Torture Room

They had their favorites.  Tools with sharp, shiny points, rusty tools, tools that only worked after you left them in the fire awhile.  Those were the worst, those red-hot tools.  They didn’t need levers or sharp edges.  Even a dull, red-hot corner could make you piss yourself in agony.

I was cooperating, whatever that meant, so they had me standing on a metal table.  It doesn’t sound like a luxury, but it is after you’ve been balancing on an old can of paint for six hours.

They like to leave all of the tools out there for you to see.  You count them.  You name them. You prophesize how each one will be used, and when.  You understand how they work and how much they weigh without ever picking them up.  And you do it so many times in your head that you’re always right.  That room revolves around fear.  Everything they do is trying to pull it out of you, doesn’t matter from where.  Fear comes first.  The tools are secondary.

A metal table was nothing.  I stood up there shivering.  You forget you’re naked after the first day or so.  Naked is the least of your worries.  Except that you’re always cold.  The cold is what drives you mad.  They bank on that.

I remember standing on that table.  They were holding their tools.  You try to sympathize with your eyes.  Crying, pleading, looking helpless, none of it works.  It was their job.  I don’t think they enjoyed it.  They laughed and joked with each other, but I think that’s what people do at work.  It doesn’t matter what kind of job people have, most of the time, people are trying to pass the time.

One man, he had a laugh that bounced all over that cold room.  It was like a dull ax against a stump – “Hah…hah…hah.”  He had a small head and wide shoulders.  The top button of his uniform was always popping open and a patch of long chest hairs sticking out.  The others were constantly on him about his button.  Here I was, shivering myself into hallucinations, and all three of them are trying to get this top button to stay together.

The two others were thin.  They could have been brothers, I don’t know.  They weren’t evil either.  Not the way you’d expect.  They made jokes and shared cigarettes.  I couldn’t understand the jokes, but I could tell they were jokes from the cadence.  And then that hacking laughter echoing across the room.  I had to close my eyes and brace myself so the sound didn’t push me off the table.

It doesn’t matter how tough you are, no one goes into this peaceful place while all of this is going on.  Those stories are rubbish.  You do zone out.  Disappear into these moments of shock, or meditation, or whatever you want to call it.  The sound goes out as if someone was holding you underwater.  Then you’re in this void where nothing exists.  It’s too boring to be a dream, but not tangible enough to be real life.  It’s something else.

After standing up on that metal table for so long, I wanted them to touch me.  As long as they didn’t come in with anything that was red-hot, I didn’t care anymore.  I knew their hands were warm.  Whenever they did anything, beating, prying, burning, one of them would do the work and the other two would keep you from thrashing around like a flag in a hurricane.  I looked forward to that part.  Not having my feet beaten with pipes, not the clamps, but them holding onto me.

They had to hold you still before anything else.  So at the very least, you knew you’d have two sets of warm hands holding your wrists or clamped onto the side of your neck.  I tried to drag those seconds out.  Close my eyes and pretend they were warm towels at a barber shop.

There was the pain after that.  Everyone knows what pain is, I don’t need to describe it.  The warm hands, those were the best part.  Even after you couldn’t scream anymore, you could always focus on those warm hands until it was over.

I’m no hero.  I told them everything they wanted to know.  I told them some things they didn’t want to know too.  That always got them laughing, telling them old family recipes or what I was going to get my wife for Christmas.  I remember them laughing often.  I never laughed in there, not that I remember.  But those guys were always goofing around, laughing.

And you get used to it after a while.  It makes me think there’s nothing you can’t get used to in this world.  I guess that’s the lesson from all of this - you get used to it. 

Everything but the smell of searing flesh, your own searing flesh – you never get used to that.