Two Peasants and a President Read Free Page B

The latches and handle revealed that it was her suitcase.  Buoyed by its familiarity, she flipped the catches and opened it.  Things that I can use to improve my situation, she thought.  The flashlight that she had brought jumped into her mind, but it was not there.  They must have taken it . B astards!   Her clothes seemed to be there and her makeup kit was where she had put it, but felt like it had been rummaged.  Why do they need a prisoner with nice clothes and makeup? she asked herself.  The answer that sprang back at her frightened her deeply.  Struggling to suppress thoughts of Natalie Holloway, the girl who disappeared in Aruba, and white slavery, she forced herself to continue exploring her cell.
    Then without meaning to, she knocked something over , startling her with a sound magnified by the darkness.   Reaching to upright it, she felt a thermos.  She unscrewed the top and sniffed the contents.  Water, it seemed.  Beyond it a wicker basket.  Oh great, she thought.  A prison picnic - in the dark.  She almost laughed when she opened it and discovered that it was indeed filled with sandwiches, fruit and some sort of crackers.  But that only reinforced the grim conclusion that her captors intended to keep her fed and looking good.  Thoughts of a hirsute, greasy Middle Eastern male with greedy eyes and a bulging, sweaty belly waiting for her in some distant hellhole almost made her cry again. 
    Finding nothing else in the room, she stood up and moved toward the door, under which light faintly crept.  Pressing her ear against it, she listened intently for a long time.  No sound other than those of the ship and the sea emanated from behind the door.  She decided to feel her way around the room, seeking a crack, an opening, anything that might provide egress.
    Perhaps an hour had passed since she’d awakened, she couldn’t tell for sure.  She now knew that she was in a small room, having steel walls and containing food, drink and her clothing and makeup.  No avenue of escape. The engine sound droned on as her floating prison rose and fell with the swells.  A deep sense of despair had started to descend.
    Hash marks, four vertical then one across popped into her mind.  She resisted contemplating it, but realized it made sense.  Prisoners keep time – and their sanity – b y carving the passage of days on the walls of their cells.  Her fingernail file was in her makeup kit where she had put it.  As she etched the first groove into the floor by her bed, she thought:  What are you doing, you idiot?  Without light you can’t count days.  But she finished the carving nonetheless; something about it comforted her.  She had never felt so alone. 

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    The scraping of great iron gears grinding slowly against massive rus t ing wheels was punctuated by a rhythmic screeching that surely must be the cries of some mechanical beast from hell.  A huge metal door ground upward until flaming molten scoria spewed from its gaping mouth.  Still smoldering lumps of slag littered the floor around her feet.  A howling sound outside this baking hell was her only company.
    Abruptly she pulled her legs up to her chest as the still glowing embers started to burn her feet.  Sweat-soaked clothes clung to her chest, smothering her.  The howling grew louder until it was just outside.  She covered her ears and rolled over onto her side into a ball.  Suddenly the howling stopped as she felt something beneath her, neither hard nor smoldering.  It was the mattress. 
    Once more the howling blasted her senses, but it was no longer the sound of some mortally wounded creature.  It was the trumpeting horn of a nearby ship.  The nightmarish images began to blur then fade into the dar k ness that had surrounded her for she knew not how long.  A stench assaulted her nostrils, her stench.  The wretched loneliness returned.  How many days and nights had she been here?  How many nightmares?
    There had been