“What was his name?” Lia asked.

“Classified,” I responded automatically.  The last thing I wanted to think about was the freckle-faced private who had ultimately been our demise.  I still thought he went down way too easy when they hit him and wondered if he had been conscious though it all.  Regardless, if he hadn’t cracked, my unit might have made it through.  I might never have been captured.

She blinked a couple of times but didn’t ask again.

“When we wouldn’t cooperate, they went with Plan B.  They started rolling the cameras and told the world that we were invading their country unlawfully and all that bullshit.  They said they were going to execute one of us as a spy, and I told them to kill me, but they didn’t.  They took out the civilian dude just to make some fucking point.  I was bagged and loaded back into the truck and taken somewhere else—I don’t know where.  It took a lot longer than it had taken us to get to where they did the filming.  I’d counted maybe four hours before I ended up falling asleep.”

“Once we got there, it was pretty obvious the place was a fairly permanent site.  There were decently constructed buildings hidden in the rocks and not just soldiers there, but women and children, too.  I was dumped in a small room in the dark for a while, maybe just for the night—I’m not sure—and then they started all over again.  Mostly they deprived me of any food and water, trying to break me down.  I wasn’t too interested in dying of dehydration, but I figured at that point, I wasn’t going to make it anyway.”

I looked over at the clock on the nightstand and realized I had been talking for more than an hour and a half already.  I still hadn’t even gotten to the good shit—the shit that was likely going to make her turn and run.

“Give me a minute,” I said.  I stood up and walked out the door, not even bothering to put on a shirt or anything.  Luckily, the dude at the front desk was willing to sell me a few of his cigarettes, so I didn’t have to go far.

“Don’t smoke in the room,” he called out as I walked away.

Whatever.

I lit up with a pack of matches displaying the motel’s name on the front and walked into the room where Lia was still sitting on the bed.

“You smoke?”  She seemed taken aback.

“Not usually,” I replied.  I grabbed one of the plastic cups from the bathroom to use as an ashtray and put a little water in the bottom of it, then took my spot on the windowsill and went on.

“Once they figured out all their abuse wasn’t going to work on me, they tried just letting me rot for days at a time in-”

My throat tried to close up on me, like my body didn’t even want the words to come out of my mouth, but I swallowed hard and fought for a little control.

“They put me in a big hole in the ground out in the sun, sand everywhere, and when the sun got to the top of the sky, my back would blister in the heat.  After a few days of just leaving me there, they’d come up and ask if I wanted water.  Then they’d pour salt water all over me and leave.  Usually the next day, they’d haul me out and give me something to drink.  Then I was back in the hole.  I think they were trying to just…I don’t know…drive me crazy?  It probably worked.”

My organs felt like they were trying to climb out of my skin, and I realized I was gnawing on the edge of my thumb with the hand that didn’t contain the nearly burnt-down cigarette.  I stopped chewing on myself and tossed the butt into the cup of water.

Lia sat quietly, barely moving.  She was holding back tears, but I wasn’t looking for her sympathy.  I only wanted to get through this shit so she would understand and hopefully decide my reasons for all the shit I had done were valid enough.

“So, that’s where I stayed for months,” I finally said.  “Every once in a while they’d give me water and maybe some rice, but that was it.  I’d completely lost track of how long it had been, but one day when they brought me out, that same guy—the leader of that group, or one of them, at least—came back.  He started telling me a bunch of shit that was all classified information that he definitely shouldn’t have known.  I figured out then that the private I’d seen when they filmed us must have cracked.  He certainly would have had knowledge of the intel this guy was telling me.”

I leaned over and put my elbows on my knees.  Closing my eyes for a moment, I tried not to let the anger from that time get to me.

“Then he tells me when and where they picked the dude up.”  My hands clenched into fists.  “Turns out they had him long before they got me.  At some point, I realized he was the one who gave away our position, though it wasn’t confirmed until after I came home.”

“The private betrayed me,” Lia whispered.

“What?”

“You’ve said it in your sleep,” she replied, “a couple of times.”

More talking in my fucking sleep.  Ultimately, that was what cost Bridgett her life—she learned too much from me while I was napping.

“What else have I said?”  I swallowed past the tightness in my throat and awaited her answer.

“Nothing that made any sense,” she said.  “Like what you said about the private betraying you—I never would have known what that meant until you told me.  You’ve said the word ‘sand’ several times and something about being hit, and lots of letters and numbers that didn’t make sense.   I never understood anything else you said.”

I wondered what the letters and numbers might have meant.  They could have been military abbreviations, weapon types, codes—there were too many possible answers without having her write them down or something.  If she did that, then I would have to explain it to her, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to set myself up like that.

Maybe I could record myself sleeping.

“I’m sorry,” Lia said.  “I sidetracked you.”

“It’s all right.  I could use a break.”

We ate a little of the leftover pizza, and I took a minute to shave.  It was good to have the scruff off; I hated it when my face was stubbly and scratchy.  I wished I had my trimmers with me so I could give myself a haircut as well, but I was going to have to live with just the shave.

I made a valiant attempt to distract Lia into fucking again, but she wasn’t having any of it.  She quickly and definitively steered me back to my life’s story.  I sighed as I gave up and then sat with my back against the headboard.

“So I figured out the private was how they found us,” I went on, “and the insurgent leader continued to try to get more out of me.”

Flashes in my head started feeling like a hammer against my temples.

“You like to tell me your numbers?  I’ll give you numbers!  How about you count this?  Maybe we just keep going until we hit your number, huh?”

My gut tightened up, and my body went stiff.  For a moment, Lia and the motel room were gone, and there was nothing but sand and sweat and pain.

“Evan?  Evan, baby—it’s okay.  I’m right here.”

I felt hands on my face and realized my wrists weren’t bound.  I reached out and grabbed the arms that tried to encircle me, and then I heard her voice.

“It’s okay, Evan, it’s me.  It’s Lia.”

It was the cracking in her voice that brought me out of it.  My eyes found her, and I saw the streaks of tears running down her cheeks.  Releasing her forearms, I reached out and brushed one of the tears away.

“Sorry.”

“What were you remembering?” she asked.

I closed my eyes and swallowed.  I felt her fingers against my jaw and turned slightly to press my face to her palm.

“Just…everything he did.  Trying to get information…trying to break me.”

I opened my eyes to find her staring into my face.  My chest rose and fell as I tried to take in enough air.  I could see it—I could see it in her face.  She knew there was more, and she was going to ask for the details.  My hands clenched, and I started to hyperventilate.

“Evan.”  Lia’s voice was stern, the tone causing me to instinctively look to her eyes.  “You’re all right.  You are with me, and I’m not going to ask you anything else about that, okay?  He hurt you—I understand that—and that’s enough detail.”

I nodded once, then again.  My body was shaking uncontrollably, and I couldn’t even figure out how I’d let it get this far.  I could feel sand in my throat and up my nose, heat from the desert sun on my skin, and there were hands on my back and arms—pushing me down and holding me to the ground.

Then they were gone, and it was just me and Lia in a motel room bed.  Her arms were around my head, and I rested my cheek on her stomach.

* * *

“You don’t have to tell me any more.”

As much as I knew she was trying to make it easier, Lia giving me an out was actually making it more difficult.

“There’s a shit ton I haven’t told you,” I reminded her.  “You need to know about some of it because of what’s happening now.”

Lia sighed and nodded.

“I really had lost all track of time after I had been there a few months,” I said.  “I was always tied up, so I couldn’t even make scratches on a wall or anything, and I was in that…that fucking hole most of the time anyway.  I spent most of the time trying not to think, but there wasn’t anything else to do.  I counted up all my sins and asked God to forgive them.  I swore if He’d just let me die, I’d do the penance or whatever I needed to do—anything to stop the fucking pain.”

I paused and raised an eyebrow at her.

“So, no,” I said with a sardonic grin, “I’m not Catholic anymore.  God can kiss my ass for letting me rot there for a year and a half.”

Lia’s teeth grabbed her lower lip, and her eyes tensed.  She nodded slightly, and I went on with my story.