“Throw out your stuff,” someone shouts.
I realise my belongings are in the bin bag.
“Throw it,” shouts the voice.
I swing back the bag and throw it out into the courtyard. I see a building that looks like the loading bay of a warehouse. A man appears in the doorway carrying a hose. He’s different to the army guy in Brighton; he looks like a security guard. But then I see nothing as the water throws me back into the van and on to the floor. The water rolls me around until I hit the back wall. I try to stop the force with my feet and then my hands, but it’s impossible. I turn in to face the van, so my back is to the water, but then the guard starts aiming it at my anus, so I turn around but that’s worse and I hear him laughing. The water is freezing. I curl up into a ball to protect myself as best I can. I learn my first lesson: that there’s nothing to do but wait for this to be over.
“Okay, okay,” the guard says, as the water is turned off. Something is thrown at me and I jump, but it’s nothing – a rag, or a piece of material. The guard laughs again.
“Put that on,” he says.
I uncurl myself and look at what he’s thrown me. I can’t figure out what it is – sacking of some sort. I shake it out, but there’s nothing to shake out. I was expecting some trousers but it’s not clothing.
“On your head, you fool,” the guard says, not so amused now.
I look at him and see a fat cunt of a security guard. It doesn’t make sense – why would they hand me over from fully kitted-out troops to a pair of rent-a-cops? It changes my perception of what this is – amateur hour, all of a sudden.
“Put on the hood,” he says, “or you get the water cannon again.” He’s just itching for an excuse.
I peel apart the opening in the sack and put it over my head. It smells and blocks out the light.
“Now lie down,” he says.
I feel my way to the floor.
“With your head to the door.”
I turn to the sound of his voice and lie back down.
“Put your hands together behind your back.”
I do so and it forces my face against the sacking, pressing into the metal floor of the van. I gag on the smell and when I breathe in, the material goes into my mouth and I think I may be sick again. This is what the smell is: other people’s stale vomit.
“Now don’t move,” the guard says, and I hear two of them climb into the back of the van. Two hands grab my arms and they handcuff me again. My shoulder muscles hurt from before and I dread the idea of trying to stand. My ankles are gripped and it takes me by surprise.
“Don’t struggle,” a different voice says. “If you struggle, you’ll only make it worse.”
I hear a heavy metal object dropped on to the floor and I panic because I don’t know what they’re about to do. I’m naked in the back of a van, face down with two fat cunts above and behind me. I shake my head, because this is the only thing I can move. Even this isn’t easy – I have to raise my chin off the floor of the van to thrash my head about, and all that happens is the sacking gets caught in my tongue. I can’t speak, so I make noises at the back of my throat. I know I’m about to be given a lesson, but I don’t know what and I don’t know what for.
“Jesus,” the first guy says, “what the fuck is his problem. Lie still,” he says to me.
He kneels in between my shoulder blades and this means I can no longer move my head. His mate still has my ankles pinned to the ground.
“Lie still,” he says again.
I do so and he takes away his knee.
“We need to put some leg irons on you, that’s all. If you fight it, you’ll hurt yourself. That’s all we were saying – Jesus!”
I do cry now because this is going to continue and the noises I was making turn into a plea. I spit out the sacking as best I can but I can’t get it away from my tongue.
“Jesus,” fat cunt number one says again, and I can hear the disgust in his voice, “this is hardly worth it.”
They put on the leg irons and I feel completely in their power. They grab me under the arms and drag me across the floor of the van into the open air. I don’t have a chance to protect myself, and I doubt if I could do anything to help myself anyway. I catch my hip against the door mechanism, but it could have been a lot worse. They stand me up in the open air and hold me there. My breathing isn’t any easier, but now I’m outside I can at least make out the ground at my feet.
“Are you able to walk?” asks number one.
I don’t answer, but I move my feet.
“This way,” he says and they guide me away from the van. There are stones again, cutting into my feet, but then we move along a metal ramp, up to the loading bay that I saw briefly when throwing out the bin bag.
One of them lets go of my arm – it’s fat cunt number one I think, because he was on my right. There’s nothing for a minute or two and then a door opens. I hear some talk, but can’t make out anything. I don’t like the lull, because it gives me time to think.
“What’s happening?” I ask the guy holding my left arm.
He doesn’t answer. I try to turn towards him, but he holds me firmly in place.
“I haven’t done anything,” I say. The words sound muffled, even to me.
“You’ll be fine now,” he says. He speaks quietly, while the other conversation carries on in the background.
“I don’t know what’s happening.”
“Sshh, you’ll be all right.”
I cry again and he makes another noise to quieten me down.
“Okay,” number one says. “We’re done here.” I hear him clearly. Number two lets go of my arms and bends down to unlock the legs irons. I stick my chin into my chest and I see the top of his head. Number one unlocks my hands and they free me at the same time. I feel lighter without the metal. I think I’ve already forgotten about being naked – it’s no longer such a terrible thing. I stand there nodding in my hood; I don’t dare to reach up to take it off. It’s wet inside from the soaking I’d received and this makes it cling to my head. I have no thoughts of running; I’m just waiting to be told what to do next.
“This way,” a new voice says and a hand grabs my left arm. I’m led inside, away from the light. I hear the van start up behind me, but then a door closes and I hear nothing more. It’s concrete under my feet – smooth concrete – but still I tread warily.
“This way,” the voice says again.
They’ve taken delivery of me. I’m a package, and I’ve arrived.
I put one foot in front of the other and move into a void. Every step I take I expect to trip or fall or hurt myself in some way. The voice lets go of my arm, so I take a further step and then stop. I hear his shoes walk away and then a door is closed and locked. It’s dark in the room, with no light visible by my feet.
I wait, not knowing if I’m in the presence of another person – they might be silently watching me. It’s still concrete beneath my feet, warm and smooth – a treated floor, I think. Adjusting my feet does nothing to stop the sensation of falling, as if I’m tipping over and losing my balance. I put out my hands to break my fall and there’s nothing but air to hold on to. My head is spinning like a bedroom when you’ve had too much to drink. I’m in a permanent state of falling over an edge that doesn’t exist. I want to wake up, turn on the light, go and be sick – anything to stop the falling. I’m falling, I’m falling, but I don’t fall.
Nothing happens. There’s no sound – nothing. I wait. My hands are free; I could at least take off the hood, but I don’t dare until I’m told.
“Hello?”
Nothing. I don’t feel alone – I can’t hear anyone, or see anyone or smell anything but the vomit in my hood, and yet I sense another presence in the room. My body is still wet. I cross my arms and feel my shoulders – where my arms were wrenched from my body – and touch the grazed skin where I was thrown against the broken-in door. The backs of my hands brush against the sacking of the hood. I pull on the material to take
it away from my mouth and feel a wave of fresher air come into the hood. The rush of oxygen makes me dizzy all over again.
“Can I take this off?” I ask.
Nothing.
I reach up, pull off the hood and let it fall to the floor. Whatever happens, it’s worth it for the air. It’s so good – like the air at the seaside – but also black and silent. I must be in an enclosed room. The darkness is complete – and when I say complete, I mean absolute, like the darkness of an underground cave. I run my hands over my face and head, so I know this is real. My upper arms and the backs of my legs are in pain and I reach down to where the leg irons have taken the skin off my ankles. I crouch down and then kneel on the smooth concrete floor. My body dries quickly in the warm, fresh air. How can they block out the light so completely?
“Please,” I say, but I don’t know what I would ask for if somebody answered. Let me go? Let me see? Tell me where I am? Tell me why I’m here?
I rest my forehead on the ground. If I believed in a god, I would pray to that god now. I grope across the floor in the dark, back towards the door, stopping after each shuffle to feel out the space in front of me.
I shout out again, if only in an attempt to catch an echo of sound with which to picture the size of the room. But there’s nothing but an empty silence.
I continue my crawl and touch a wall. My shoulders hurt as I lean against it – the same concrete material, flat and smooth to the touch – and push myself up into a crouching position. Using the wall as a guide, I stand up straight and reach as high as I can. I step in closer and run the palms of my hands flat along the wall in a slow, sweeping motion.
Now I have a wall, I’ve lost the sensation of continuous falling and given up completely on the idea that someone else may be with me in the room. I inch my way left along the wall, until I hit a corner – a square corner – and I stand for a while with my two hands on the two walls and my feet wide apart. I set off again to my left, but I kick a metal bucket with my foot. The metal makes a scraping noise on the floor, and I have a sound to relate to – something other than myself. I nudge the bucket with my foot; it feels weighty, as if it has something in it. I feel around the rim with my fingers. It’s a metal waste bin; it doesn’t have a handle like a bucket. The sound when I nudge it is duller than an empty bucket might be; there’s definitely something in it. Whatever it is, it lifts slightly and flops back down when I shake the bucket. I lean over and smell – nothing.
I tip the bucket over and pour the contents on to the ground. It makes a different sound and I listen out again for some reaction, but nothing happens. Nothing is going to happen in this room unless I make it happen.
I reach out and touch some material. After a moment’s hesitation, I drag it towards me and lift it in both hands. It’s material all right; quite heavy, like strong cotton – a pair of jeans, perhaps? I lift it up to my face and smell – definitely an article of clothing of some sort. Overalls maybe? I’m in prison, and these are my overalls? What kind of a place is this?
“Hey!” I shout. “Hey!”
I throw down the overalls and back myself into the corner. My heel hits the bucket. I bend down to pick it up and bang it hard against the wall.
“Hey!” I shout again.
The bucket makes some noise but not enough for my liking. I want a dustbin lid to bang on the ground, loud enough to wake the world. I want everyone who cares to know where I am.
“Hey, out there!” I shout, but my shout disappears into a vacuum; it goes nowhere.
I stand up with my back to the corner and throw the bucket into the air. It comes back down without having hit anything and clatters on the ground. Is there no ceiling to this room, this cell? I find the bucket and throw it up harder. This time it at hits a ceiling, or something – I can’t be certain, but it sounds different to the concrete. I forget to protect myself against the bucket coming back down and it catches me on the side of the head. I slump into my corner, shocked more than hurt, and kick out at the bucket in anger.
What was I thinking? There’s nobody I know would care where I am.
After a few minutes – or what I think is a few minutes; I’ve already lost the ability to judge the passing of time – I push myself back up to a standing position against the wall. The overalls, if they are overalls, are beneath my feet. The bucket is somewhere out on the floor. I have another shaking fit; I’m not particularly cold but I can’t stop my body from shaking. I reach down for the overalls and throw them out in front of me. Using the palms of my hands, I smooth out the folds in the material until I have it flat on the ground. I pat it all over with my hands, trying to figure out some shape in the dark, following what I think might be a leg or an arm. It reaches an end on one side and then doubles back on itself. That makes two legs. I pull them together and kneel along their lengths. I was right – this is a pair of overalls. I feel for the opening and pull it apart with my hands. There’s the sound of the rip of Velcro and I’m in. I lean back into my corner and step into the overalls. Once I have my legs inside, I stand up straight and reach in with my arms. I straighten the collar around my neck and fasten up the Velcro strip. The overalls are a good fit, as though they already knew my size.
I slide down into a crouching position in my corner and give myself a few minutes’ break.
I have to find out the extent of my room. I stand up and turn to face the wall on my right. Taking the same sideways steps, I use the sweeping motion of my arms to guide me along. I reach another square corner after four steps and continue along my third wall. My technique for sidestepping and sweeping the wall improves, partly because I’m now convinced there’s nothing else here to find. Five steps and another square corner. One more corner, and I’m on my way home.
Home – you’re a long way from home, Brendan Loughlin.
My hand catches on something on the next wall – a joint, or a crack. I pull my hand away and stand perfectly still, waiting.
Nothing.
I reach out with my left hand again and find the line in the wall. It’s a vertical joint of some sort – a fault line maybe? I’m excited that this may be a clue to the room. I follow the line down to the floor and then along where the floor meets the wall. This is the door – it must be – although it’s made from the same concrete material as the wall. I go back to my vertical line and reach up. The line cuts across to my left at about the height of seven feet. Yes, this is a doorway. I follow the crack along the wall and then it cuts back down to the ground.
Only it’s not a crack, is it? There is no crack or gap – there’s just a joint in the wall that doesn’t allow in any light. I sweep my arms across what I believe to be the door, but there’s nothing. I can feel the outline of the doorway, but no hinges or locking mechanism – nothing to suggest how this door might work. Yet this must have been where I came into the room.
Cell, I tell myself. I’m in a cell.
My bucket must be out in the middle of the floor. I know I can’t get lost now, so I get on my knees and sweep across the floor with my arms. I find the bucket and also the piece of sacking I wore as a hood. I squat down in a corner and feel as though I’ve achieved something, only the feeling’s short-lived – it’s still just a bucket, some sacking in a dark and empty cell.
The darkness and the silence take their toll. I’m not stupid. I know what’s happened: I’ve been taken and I’ll be held without trial. It’s not remarkable or unusual. I’ve done something that somebody somewhere didn’t like. Call me a threat to national security and they can do what they will. I know the world we live in.
I must fall asleep because I’m woken by an alarm that takes over the whole room. Ultra-bright lights are switched on and they’re blinding.
“What?” I shout. “What?”
But if my voice before had disappeared into the silence, I can’t even hear my shout above the alarm. And the lights – I have to shut my eyes while I shout, and cover my ears to protect them from the noise. I cower back down. There a
re several alarms sounding at once, but they’re all so loud I can’t differentiate between them.
What have I done?
Light floods the room from above.
“Please,” I shout, “please.”
And then, just as suddenly, the alarms and the lights are switched off. I’m back to my silence and my darkness, though the noise and the brightness stay with me.
“No,” I say, because I’d hoped the alarm might mean something. “I’m hungry!” I shout out. “You have to give me some food. And water – you can’t leave me here without water.”
But I’m back to shouting out into the void.
I whirl around in the darkness, panicking because I’ve lost my bearings. Only when my arm hits a wall do I calm myself. I walk around the walls, past the door and back to my corner with the bucket.
I really need to pee, so I pick up the bucket and walk around the room to the diagonally opposite corner. This is the bucket’s new home. I reach up to the Velcro fastening and peel it open. Too late, I remember putting the hood in the bucket; I can hear the different sound my pee makes when it hits the sacking.
Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about that now. I refasten the Velcro, wipe my hands on the overalls and walk back to my corner.
The lights have left an impression behind my eyes, orange like the colour of my overalls. An orange jumpsuit; I’ve become a symbol.
I think about Papillon. I think about The Man in the Iron Mask. Heroic figures – not like me. My mask – my piece of sacking – is in the bucket across the room.
I sit down in my corner. The alarms and the lights come on again and I curl up into a ball. Are they watching from above? Can they see me in the darkness? Is this a punishment for sitting down or for falling asleep? The noise stops, but what am I to do? If I can’t sleep, what am I to do?
I stand in my corner to let them know I’m not sleeping. So they can see me. They’ve been with me all this time. All what time? What time? And they can hear me too? They can hear me but don’t care what I have to say. I resolve not to speak, not to give them the satisfaction.
Dancing to the End of Love Page 9