When it rains in the desert

Promises

Celia was returned to me a day later. She'd clearly taken another beating. Her neck had deep purple spots on each side. Someone had strangled her. And from the looks of it, multiple times.

The thing is, I was learning that this was all a game to Rick. Everything he was doing to us, all the pain he was putting us through, it meant nothing to him. Actually, If anything, he got a kick from it.

You could see it in his eyes. Where he looked tired and worried the days before, here, whilst he was torturing us, he looked alive. He looked like a child on Christmas morning. Except, he looked like a child before opening his presents. Like the best was yet to come.

He enjoyed giving us hope and then taking away, just when it was about to consume us. I knew this because in the time Celia was gone, the man I assumed to be Maggie had drowned me. Multiple times.

Not in like the sea or anything but it may as well have been.

After he'd taken Celia from the room, He'd come back in with two men carrying a barrel of water into the room. I was watching them as they moved, painfully slow. As if to tease me. To leave me guessing what was going to happen to me for as long as possible.

He "dismissed" the other two men and walked towards me, smile on his face and pulled the hair at the bottom of my neck, forcing me to look up at him. "You know how to swim right?" he asked. Before I could answer, my head was pushed into the water.

It was an absurd experience. Not at first of course. The first time my head was pushed into the water I was mortified. My naive self believed he was going to kill me. I fought for the first few second, making as much mess and as much noise as I could. But the lack of being fed, the lack of energy quickly made me an extremely easy person to drown.

Then, once I embraced the feeling, once I felt my eyes roll back and my throat tighten, he pulled me out of the water. I gasped for air, clawing at my neck with my free, un-cuffed hand. I felt the air flood my lungs and my chest expand, but not fast enough. Just as I was chugging the air down, my face was met with the surface of the water again.

The next few times my reaction was the same, I had decided to fight, every time he pulled my head back I began gasping for air, but exhaustion kicked in around the sixth time. I relaxed my face when it hit the water, my reflexes didn't force me to breathe and I didn't fight it.

By the 15th time , I could feel each molecule of oxygen entering my body. I could feel it as it traveled into my nose. I wanted to die. The thought of trying to force myself to breathe was exhausting. Each time my head hit the water, the thought of death became more compelling.

That was when I realized that this was the punishment. I would be introduced to the sweet sweet gift of death before being denied it, time and time again.

That would've been enough. It should've been enough. I won't pretend I was strong, I won't lie and say that I fought until the very end. I wasn't built like Celia. I wasn't strong like her. I can say that I never begged for it like Celia promised. But I also can't say that I didn't want to.

If i'd had enough time to speak between breaths, I probably would've begged for him to kill me. But he wasn't even scratching the surface. I was yet to experience my breaking point according to Rick.

My face was still dripping when I looked at Celia. I saw the hope leave her eyes and it made me hate myself because I knew what she saw.

She saw me give up. She saw me defeated. "I'm sorry" she said. "I'm so sorry Jacob." I couldn't shake my head. I tried to tell her that she never had to be sorry to me, but I couldn't. "I'm so so sorry" her voice wavered as she said it.

All I could do was hold my arm out. I held it out in front of her and she took it, sitting next to me. I tugged on her arm and pulled her towards my lap. I just needed to be close to her.

Her arm wrapped around my neck and her mouth went to the side of my forehead. "We're going to get out of here" she said, her lips still pressed to the side of my temple, but I wasn't sure I believed her.

I nuzzled my face into her neck and she pulled me closer. Then, when I was finally in her embrace again, when I could smell the familiar smoke and something sweet, I felt myself break.

It just sort of happened, I began shaking, trembling and once it started I couldn't make it stop. Celia understood. She pulled me impossibly closer and began rocking us back and forth. "I promise you it's going to be fine" she told me.

"I really don't want to die in here Celia" she took my face in her hands and and looked at me in the eyes. "I'm not going to let that happen, do you understand?" I looked back at her, nodding slightly.
"I'm not going to let his kill you okay? I promise"

She took my pinky finger in hers and held it there. The truth was if this would've happened before Celia I probably would've been fine with dying. But now, I had so much to live for. I had Celia, my Celia. I had a niece, I had my sister back. God my sister was safely sat at my apartment and I still hadn't seen her yet.

I knew I had to make it, I knew that we had to make it.