The Journey to Freedom: Path to WW3

Chapter I

"Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself." 

Walter Anderson

     With the pain searing down my face, then going down my spine like goose bumps. I can only see the blood dripping from my lip to the floor from all the punches to my face and to my stomach. As I look up and see my hands chained to the ceiling I sometimes wonder how it came to this. 

"How did I get mixed up with these people and how do I get out of it?"  I think to myself.

     As I see the guy getting ready to punch me in the face again I try not to think of the pain anymore, as soon as his fist gets to the point of hitting my face again, everything turns white and I start to recall my childhood.

     I was never that strong. As a child I had to learn how to deal with pain. When I was little I took the beatings that my father gave me and the beatings that he gave my mother. I recall the time my father hit me only because I crossed his view from watching a game on the television or when he would hit my mother because his food wasn't hot enough or it wasn't to his liking. Growing up in an abusive home didn't mean that I would be abusive myself; it just meant that I would not be like my father. I saw many things that always made me wonder "what did that person do to deserve that?"

As the punch lands on my cheek, my reminiscing of my past goes away. 

"Where are the others?" The guy asks me.

"I don't know. I have no idea what you are talking about."  I respond.

     I get a kick in my stomach and then I feel like I'm about to pass out and another memory kicks in, I remember when I was playing soccer, when I was eight years old and I was playing defense, well the forward that was playing against me kicked the ball so hard that when it made contact with my chest, I felt all the air leave my body and felt like my chest was caving in. Well that's how the pain of the kick in my stomach felt like.

Another guy pulls my hair back and childhood memory is driven away by the pain in my head. 

"For the last time, where are the rebels?" He yells at me. 

I spit in his face and say "fucking your mom" and then I give him a smirk. 

     He raises a two by four and I can already imagine where this is going. Maybe I should tell him where the others are. Maybe I should tell him everything but then what kind of a person would I be? How can I betray those people? The very same people that are only trying to survive.

     The people that are trying to survive only do so by living in a country that doesn't belong to them anymore. In a country where every day we live just to survive from those soldiers that have betrayed their vow to protect our country from tyranny? 

     Soldiers aren't meant to join in tyranny and enforce it, they are meant to defend the people, but obviously money talks and not everyone in the world is rich. I get hit in the back with the two by four and fear the worst, but no, no broken ribs nor a broken back. 

     My body sure is stubborn when it comes to being broken so easily. Well Nicholas, you sure did it now, this has got to be the worst situation you have ever put yourself in.