The Deeper Dark

The Hole Haven Found Himself In

"When the world is screaming in your ears, you have to be your own peace."

They knocked on the door like cops who were coming to make an arrest. They knocked at random times throughout the night to wake up the prisoners and keep them from getting used to any sort of pattern. Their tactics jarred a prisoner's psyche and dug deep under his nerves so that every moment he spent in their cages was on the edge of a total breakdown. That is if they could get him to finally break down.

Haven Kayd had been on a mission years ago to fly over the area and gather intel with the digital recording equipment installed underneath his fighter jet, a jet also equipped with enough firepower to level a compound if the mission called for it. But the Captain experienced equipment failure that brought his jet down right in the middle of enemy territory. He was able to land instead of jettisoning, but the landing was far from smooth and it attracted a lot of attention.

He was out of it for a moment. Then, he came to his senses and climbed out of the cockpit where he found himself in unfamiliar territory and no idea which way to go. He looked around for a place to hide but he was too late. They were already coming and he had no idea what to expect.

The next thing he knew, there were AK-47s pointed at his face from all different directions. Ironically, those were the same AK-47s America had supplied the Afghans back in the 80s. Isn't it interesting how small details like that jump up to bite us in the end?

They covered his head with a dark hood and made him walk miles with his hands tied to ropes attached to his feet. When they finally stepped foot on the compound, they took his flight gear and his boots. One guerilla wrote his name on a shirt they gave him while another recorded it in a logbook. Then, they threw him in a cell with nothing but a drain in the middle of the floor that emitted the odor of old urine from hundreds of prisoners who had been there before him.

Tired, he took a seat on the floor, and just as his eyes started to feel the heavy weight of exhaustion, he felt the shock shoot through his body of the prison guard pounding on the steel door. Just as his mind was about to shut down and allow him to escape the miserable existence he presently found himself in, the pounding on the door would instantly bring him back to his concrete walls and that sharp smell of urine. This had become his reality. He had no sense of time because he couldn't see when it was day or when it was night. Lights were on all the time and there were no windows that he could see from his cell. 

Of course, during many days, there was plenty for him to do rather than sit in a lonely cell wondering how much time had passed. He was escorted to different parts of the compound for various reasons. He was interrogated in one room and then recorded in another as proof of life. America seemed interested in saving him, but Haven knew their policy. They were pretty set on not negotiating with terrorists, a rule they had broken themselves but only when the purpose served them. He knew he wasn't that important and he was making his peace with the fact that he just might never see home again.

Those were the images that filled his mind whenever he had downtime. He would think of his daughter's cute smile and when his mind wandered, he could almost feel her hand in his again. She would sit on his lap after a long day and tell him all kinds of stories while his wife sat on the couch laughing at all the details his little princess muttered through. That's when Haven would stop himself from thinking, from remembering. He couldn't afford to think about those times. He had to break his mind free from wanting to be back there, from wanting to ever see them again. That's the harsh reality of his situation. If he separated himself from wanting anything, they wouldn't be able to break him.

Days became months and months blended into a long blurry string of time. Haven had no idea what year it was. He had missed so many birthdays, he had no idea how big Lara had gotten. His marriage, his small family was nothing but a faded memory now. Even when he allowed himself to remember their smiles, they were fading. It was getting harder for him to picture it. He had struggled with his will to survive and it had won every time. Committing suicide simply wasn't an option. But if they killed him, that would certainly do the trick. That would be very merciful, and it would finally end the misery.