposed to be torture. To die as I stare at the source of life. It’s working.

I begin to count the room again. One bottle of water. One spinning chair. One table. Twenty stains on the mattress, three of them moving slowly across it. I reach out and run my fingers over them, gently following their path. Four walls, one is breathing in and out slowly, matching my breath gasp for gasp. I try holding my next inhale, and the wall holds with me. I exhale, the wall breathes out. Sigh. Thank you, wall, for being here with me. One tiny window with a clown looking in. I blink. The clown smiles. I blink twice. The clown waves at me. I frantically try to stand, my knees locking up; I fall backward hard, landing flat on my back, staring at the ceiling. I forgot what I was doing a minute ago. Why was I frantic?

The ceiling cracks whisper and sway like tiny tree branches, and I count them as they dance in the breath created by the wall. I exhale heavily; all 34 cracks scatter with it. I sit up and begin to count the cracks of the walls. I stop on crack two as it opens, yawning into a gaping hole. Snakes slide along the floor out of the open pit, disappearing as I kick at them. They don’t stop coming out of the crack, and finally, I collapse in pain and headache. The little fight I had left slid out of my body. I close my eyes to the snakes, letting them take me over, ready for this hurt to end. But they never reach me. They never touch me. Their mouths spread open in my mind, but they don’t bite or strike. I open my eyes to see the pit closed; the snakes swallowed up.

I must have dozed off. My mom stands before me as I lay on the cot; she asks me if I have everything I need for school. I tell her to hand me the bottle, and she turns and walks into the wall. She’s gone. I gasp and choke, desperately looking for her to resurface, but I am alone. I close my eyes and kick out again, trying to hit the table, sweep the leg. Attempt 1,065. The room gets hot, and my skin should be sweaty. I lick and lick, but it's salty and dry, my tongue sliding along my arm like two pieces of sandalwood rubbing together. A cockroach scurries across my ankle. I rush to grab it, but the room tilts again, blinks black, then flashes brilliant white. When it settles back, the cockroach is long gone.

As the moon fills the room, I realize no sandwich will come today. No water to hastily pour into me. It’s Grammy that floats to me then, her wheelchair spinning around. Her mouth opens wide like a phonograph, music and strobe lights pour out, Outkast fills the room. I try to sing with her, but my words are a garbled mess. I cough, closing my eyes to Grammy. My eyes are hard to open and close now. It feels as if a desert’s worth of sand is sitting in my eyelids.

I wake with the first early light again. Five suns. Five suns since my last water and sandwich. Five suns since I thought I would be lucky. Twenty stains on the mattress. Four walls. One Tiny window. Thirty-four cracks in the ceiling. Forty-eight cracks in the walls. 2 Cockroaches so far. Zero captured. One table. One Chair. One bottle of water, hot. I mark my sun in the sandstone brick; the effort rips my nail off completely.

I stand. The room blinks out, blinks back in. I fall forward, caught by my wrist restraint, and I crumple. The Mattress shifts under my movement. I sit up. Wait. I push again, the mattress shifts. I press my back into the wall and kick my feet out. The room wobbles and dips; blinks in and out. I pass out, the room swirling in a sea of color as it comes back into focus, the items swirling into their places. My ears ring high and loud. Grammy floats above the table, screaming as loud as I wish I could. I press my feet into the cot, shoving it hard. It taps the side of the table. The water bottle tips but straightens and stands as is. My knees lock up. I use my free hand to pull them back up. I straighten the mattress again, pushing hard, the water tips, but stays. Again. The room flashes white with my effort. And again. My ears ring, my legs can’t bend anymore. The room smells of rotten puke. My tongue doesn’t feel as if it can fit in my mouth. One more push. The bottle tips.

The water pours freely off the table onto the concrete. I try to shriek, but it comes out in a harsh little huff, I scramble to catch it, but the chain snaps me back, cracking my wrist.

The water is empty. It poured out on the floor, seeping in. A foot out of reach. My wrist is broken. A sob shudders through my chest, dusty and achy. The room shakes with me. My tears dried up days ago. The window clown laughs and claps.