Dating : THE WORD by Annie Bee

THE WORD by Annie Bee

Author’s Note: This is just something I whipped up as I laid in bed after a night of back pain. Happy reading!

I had stepped off the plane, dying to see how the USA had changed, and if my best friend on this entire rotting planet would be there to welcome me back.

He never disappoints.

“Hey bruh, long time, no see! Tell me all about your travels.”

We hugged as I expressed incomprehensible joy at seeing my trusted companion again, after all my years of solitude.

“It was fun, but I’m relieved to be back. What all has changed? Did we get a new president? One with more than 2 ounces of brain and possibly one with more tact?”

He rushed to place his hand over my mouth. With intense eyes, he warned, “Stop talking about our president like that…Yes, we got a new one, and he doesn’t like us talking bad about the powers that be. He’s got ears everywhere, especially here. So, zip it.” He gradually lifted his hand from my mouth, leaving me dazed for a few seconds.

Questions bombarded my brain as I strained to understand what he meant. Getting to the heart of the issue, I laid out my question. “What do you mean? This is AMERICA. He can’t just do that, even if he’s the president. It’s unconstitutional.”

My friend tackled me down, breathing heavily into my ear as he cut off the air from my lungs with his big bear arms. I tried to nudge him off of me, but I’m afraid my vegan diet had dropped me down a size from his weight class. No more even wrestling matches any more.

He whispered in my ear. “You have a LOT to learn. Things have changed, and you’ve got to change with them, or else things will not go well for-”

Suddenly, I felt myself being dragged across the shiny airport floor. Whoever it was that dragged me also gagged me and strapped a hood over my head. The next I knew, I was in a part of the building I didn’t know existed. They tied me to a chair and uncovered my head. I spit the gag out as they walked away.

I was enraged. “I thought this was a free country! What about my rights? Freedom of speech and all that? You can’t just arrest me without cause!”

One of the guy’s came back toward me and shoved the gag back in. Then, just like that, he left.

Silence, then darkness. Again.

After what seemed like a few hours, I heard shuffling, then a distinct sound, almost like a whirring. My breathing paced rapidly. The air grew suddenly frigid as my memory began to fade.

When I came to, the gag was gone, so naturally, the first thing I tried to do was speak. Opening my mouth, I let out a muted sound. Searing pain pounded my temple and a hoarseness that wasn’t present before spliced my vocal cords.

What did they do?

I tried to speak again, but only strained coughs resounded. I was trapped in this state of wordlessness, an oppression reserved for animals, not upright bipeds, all because I said something the government hated, for whatever reason. Much like a bird with wings clipped too short, I began to lose some shred of hope I had left.

The lights then lurched back on, revealing two strange men wearing hazmat suits. My body seized up as they approached me.

“Don’t worry, little guy. We’re gonna take you some place real special and cozy.”

Little guy? Are they insane? I’m not 12. I may look 16, but not 12. C’mon.

The next thing I knew, they handcuffed me to one of their wrists and escorted me to another secluded, unmarked area of the dank building. I smelled something stagnant, almost like a neglected fish tank. The stench grew stronger as we neared our destination.

My face began to perspire. My teeth chattered. A breeze picked up as we entered the small room, taking my breath away, but how? We were still inside. This cemented room didn’t have a single vent. They shoved me inside and shut the metal door. I peered around the room. Nothing seemed too out of place besides the fact that I was being held captive, for no good reason.

I felt the breeze again. Bizarre. It seemed like it fell from the ceiling. I watched as some type of mist sprayed out from sprinkler-esque contraptions. Like the rash person I was, I allowed the strange mist to enter my eyes. Pain. Pain worse then I’ve ever felt, and I’ve been pepper sprayed as a trainee jail guard. This was worse. MUCH worse. My memory faded again, and I blacked out.

BANG.

Bent over in pain and gasping for air, I woke up to the blurry sight of more hazmat suits. These guys didn’t seem as friendly as the other ones from before. What person in their right mind wakes another human being up with a punch to the gut? I guess it was these ones, although I wasn’t sure exactly how human they were.

They placed a paper and pencil in front of me and told me to write in response to their interrogations, since my throat was still clogged.

“What kind of person must you be to even utter that vile word?” The guy said. “Didn’t you know this would cost you and your family? Lives are in danger because of you. How selfish can you be?”

I sat in a stunned confusion. What did they mean? What was the dreaded word I dare not ever utter?

So, I retaliated with my own question, asking them point blank what the word was. I slid the paper across the table to my questioners. The tallest guy picked it up and chuckled.

“Wise crack, aren’t you? What do you know? Huh? You some kind of spy or agent?” With that, he slid the paper back over to me.

I decided right then and there that if I wanted to preserve my life, I had better cooperate, so I decided to make some stuff up to appease them.

I wrote the words, “I’m a bibliophile. I simply read aloud from a book that mentioned the word. It was a slip up. That’s all. I deeply regret my actions. Please show me mercy.” I handed the paper back over to them. The guy’s face contorted into a sarcastic, amused expression that made him seem less human.

“Tell you what, if you aren’t gonna tell us, then we’ll have to try other methods.” With that, they placed the gag back in my mouth, which didn’t make sense since I couldn’t talk anyway. They also tied my hands to each other, then moved down to my ankles.

They brought out a bucket of water. Great.

I knew where this was going. One hazmat suit tilted my chair back on its hind legs while the other began pouring the liquid on my covered face.

All this for saying one word?

It must be a doozy of a word. My parents would soap my mouth for swearing when I was a youngen’, but this was just plain mean.

Choking, I slammed my hands on the table repeatedly, as best as I could, urging them to relent.

After a few more treacherous minutes, they uncovered my face. I retched out the gag and gulped in the entirety of the room’s oxygen inside a single breath. Freedom. At least for a second.

“Changed your tune? You going to start talking now or what?” They tilted me back onto the four legs of the chair and pressed my face on to the paper with their oversized, gloved hands. “WRITE.”

I didn’t know what to write, so I just wrote the first thing that popped into my head. I’ve never been good at thinking on my feet. I guess I would have to be now.

Awkwardly juggling the pencil between my bound hands, I wrote to save my life.

“One word: unconstitutional. Let me go.”

Wrong move.

Without hesitation, the burly men bent me over the table and hurled the chair over my back, making such a loud impact that I thought it might’ve shattered my shoulder blades. These guys were two twisted, sadistic maniacs. What kind of top secret organization was this? Obviously, no organization in the United States would treat anyone with such insane cruelty. Right?

Unrelenting, the guys tore the clothes off my back as if they were paper. One of them, I don’t know which one, grabbed my skin and twisted it between his thumb and index finger. Ouch.

My jerk reaction was to scream bloody murder, but still, no words echoed- only the sounds of my muffled writhing and the sadistic twits mutilating me.

No more words. Only pain.

Then it hit me: why THIS word?

Why the word “unconstitutional?”

Did it have some kind of connotation or double meaning I wasn’t familiar with? I remember this being a peaceful place, with freedom of religion, of press, of speech, where we could go about our days sniffing glue if we so chose. Now what? Is this a wasteland or some kind of Auschwitz 2.0 that brutally sucks the life from its naive members?

I didn’t understand it. It had only been four years since I had left this great nation to do some backpacking and living off the grid. I come back, and it’s like God himself flipped the world upside down, allowing the good qualities to drain out onto the cosmic floor, never to be seen again.

What happened?

Before I could answer my own question, another swing of the chair had landed, and everything darkened.