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Edit One, Two and Three of Alice's Story. She introduces her state of captivity.

Wake

By Brandon Wayne Stewart

 

Edit One: Goodnight

 

                I lost track of the days, somehow in my jotting of thoughts and feelings I neglected to write or even bother with a date. For almost a year, or what I could approximate as a year I’ve been toiling under the unforgiving sun every morning until sunset, I had no explanation of why I was doing this out of will, but my life was dependant on it and other options didn’t come by much you see.

            “I‘m still here!” I yelled out, gave a short chuckle, it’s not like the guards knew much English, and I doubt that they could’ve cared less at this point if they heard me. I was considered one of the lucky ones, I was one of the girls that weren’t systematically raped and killed. I was spared, because of my curiosity--perhaps, my interest in sharing his life. “He” was Jiang Li, my husband, no idea if he was living or among the dead. Wait, switch that thought, I didn’t want to know if he was living or among the dead. Being lead back to the warehouse, along the great walls of the camp, everything looked the same. Dead women who couldn’t keep up, or passed out from exhaustion tied to poles and cut open, some how as a--reminder for what could happen if our work wasn’t pleasing. Pleasing, had almost no definition anymore, or if it did, pleasing was replacing the words “don’t complain.” The walls were rusted, dull grey, and only colors came from the urine of the soldiers, the blood of their victims, and the vomit, of anyone whose stomach couldn’t handle the horrific nature of it all. Sometimes you could see the attack dogs, coming by to drag away the bodies, it was disgusting, the guts spilling out, and maybe a woman you worked with was in their jaws--well her arm, or leg at least. The dogs were something we naturally feared; though they were always a secondary threat in the camp usually the Dao was the number one way of scaring a woman. The ground was dead, the grass that inhabited it was practically non-existent. If you looked close enough you could see that this camp used to be a giant park. One day a younger girl found a small ball, she became over excited and wanted to play with it. It rolled away to a guard and he took it away from her. She asked for it back, but ended up shot for not working, regardless of the fact that the work day had ended.

            At least the meal plan wasn’t too bad. Every morning we ate rice and fish, maybe not fresh fish, but it still had a relatively decent taste to it. In the nights we would get a bowl of chow mien, and a cup of tea, it wasn’t the best I’d ever had, but when I first arrived here, I thought of much worse things to eat. On Fridays we got soy milk, sometimes, the soldiers would steal it from us, urinate in the cup and force us to drink it. It’s never happened to me before, but I assume my time isn’t too far away.

            The warehouse was just a giant room with a kitchen on the other end. We were scared to go to near it, or even stare at it. Once a girl was so hungry she tried to break the door down, and as a reminder of not to do that the guards cut her hands off, and etched “no” into the left palm, and “entry” into the right palm., and hung them above the door. Of course this girl couldn’t work without her two hands, so she was soon after raped and then killed. There were sleeping bags, all over the warehouse floor, even though many of us were killed in the beginning, many of us had still found it impossible to find space to sleep, still compact and squished, side by side. The room always looked gigantic until everybody was checked and entered inside.

            We all received our partition of food for the day, a little girl was hungry, so I gave her half of my food, I’ll most likely regret that while I’m trying to sleep on a unsatisfied stomach. The girls here call me “Toolbox,” most likely, because I knew a lot about the labor we do here at the camp whereas some of the girls (and we’ve been here for almost a year now) have no clue in what to do at all.

            I liked to look back, when my name was Alice, no one at the camp calls me that. To the guards I am just another rape in waiting. When did this all fall apart? It’s stupid to ask oneself questions, and expect an answer. Lights out now, meaning grab a bag and shut up. Tonight I got a warm one stitched up of a tablecloth and dungarees, it was nostalgic to see the material, you just didn’t get to see them here as much as I did years ago. Years ago I was happier, I think by general consensus we all were. Yet I feel like my past is just a shadow and my brain is the setting sun, never to rise again. I always reminisce about the past, maybe as a mechanism to never forget it. We all still have hope that things will change, but even hope can’t comprehend what’s happened.

            Sometimes we talked after lights out--well a lot of times we talked to the other women, we would talk about our past, some of us would tell lies just for the sake of it. (We had tried singing once, but we were beaten in the morning for it). Some of the stories we would tell were pretty embellished, but they felt relieving, we had a girl whose husband died just to protect her from being raped, we had a girl who had travelled all across Asia, and had just been here at the wrong time. Also we had another girl, one of the most important girls, we called her “Library,” I think her name was Mary a year ago, she was the heart of our sanity. She would tell us stories from across the world, she used to work in a library in London, England before she came back to retire, she had read tons of books, and always took us away with stories from a man named Charles Dickens, she told us he was a great writer, but long dead now.

            I probably had heard of Charles Dickens, but maybe my mind just didn’t care enough to remember. I wasn’t uneducated, or illiterate, or possessive of any educational hindrances. I had attended the University of Toronto. Jiang had helped me pay for it, sometimes when I trail back to the first thing Jiang ever did for me, I find many faded memories, only because the gestures are countless. Not to go too far off topic, I guess in the university I just never really liked to read. Well maybe I did, just not that I care to reminisce about those readings.

            Library was sleeping tonight, and so the conversations were short. It was no surprise, though, we did the same thing together for months, and what we had went through before we arrived here was nothing short of hell, in some of the girls minds, they wish they were one of the dead bodies outside. As a result, the conversations got boring and nothing new could be told, because nothing new happened. Stories would only last so long, and only the good ones told by Library, or the girl who travelled across Asia could be told again without getting too repetitive. Maybe tomorrow something interesting would happen, something that could paint a smile on our faces. It was always nice to have hopes, but those would turn quickly into despair.

            With nothing left to say or do, I took out the little note I was holding, I’ve  held on to it since I was in high school, and it was the most important possession I had ever kept, I read it whenever I was feeling down. A guard was coming so I pocketed the tattered note; I guess I would read it tomorrow. Goodnight.

 

 

Edit Two: Rain

 

                Mornings were the worst, and they weren’t necessary. Every morning the guards would come circling us, sometimes even stepping on us, and play loud headache-inducing sirens. No time to feel pain though, no time to comprehend where you were or what your next body function was. We all had to line up to go squat by the makeshift buckets at the other side of the camp; we were only allowed to use the bathroom in the morning and in the evening. If we ever asked to go in the night, and in rare cases we did, we always told the guard we wanted to s**t. It was the standard lie that would make raping us when we were in smaller groups or alone unappealing. Who ever was at the end of the bathroom line, would have the depreciated honor of carrying all the buckets to the drain area and digging a hole for the crap. I did that once, I remember I vomited all over my shovel, and the smell was daunting, I felt like dying then and there.

            After the disgusting episode of the morning bathroom lines were over, we would head to our stations. We were forced to build parts for some machine we weren’t told much about it however. Long pipes, hinges, some sheet metals, and some nuts and bolts had to be crafted. There wasn’t any safety code in the camp, but luckily there hadn’t been any accidents. The careful nature of the girls had come from the fact that any injury would cause us to be considered unfit to work, and therefore become a rape in waiting and then murdered.

            Working wasn’t all that bad though, the job was repetitive, and not really all that hard once you had gotten a motion going, it was the sun that made the job unbearable. The sun fortunately wasn’t out today, and there were a lot of clouds, but that would mean it would rain. We didn’t get any breaks because of the rain; we would have to work as efficiently and as fast, just as if the weather was perfectly fine.

            It was when the rain came though that some of us, including myself began to cry. We couldn’t cry too hard, or too loud, because a guard may catch us not working, but we could cry without the fear of getting caught. We had to suppress so many feelings, the feelings we had about our lives outside the camp, our homes that were destroyed, and the countless loved ones we had. I cried a lot for Jiang, I do miss him a lot, though I know he may be long gone by now.

            Sometimes I do consider escape, but it’s too risky, I wouldn’t want to die so horridly like the girls in this camp did, and most importantly, I had no idea where I was. We were driven out of Hong Kong, into a desolate and scorched Shenzhen, and then we went into big trucks, that didn’t stop for hours. We had no idea how far or where we had ended up. I wish I could escape though, the raindrops hitting my shoulders seemed to whisper, “do it,” but this was just my imagination clearly. Wait, no switch that thought, that was just my brain telling me to just die. Escape however, was on the minds of a lot of us, but no one could step up and make a plan, and I doubt that there would be anything near an uprising at the camp.

            Shortly after the crying, and the suicidal thoughts, we get ten minutes to sit down, we aren’t allowed to go and converse, so we usually just sit down and be alone with our thoughts. It was the long--shortest ten minutes that I’ve ever experienced. Many of us didn’t even bother taking the break. It didn’t make us feel relaxed or any better.

            Come to think of it, the rain had so many risks that came along with it. We were dressed really poorly and we already had really bad living conditions and mediocre food, getting sick was terrifying. For us in the camp, being sick was getting pregnant as a teenager, and each guard was your mother, or your mother’s mouthy friend. I was sick once, and Library helped hide it from the guard, I still owe her for that, she told me that I have to let her meet Jiang when we got out--assuming he was the same man I had left on the island. The rain also increased our depression. Which made it even harder to work, but we did work regardless, “Chinese efficiency is top,” said Zhou Ming once. I guess when it comes to being slaves we get to be considered Chinese, whatever that means.

            Suddenly I hear screams, looking around I can see that one of the girls cut herself on one of the machines, the guards are now surrounding her, none of us are allowed to try to help her. Her fate is sealed, first she will beg to keep working, but the rain today will seep into the cut, and sting painfully, so that will be impossible. The guards will struggle with her for awhile and drag her off to the beds; nothing really has to be said after that. She looks like a teenager, she is in a tattered shirt possibly belonging to an outfit from a school uniform, and her pants look like she was in a gym class when the chaos began. It was horrible watching her fight, my soul was writhing in pain, I wanted to scream out and yell, but I couldn’t. She was hit really hard, and then collapsed. The guards then dragged her away. We assumed it would be the end of her. From the looks of it, her hands got too slippery because of the rain, and as a result she injured herself. The only thing left was her blood stains on the machine, but that was now being washed away by the unremorseful rain, as we watched the blood wash down the large machine, and the red color dissolving to the colorless, pale rain.

            The rain was never good, but the sun wasn’t much of a friend either. Nothing was, except for the other girls, and with all the rules we had, we could barely be friends to each other. I still have that girl’s innocent face at the back of my thoughts. I hope her death was fast and without pain. She would’ve had another day, if it wasn’t for the rain. The rain was a poison. The rain replaced the sun, but brought its own terrors that were comparably worse in my opinion.

            “Rain, rain go away come again another day,” I whispered singing to myself while working away, “or never again if you don’t mind,” I said to myself in my head.

            The hours went by and the sirens blared, and that was the end of the work for today. It was time for us to go back into the long bathroom line, “--Yippee.”

 

 

Edit Three: Lucky

 

 

                Rancid smells, splashing and farting fills the air, I consider myself fortunate, I was able to get into the line quick enough to not have to endure the trial of how long I could hold my nose until I almost suffocate. Reminds me, strangely, wait no switch that thought, it reminds me amazingly that no one in the camp has even attempted to commit suicide. As interesting as it is to think about, I don’t think I will dwell on it much, it might get me into a consideration of it.

            Now we go to a second line, a line to be searched and then admitted back into the warehouse, searches were sometimes quick and easy, but other times, it would just compose of two guards groping your body for about two, three minutes or so. I have already been groped a couple of times, not sure if I should consider that a compliment from the guards, or something I should fear. Today unfortunately I will be groped. The guards surrounded me, one in front, and one behind. The one behind me went first; he slid his hands without hesitation down my pants, and began squeezing my butt, and rubbing my legs. The guard in front of me, grabbed my breasts, and I’m not sure what he found so interesting about them, since they weren’t really much to begin with, and started rubbing the n*****s with his two fingers. Then they would switch, the guard in front of me was really perverted, and he pulled down my pants, to see what he was grabbing. He kissed my butt cheeks, like a mother who kissed a son that had run away and had returned the next morning. Then, nothing more, my pants came back to my waist, and my n*****s were released. Maybe the conditions we lived in had saved my life. The guards were idiots, but didn’t really like to take risks. Many of the girls in the camp understood basic sanitary methods, but it got harder and harder to maintain them. We only got a new pad every two months to use, so we’d be reusing the blood stained one from the month before. Disgusting yes I know it is.

            When I entered the warehouse, I was shocked, I saw something I never expected to see, it was the teenager who had just injured herself. She had received bandages on her arm, and she was drinking tea. How had she survived? I assumed she went to the beds, after she was dragged off, but I never looked to confirm it. She even had a towel one her head to dry off her hair. The guards were never this nice, I wonder what had happened. She was lucky no doubt about it, my hair was still wet, and like everyone else I would be trailing water droplets across the floor, that would be a bad sleep. I tried to use my hands to dry it while I walked by rinsing out the hair onto my clothing, but a lot of water came out onto a sleeping bag, so I had ruined a girls chance of a good night sleep. The girls all were in now, some of them were crying, most likely they had been felt up by the guards on their way in too. We all picked a place to sit down, and I sat down near the teenager, I really wanted to figure out what had happened to her after we saw her dragged away. Library came and she looked even more puzzled than I had when I entered the warehouse and had sat down right beside her. Other girls came by too, even a really tough girl we called, “Muscle Baby,” she was so intimidating when she sat down and stared at the teenager.

            “Why are you here?” asked Muscles, whispering, but still intimidating.

            “What do you mean?” countered the teenager. She looked terrified, as if Muscles was one of the guards.

            “We saw you get dragged off, how did you make it back here?” whispered Library.

            “I don’t know,” replied the teen, her head was down in shame.

            “Did you do something wrong?” asked another girl. Maybe she didn’t do something wrong, or maybe she should’ve rephrased it and asked if she did something wrong�"right.

            “I woke up in a room, and a well dressed guard was staring at me,” said the teen, again no attempt to move her head looking straight down was evident.

            “So then?” asked Library, not taking much consideration to the discomfort the teenager may be feeling.

            “He gave me a towel and asked, what had happened, I told him I was working hard, then he gave me a pill, and I was taken back here,” said the teenager, she tried to make eye contact with Library, but even Library gave intimidating stares.

            Gasps went across the circles of girls that were listening, that was never the case ever before at the camp.

            “Lucky!” one girl almost spoke too loud, her friend covered her mouth.

            “You are very lucky,” said Muscles, “what’s your name?”

            “Anna,” said the teenager.

            “Well Anna, I think we are going to call you Lucky from here on,” said Library.

            From that a swarm of question started hitting Lucky. She was questioned about the guard, about the room she was in, about how long she didn’t have to work, and if she’d ever see that guard again. She didn’t answer many of the questions, most of the answers she gave composed of “I’m not sure.” Library didn’t look completely satisfied after a few minutes. I think she was thinking what I was. Her story seemed too simple, there had to be more to it, something that the teenager just wasn’t telling us. However, this was her night in the spotlight, for today she had survived where many girls hadn’t. Library looked concerned, and I was too, but she should be left alone, to be the awe of the girls in the camp.

            At lights out, Library told us the story of Aladdin and we all started whispering out our faint dreams and wishes to one another. Library told us that if we ever found a lamp, we should hide it and make sure no guards take it away, because a genie may be in there waiting to save us from this horrible place.

            “If you find it, give to Lucky, she can keep it safe,” one girl said.

            Lucky gave a shy smile, not wanting to be rude she said, “Maybe I could.”

            Lucky was close to a blessing in the camp. Her story seemed to be full of holes, but she gave everyone at the camp a glimmer of hope. Tomorrow we would not be working at all, apparently the camp was under a new supervisor and so he decided that our productivity could be boosted by taking a break. Maybe he took a note from the Nazis. I didn’t know much about the Nazis, but I had learned in better times that they wanted to kill all Jews and erase them from the face of the earth.

            Before I went to sleep that night, I took a long look at Lucky, I still yearned to learn what had happened to her. I wanted to know what exactly she was really hiding, but I guess that would be for another day, another time�"if my time wasn’t coming to an end of course, but I didn’t see it that way anyways. I’ll focus my thoughts on Jiang for the duration of my sleep, and hopefully I can have a dream about him. Just something to slip my mind away from the hellish domain it was a resident in.

Author's Note

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