Echoes of the Other

Don't you just love a nice and tidy resolution? A happy ending of sorts when all the loose ends are tied and the foes are defeated?

The idea that the protagonist has gone through hell and out the other side to survive. It's reassuring, isn't it?

The guy gets the girl. Home safely to his family and kids?

As I sat strapped to a stool in the middle of some forgotten shipping container on a ship to God knows where, I hoped for the same nice and tidy resolution, the same happy ending.

Even when all hope seemed lost.

Hope is only lost when you let it go.

I was not quite there yet.

My willpower waned, though.

Sweat and blood dripped from my forehead into my bloodied mouth.

Piss drained irregularly from my groin down my trousers.

The longer I spent on the choppy waters of the Channel or North Sea, the more my willpower drained.

The creaks of the ship beneath my feet, beneath the already rotted, rusted metallic surface of the container's flooring, and the voices. Dutch? Polish? Russian?

I couldn't be sure.

There was definitely a Russian, but his accomplices could be from anywhere.

In the dark, I saw visions.

Visions of the blood-splattered scenes that my prison had seen in the past.

Before.

Before, I found myself strapped there.

What felt like weeks was likely only a couple of days. But, still, my memory of the safety and sanity of everyday life drained away as fast as my willpower.

Surely it was just mistaken identity and when we reach... wherever they were taking me, everything would be cleared up.

That might have been possible...

If the last punch the knuckle-duster-wearing oaf with the Russian accent hadn’t switched something in my brain awake.

Something that had lain dormant for far too long.

My memories of him, my other corporeal passenger, played like movie reels.

I had learned to distance myself.

Distanced myself so well that I had compartmentalized his part of me.

Now, he was coming to the surface and I prayed, I could subdue him.

But, as my willpower drained, his power over our body grew.

I could feel him take over, gaining greater purchase in the unfiltered thoughts of his mind.

Thoughts of only suffering.

I prayed. My prayers were suffocated. Replaced by his lament of promise.

The promise to our captors.

When we docked, all hell was going to break out.

Like it did 20 years ago.

If I go, I hope I never come back.

*

Thanks for reading!

Author's Notes: Something I wrote today. You're welcome.