Garbage Dreams

"I relive every moment I had free. I imagine every walk, swim, lake party, beach visit and picnic I ever had, and remember every psychedelic sunset, and nights sitting outside with a sky that is lit up by stars, it was like a symphony," Lindsey transcribed. It was written down on a letter shared by her husband, George who had read it aloud for the cameras. Lindsey hasn't seen a tree since she was detained, and also wrote that she misses the sun. This was her husbands last visit, and the authoritarian regime only allowed the visit for publicity.

Lindsey’s cell was dark and dripping water from a cracked ceiling filled with rusted, leaking pipes. Rats had scurried across her cell floor on a constant basis. She normally enjoyed the smell of petrichor that the dripping water was creating, but in her cell the smell was mixed with human piss, dung, mold, rotten food and who knows what else. They didn’t feed her enough, so she’d try to catch the rats for food, occasionally succeeding.

“Good protein,” she’d mumble as she was chowing down on one of the little fur balls, blood dripping off her lips and chin and hitting the floor, which slowly changed from a gray cement color to a dark red color.

Lindsey, a relentless and ambitious journalist who never backed down from a fight, even from the most oppressive governments and toughest interviews, had always believed in the power of free speech. This was something the people of the Chingra government didn’t enjoy. She was dedicated to finding the truth and holding those in power accountable for their actions. She’d flown to Chingra’s capital, Gargasha, to get an interview with the country’s ‘president,’ as he called himself, and now she was in jail because of it. She lived just a few hours away from the capital, but now she would never be allowed to return home.

Her latest report, an in-depth investigation into the corruption and human rights violations within her own government, had struck a nerve with the authorities.

Shortly after the report's publication, Lindsey was arrested on false charges of espionage. The government saw her as a threat, another voice that needed to be silenced. She was dragged out of her house in front of her screaming children. She couldn’t work on her next story, which was just as important to her as her last article, and she wasn’t allowed any visitors. This meant no family or friends, even her worried children, and they wouldn’t even allow her to get a lawyer. She was thrown into a cold, dark, eldritch cell. She could hear the screams of other prisoners being tortured, and she shivered knowing she was next. She had never heard so many people in pain at once, and the thought made her nauseous. She almost choked on her own vomit as she started to hurl. When she was done, she sat in a corner and cried. She saw a rat scurry by and grabbed it, but instead of eating it this time she smashed it against the wall in anger.

“There’s always hope, there’s always hope,” she muttered to herself again and again. When she looked up at her cell wall, she noticed the words “no hope, give up now,” etched into them. That’s horrible, she thought, and she got nauseous again.

A guard came to visit her cell that night.

“Please, sir, I’m hungry and thirsty. Do you have any…” Lindsey started to say.

“Shut up,” the guard said and smacked her across the face with his baton.

“It’s your turn to scream,” the guard said and smiled.

The guard did the unthinkable, using every form of torture at his disposal to cause her pain. From water boarding to tying her arms to chains and letting them stretch. They’d given her so many tiny paper cuts she couldn’t move without screaming.

“THIS IS… ILLEGAL,” she finally managed to scream.

“Not in Gargasha, it’s not,” the guard said and smiled.

“This is a violation of international law. The Geneva convention says…”

“Shut up, bitch. Does this look like Geneva to you?” The guard yelled and hammered a nail into her hand. Lindsay screamed.

“What do you want from me?” Lindsey screamed at the guard, fighting back a flood of tears.

“For you to learn a lesson. Don’t say nasty things about my government,” the guard said and smiled, before hooking up electrical wires to Lindsey and turning them on.

“Next time you write an article about the government, remember this…” the guard said and smiled, then turned up the electricity, causing Lindsey to convulse and a small amount of foam to form on her mouth.

This went on for several more hours before Lindsey finally passed out.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. Isolated from the outside world, Lindsey's only solace was the occasional letter she managed to send to George. She didn’t know if the letters were actually being sent, for she never got any return mail, but at least it gave her hope.

In each letter, she wrote about all the things she once took for granted, and missed her freedom.

"I miss the Sun most of all. It’s always dark here. I’ve been forced to eat rats, they don’t feed me," Lindsey wrote.

"I miss your affection too, your warm caress on my skin, the gentle dance you do with your fingers as you move them down my arm . I long to be free again. I miss hiking with you and the children. I miss their excitement every time they saw an animal, as if they hadn’t already seen a hundred. I want to go to the beach again too. I want to feel the sand between my toes, and the cool ocean breeze! Love, Lindsey" she wrote in the last letter. She gave it to a guard she thought was the least cruel, hoping he’d send it.

Lindsey kept her weakened spirit unbroken by reminding herself that they wouldn’t have put her in prison unless she was on to something. Even in confinement, she was still a journalist, still digging. When she had the rare opportunity to talk to other prisoners, she asked them what they were in for, and they all had similar stories. They had all spoken out against the government.

“Interesting,” she’d always respond. When she was free, she planned on coming back to free them too.

Back at home, her husband George tirelessly campaigned for her release, rallying support from fellow journalists, activists, and citizens who were also sick of the authoritarian regime.

The international community also caught wind of Lindsey's unjust imprisonment. News outlets and organizations began reporting her captivity, bringing attention to her unjust confinement. Pressure mounted on the government to release Lindsey, but they doubled down on their false charges, even adding to them. They claimed that in a drunken stuper, she had stabbed several people to death. Despite zero evidence of this happening, they repeated this claim several times in the media.

While in prison, Lindsey grew depressed. Her nerves were shot and she couldn’t feel the pain from the torture as much as she used too. Lindsey figured it was like building calluses from playing the guitar, but these were torture callouses from the twice daily torture. She doubted her letter were being sent, because she now knew all the guards in her prison were primitive torturing machines. She had been viciously beaten and tortured by each one. They had no regrets or remorse about it either, always repeating the line “don’t insult the government, they know what’s best for you.”

She asked for letter paper but instead of sending the letters, she kept a journal detailing the corruption and abuse she witnessed during her stay in prison, figuring if she ever got out she could share her notes with the world and expose these authoritarian monsters.

She was unaware, but her husband George had receive the letters pleading for help. He had used them to spark a movement, inspiring others to speak out against injustice and help his beloved wife fight for freedom.

Day after day went by, and George’s pleas for help had gotten him an army of followers. After what felt like an eternity for Lindsey, thousands of people descended on the prison, threatening riots and throwing Molotov cocktails at the guards.

George and several others had sued the Chingra government, and the government's case against Lindsey crumbled under the weight of mounting evidence of wrongdoing. They were also sanctioned, not allowed to trade with most of the outside world, and the international pressure became too much, forcing them to release her.

“You got lucky,” one of the guards said to Lindsey before she could walk out of the open cell, then he spit on her in one final act of grotesque dominance. Had he forgotten that she was now free of cuffs? Lindsey socked the guard so hard in the face, the blood from his nose splattered everywhere and his skull cracked against the wall it just hit. Then she continued to walk out of the cell, and despite this being a cut and dry case of self defense, she was still hoping there were no witnesses to what she had just done.

As Lindsey walked out of her prison cell, her eyes squinted against the blinding sunlight. Tears streamed down her face as she saw George, who had been waiting anxiously for her release. She ran up to him and almost squeezed the life out of him when she squeezed his body in her attempt to give him a hug.

“We did it, honey, we freed you!” George said and smiled.

Lindsey smiled back, and for the first time in her life, had no words.

“Are we really going home?” Lindsey asked.

“We’re going home,” George said.

Lindsey published the notes she made in prison to fuel protests against the vicious Chingra government. Eventually foreign military operations help the protesters to overthrow the eldritch and authoritarian government, and it was replaced by a government of fairly elected leaders.

There were still several other corrupt, unjust governments in the world, and Lindsey knew her work as a journalist needed to continue. She still needed to shine a light on corruption and bring down any authoritarian government that thought it could oppress its people. She knew this was more then a garbage dream, as several dictators she interviewed had told her over the years. This was her dream, and it was fantastic. So this is exactly what she did, and helped change or over throw oppressive governments around the world!