by Gold, Amelia
The next soldier decides to force me to open my eyes by stomping on my foot, knowing that it had been blistered from my “walk”.
I don’t know how much longer I can take watching myself being treated in this way. A witness at a live event would have protested by now. I am beginning to understand some of the loathing and sarcasm that Hash displayed during our conversation together. How many times has he been witness to torture? How many times has he been forced to contribute to the torture in some way?
“Don’t be shy.” The supervising soldier speaks into my ear as I’ve now closed my eyes and am refusing to look at the screen. “This is the real you. Not many people get to see themselves in such an intimate way. You think you know who you really are but you don’t. People like to give themselves narratives so that they can pretend to have some sort of purpose. Then they act out the part that they play in whatever narrative they think that they happen to be in.”
On the screen, the girl is doing something that I haven’t done in a long time. She’s crying. No longer having the energy or the voice to scream, she pleads with her eyes.
“Here you are with nothing to hide behind. There’s no cause to follow. No family to protect. No history to conceal. It’s just you. This video reveals who you are deep down. The core you. The person that you hope no one else will ever see. You can learn a lot about yourself from this footage. I think you should really thank us.” The supervising soldier continues to mutter in my ear.
“What you’re showing me happened in the past. It’s already been done. Making me watch it doesn’t hurt me in the present.” Actually that’s a lie but I’ll go with it. “All it does is to show me that I was hurt in the past. I don’t need to see the video to know that I was hurt. I have scars on me to prove that.”
“You might like to add to those scars.” He says softly.
Before I can fully make sense of what that sentence means, the muscles on my back in my shoulder begin to spasm involuntarily causing a painful yelp to escape my lips.
“We’re not even half way through the footage yet. I’d hate to have to pause every five minutes just because you’re not paying attention.” He shows me the dial in his hand.
“Looks painful.” Vinn is taunting me in the video.
“You have… daughters and nieces too.” My screen self tells them, earning a loud round of laughter from all the soldiers.
“Which is why we wouldn’t want your wounds to become infected.” Vinn says after the laughter has died down.
Another soldier steps onto the screen and I recognize him as the soldier supervising my “education”.
“This is Kov.” Says Vinn. “Padd’s second in command.”
In the real world, Kov is smoking, just like his video self.
“The Captain wants to disinfect you.” He says to me in the video. “I would not have been so kind.”
Then he digs his cigarette into an open wound on my chest.
The girl’s screams pierce through me as the footage and the cigarette smoke in the room trigger my real memory of the incident. For the first time, my reactions match my memory and I flinch with real pain.
“Please turn it off.” I tell Kov, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.
“It’s coming back to you, isn’t it?” He laughs.
I don’t answer because the girl in the video is screaming again and I have to close my eyes. My shoulders explode with pain again causing my affirmative answer to be much louder than I had intended.
“See? Now it wasn’t that hard to answer my question, was it?” He asks me.
“No.” I whisper.
In the video, the girl’s screams become more pitiful. “Please!”
“If I had shot you instead of that stupid girl, Padd would still be alive.” His voice is seeping with hatred in the video.
“You… shot Ath.” I gasp in the video.
“Is that what her name was?” He says with distain.
I’m locked in a room with a man who set a girl on fire and feels no remorse over her death. I’ve never had homicidal thoughts before but I know that if I was in a position to kill, this Kov guy would be at the top of my list.
“You liked watching your friend die, didn’t you?” He speaks into my ear again.
That is not a question that I am ever going to answer so I brace myself because I know the shock is going to come. Then I let him electrocute me until I pass out.
Rehabilitation
Once again I awaken to water being poured across my face. How many more blackouts do I have to go through before it becomes permanent? I don’t want to wake up.
“Do I have to remind you that I don’t like having to pause a video halfway through a screening?” Kov asks me as the water drains from my face.
“How can you watch that and not feel anything? You’re in it.” I ask him.
“I’m in at least twenty other videos.” He replies.
“I know you hate us but does that really justify what you’re doing to us?” I try not to cry as I ask him.
“If you knew how I actually felt about you and your people, you would not have this self-righteous anger right now, which is kind of endearing.” He smiles.
“You’re sick.” I tell him.
“Maybe.” He allows. “See, feelings are what you have when you want something to fail. This entire operation that we’re running: mass murder and mass enslavement – it wouldn’t work based on feelings. Love, hatred, any kind of intense emotion will destroy a military operation of this size and at this level.”
“You mean to say that you’re just a robot following orders from above?” I laugh at him.
“Look at us in this room.” He smiles back at me & gestures to the empty room. “Do I look like I’m following orders here?”
“But you like it. You like doing this.” I tell him.
“What I like has nothing to do with what I feel. You asked me what I feel about what I’m doing, not whether or not I enjoy doing it.” He replies.
“Like I said. Sick.” I remind him.
“Yes.” He agrees with me and then shocks my back anyway causing my muscles to continue to spasm even after the current has ceased.
I have no energy to say anything to him so I just wait, trying to relax my overstretched muscles.
“You want to destroy an enemy, you don’t use hate.” He pulls my head toward him and speaks into my ear. “Because hate will give your enemy the power to resist. You use your most potent weapon: apathy.”
“You… kill and torture hundreds of people… on a daily basis. And you don’t care.” I whisper in disgust.
“You’re starting to get it.” He smiles. “Now, shall we watch the rest of the footage or am I going to have to shock you again?”
“Do what you like.” I tell him.
“Just remember that the next time I shock you, it won’t be in your back.” He says as he flicks his remote control.
The video resumes with water being poured into my face. I had blacked out during the initial torture session just as I did during the subsequent viewing of it.
“Hash, do something about her inability to stay awake will you?” Vinn commands the medic.
Hash comes back onto the screen with another syringe. “This is a stimulant. It will force you to stay awake.”
I nod to show that I understood.
After the drug has been administered, Vinn makes another announcement. “You see, my men perform a very high-stress role and they want to release some of that tension.”
I give a barely suppressed laugh in answer to this statement. I expect some sort of reprimand but it doesn’t come. Not yet anyway.
“My men would very much like to rape you but there’s always the chance that you might get pregnant. So, Hash here, is going to re-engineer your reproductive system, and we won’t have some nasty little Venry-Knax hybrids running around the place.” Vinn continues to explain.
“Considerate.” I remark between gasps of air.
&n
bsp; They unshackle me but do not bother to support me so of course I fall over onto the floor.
“Now, get to the operating table.” Vinn commands.
Whoever is operating the camera points it down toward the floor and you can see how painful it is for me to move across it. It was like the aftermath of my truck walk again. The movement is incremental and excruciatingly painful.
“Hurray up.” Says the on screen Kov.
He steps onto my back again and I can now see that it was he who had done that when we were on the road. I move forward in silence and I finally make it to the foot of the operating table when I find that I don’t have the energy to get up onto it.
“Move!” Kov is saying since I had stopped moving.
“Can’t.” I reply.
“Move her.” Vinn gives the command and two other soldiers come into view of the camera. They pull me up roughly and hoist me onto the table.
Straps are pulled across to immobilize me and then the camera pans toward Hash, who is preparing another needle.
“What are you doing?” Vinn asks him.
“I’m putting her under.” The medic replies.
“Who says we’re going to need anesthetics?” Says Kov.
“No. You can’t… You can’t do that to her.” Hash’s face has gone very pale.
So this is what he was trying to tell me to forget earlier in the day. I wasn’t just sterilized. I was sterilized under complete awareness. Vinn had told Hash to give me the stimulant before he knew that an anesthetic would not be administered. They were going to make me stay awake for the operation.
At this point in the video, some members of Padd’s squad begin to excuse themselves from the room. Eventually, aside from the camera operator, only Vinn, Kov, Hash and one other soldier who has a gun pointed at Hash remain in the room.
*_*
“We have to stop meeting like this.” Hash tells me as I wake up in the “hospital ward” again.
Only, this time I don’t have amnesia regarding the previous night. I remember what happened very clearly. After the video screening ended, I did go into shock like Hash had warned earlier in the day. Kov left me alone in the “interrogation room” for some time. Then later, he came back with the rest of the squad and they took turns at raping me on the floor. Kov had succeeded in inducing apathy so that I no longer cared what they did to me or what they made me do.
“I’m tired.” I tell Hash.
“I know.” He replies.
“If I ask you to give me an overdose, you’ll be able to do it right?” I look up into his eyes.
He pauses for a moment before smiling. “If I did that for every patient who asked me, the army wouldn’t have many girls left.”
“Why don’t you want to help us?” I ask him.
“I did do that once – in the beginning.” He admits.
“What happened?” I ask.
“They found out. Big deal, I thought, they’ll just kill me. Except they didn’t. They tortured another girl. They intentionally dragged out her death to teach me a lesson.” He shakes his head.
“Right now, I really want to be that girl.” I mutter to myself.
“You don’t mean that.” He gives me a look of distain.
He’s right. I never should have said that but I can’t help what I feel. This hopeless despair is the only thing I have left that still makes me feel human. Otherwise I would just be a sex object that doesn’t think for herself like what the army wants.
“That’s not the only reason why I don’t want to do it.” Hash tries to explain. “Assisted suicide is not what most doctors are trained to do. Now, I realize that keeping you alive, prolonging your suffering so that the Venry can use you again and again, is not that much better ethically, but morally I can’t reconcile that within myself. I can’t kill someone when I know that I can save them. It doesn’t feel right.”
“How do you deal with it?” I ask him.
“Deal with what?” He replies, distracted.
“These suicidal thoughts. You get them too but you’re able to dismiss them somehow.” I tell him.
“Not completely.” He shakes his head. “You just have to keep reminding yourself that this isn’t a permanent state. One day this war will be over. And when it is, we need to have survivors who can tell everyone about what happened. I want to be that survivor.”
“It’s not a war if it’s one-sided.” I remind him.
“Oh, it’s a war alright.” He smiles. “It’s just not a military war because unfortunately the Knax do not have an army. But it is a conflict and conflicts always have a resolution. Whether it is resolved tomorrow or the day after doesn’t really matter. It’s only a matter of time.”
“It matters to us.” I reply. “To the people that are in the conflict. We kind of want it to end sooner rather than later.”
“What will you do when it does end?” He asks me.
“I’m not sure that I will live to see it.” I tell him.
He considers me for a moment before replying. “I’ve only performed sterilization on one other conscious patient. She did not survive. If you can live through that, you can live through anything.”
“Thanks.” I look away, slightly embarrassed.
“I’ve heard about some of the other traumas that you survived–” He continues.
“–Like being dragged by a truck.” I smile at the insanity of it all.
“Or being stabbed repeatedly with a serrated knife.” He adds, smiling with me. “What were you thinking anyway? Heth told me that you deliberately made yourself a target.”
“You’ve been seeing Heth.” I can’t believe the good news. Since I had blacked out during the selection, I never got to find out if she was selected or if she was killed. Now it looks like she was selected. “How is she doing?”
“I think we should change your medication.” He stands up abruptly.
The last time he avoided telling me something, it turned out that the something had almost killed me.
“What are you not saying?” I ask him.
He busies himself with changing my drip and keeps quiet, confirming my suspicion.
“Something’s happened to Heth.” I remark.
He sighs and then looks me in the eye. “She was the other conscious patient that I had to operate on.”
Distribution
“Why are they leaving me alone?” I ask Hash back in the medical cell that they’ve been keeping me in. I’m not complaining about the lack of recent torture, I just want to know why.
“Because you need to be ‘presentable’ where you are going.” Hash explains.
“Where’s that?” I ask him.
“Away from the base.” He replies.
“Any idea where they might be taking me?” I continue to probe him.
He becomes quiet again and I know that he’s trying to dilute the answer.
“Let’s not talk about that right now.” He says.
“Why do you keep doing that?” I ask, annoyed.
“Doing what?” He says, taken aback.
“Not telling me.” I reply.
“Because I want you to heal.” He tells me.
“How does keeping me in the dark help me to heal, exactly?” I exclaim.
He sighs. “Negative thoughts delay healing. I’m not saying that what they plan for you won’t happen if you don’t think about it. I’m just saying that you might not want to worry about it until you’re in a better state.”
“I am heaps better. I’ve gone a whole forty eight hours without being tortured or abused.” I reply with added cheer.
“Very funny.” He says without smiling. “Actually you were out about this long after your surgery.”
“You’re starting to forgive yourself.” I smile.
“No I’m not.” Hash replies darkly. “The fact that you survived at all is a miracle. It doesn’t change the fact that I am a coward. If I was a braver person, I would have let them shoot me rather than agree to do something l
ike that to you.”
He was being so melancholy that I had to laugh. “If you don’t do it, someone else will. If a Venry doctor had performed the surgery, he would not have provided the post-operative care needed and I would have most likely died from the operation.”
“That’s a bit harsh.” He says quietly. “Not all Venry are like that.”
“Yeah but if they’re not like that, the army wouldn’t hire them.” I remind him.
“You seem to be very aware for someone of your age.” He smiles despite himself.
“I’m studying journalism. I mean I was studying journalism.” I correct myself.
“You can always go back to it.” He replies.
“So what did you do before the sun fell out of the sky?” I ask him.
“Is that what you’re going to call this period in our history?” He laughs.
“You didn’t answer my question.” I reply.
“Guess.” He smiles.
“I know you’re a doctor but what was your specialty?” I continue to probe him.
“Think how many doctors are also surgeons. Then think how many surgeons perform, as part of their job, the kind of surgeries that I am being forced to perform on you.” He replies.
I smile as I come to understand. “You’re a gynaecologist.”
“I was.” He nods.
“You’re a very young surgeon.” I observe.
“I was practicing for one whole year before the army detained me.” He laughs. “I was not prepared for the kind of injuries that I now have to treat.”
“No one is prepared for this kind of trauma care.” I reply.
“Thank you.” He tells me.
“For what?” I look at him, surprised.
“Talking to you. It’s comforting.” He replies.
“Likewise.” I smile.
I know how he feels. In these small moments, we could have these almost normal conversations (still not completely normal when you consider that I am being chained to the wall by my neck) and pretend that the sun hasn’t fallen out of the sky.