8 Cairo - The Gulag Part 2 (1/2)

The candlestick was beginning to reach its final moments alive. The flame was beginning to diminish, and I began to hear the wind scraping against the windows. I patiently waited for Rina to simmer down her quiet sobs, but the streaks of dry tears remained on her flushed cheeks.

”Kalvin stopped all the guards from catching us,” Rina whispered aside. ”He couldn't help everyone… But most of us got out, and he continued holding them off…”

”So he was a warden?” I mumbled - putting my emphasis on the 'was' - already knowing the answer.

She nodded, ”I wanted to go back for you-”

”It doesn't matter now,” I interrupted her. ”Going back for me would have made my attempt pointless. Just be thankful you escaped when you did, because after that day, it only got worse.”

…

I remember waking up a few days later with the most irritating pain in my throat. I spat on the steel bars that surrounded my cell and cleaned them with whatever clothes I had remaining.

It took a minute or so to find the right angle, but I managed to catch my own reflection in the steel bar. It wasn't the prettiest sight, as I was covered in dry blood, dirty clothes, and torn skin. However, I managed to get a glimpse of the tiny pieces of string holding my neck together.

I could sense that even one small motion in the wrong direction would pull apart the stitches in a heartbeat, so I tried to keep that in mind for what was about to happen.

Apparently, since I didn't know what happened to the prisoners on the upper floors at the time, I just assumed they were all captured and brought to a justice of some sort. Even I could hear the faint screams echoing through the hollow walls of the gulag, and even I knew that escaping from this place for a second time would prove no good.

The warden in the general's hat approached me in my cell, smiling as always. ”Due to your act of bravery, we've run into some problems on the upper floors,” He chortled to himself as if it wasn't a problem at all. ”Your next opponents will be a little older, and I'm afraid you can't refuse to fight.”

I remained silent, still angered by the sheer presence of his voice.

”Excellent.” He said as he walked off, throwing one last bowl of disgusting soup in my face.

The next fight I had inside the Gulag didn't even last more than a minute. I remember being thirteen or so, and my opponent in his late thirties. It was a weak, skinny man who looked as if he hadn't eaten in a full moon. Well... I didn't look any better either.

In that one minute we were both inside the Gulag, he told me about his wife and kids waiting for his arrival at home. He looked so pitiful, and I knew he wasn't lying either. Apparently, their house back at home had a secret bunker where his wife and kids hid during the war. The man acted as nothing more than bait to protect his family. He refused to fight me, or anyone else.

\tThe warden entered, and killed the man without a single hesitation with the wooden paddle glued tightly to his hand. In fact, he looked happy doing it. He was easily a killer by heart, not by request.

\tSo, my next fight was with another older gentleman. He looked to be about late twenties at most, very well fed, and definitely not planning on holding back.

\tBy that point, any emotion I had left to feel any pity or remorse was already far gone. The only thing I had left was pain, nothing more, nothing less.

\tThe man came running towards me at full speed, face full of sweat, and dry soup remains dangling from his lips like a drunken guerrilla. He took a swing at me, barely scraping against the side of my hair as I ducked and hurled myself away from him.

\tI didn't know a single thing about fighting, but it's like I was born to do it. After the next swing, I threw my pathetically weak fist into a fattened portion of his stomach, and the man dropped dead as if he's just been struck by bolt of lightning.

\tAt the time, I didn't know what happened, but in my later years when I came to learn human anatomy, I realized my fist had landed directly in his solar plexus, traumatizing him unexpectedly.

\tI heard faint breaths escape his thick neck, so I took that time to snap it, freeing him of his suffering.

\tThe warden came up to me, clapping and cheering as he'd just seen a beautiful performance. ”Bravo! Bravo! Very well done!”

\tI remained silent, still, and tense. That was the first time I had ever taken a life. No, it was the first time I had felt something other than pain. I felt like a murderer, because that's what I've become.

\tEvery fight I ever entered after that day was a fight for survival. I killed, and killed, and killed. Every time I killed, I grabbed a sharpened rock I had hidden beneath my soup bowl, and I made a mark on my arm for every life I stole.

\tTwo years passed until finally, the entire second and third floors collapsed on top of us on the bottom floor. Luckily, I was unscathed, and my cell was broken free. Unfortunately, I couldn't say the same for the others.

I quickly rushed out, trying my hardest to breathe inside the dust and rubble hovering in the air after the wreckage. I took off my shirt and wrapped it around my mouth and nose, looking for a possible exit around me.

After a few turns and twitches, I found a fallen rock that led to what seemed like a pathway about fifteen feet above where I stood. I didn't think it was possible to make the jump at first, but it's as if my body just moved on its own again.

I braced my core, loosened the pressure building up in my frail knees, and jumped as high as I possibly could.

At first, I knew I could only jump about two feet off the ground at maximum potential. However, after I reached the five-foot mark, my body kept going. It kept going higher and higher until it passed the landing I was intentionally going for. I remember hitting my head against another rock sticking out from the ceiling, but I managed to land on the pathway on my way back down.

My head didn't hurt, only making my vision blurry for a moment as I came to my surroundings again.

I probably spent about ten minutes examining my legs after that. Nothing seemed strange, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and nothing seemed any different. So I got up, and began running through the empty pathway that was laid out for me.

The lights inside the hallways were practically completely blown out from all the explosions and rubble that was scattered around. Big blocks of cement and broken walls covered most of the hallways, along with countless dead guards and prisoners.

I kept running, and running, and running till I could no more. Eventually, I ended up on the very first floor that led to the ones below me. It was a large, faulty elevator-like room. There were no windows, no signs of an exit, and no signs of anyone around me.