THE CORDS BURN your wrists like fire. Straining against the bonds only seems to make them tighter. You’re long past struggling, but even the slightest movement brings bright, fresh pain – like bracelets of broken glass grinding into your skin, cutting off your circulation and slicking your palms with blood. The stiff rails of the creaking wooden chair back dig into your spine and in some distant part of your mind, you absently wonder what kind of rope they used to secure your hands to the armrests. But that type of thinking isn’t productive. Right now, you have to keep your mind focused on the questions, which have become less frequent. And the answers, which you don’t have.

************************************************

YOU THINK BACK to those first few minutes, after they pulled you over. Rifling through the glove compartment for your insurance card as the red, white, and blue lights danced across your dashboard, – anxious and a little confused. You don’t remember speeding. Your papers are in order. Other than being a little behind on registration fees, you have done nothing wrong. You assume the police had simply made a mistake.

But it quickly becomes obvious that they considered you to be guilty of a crime far worse than driving with expired tags.

************************************************

YOU SEE two shadows approach cautiously from the rear of the car on either side, guns drawn; a third appears just outside the driver’s side window. Barrel chested, one hand gripping a baton, the palm of the other resting on the butt of his service revolver.

You move to roll down the window to ask what the problem is, and the glass shatters; a barrage of arms rushes in – hands frantically grasping for purchase – and any hope for a good-natured misunderstanding is lost in a flurry of unintelligible orders. Menacing, threatening, furious. You feel a paralyzing jolt of panic and confusion as they pull you from the car, spin you around, and slam you onto the hood. Worse is the excruciating pain as they yank your hands behind you so forcefully that one of your shoulders pops as the cuffs click into place.

Blinded by the patriotic strobe of the bubble lights, your head bounces off the door frame as they thrust you in the back of the cruiser. You land face-first on the glistening black seats, gagging on the cloying stench of bile, cracked vinyl, and Armor All. Too stunned to even sit up as the car races ahead, the siren wailing like a banshee.

A bright sliver of moon keeps pace with the car, gliding along silently behind an army of pines rushing by in a blur outside the window. Time becomes disjointed and the last of your coherent thoughts fade away as a suffocating cloak of panic swallows you whole.

************************************************

You can’t logically connect how you went from being pulled over at the side of the road to being half-dragged, half-pushed down a dark hallway in the basement of the police station. Your questions hang in the air unanswered; your pleas ignored. Your tongue is sandpaper. Butterflies rage in your stomach. Your heart once again threatens to vaporize.

The door at the end of the hallway is open, but the space beyond is black. The man in the lead walks ahead and disappears into the room.

A dim yellow bulb winks to life at the end of a black cord hanging from the ceiling, revealing a bleak cement room devoid of any furnishings other than two ladder back chairs facing each other in the center. A cracked porcelain sink weeps rusted water in the corner, the mirror above it coated with grime. There is a drain in the floor.

You can feel yourself dissociating again, becoming separate. If not for the officers holding you up, you are certain you would faint. Hands tighten on your biceps and you seem to be watching from just over your shoulder as they usher you into the room, your feet barely touching the cold gray concrete.

************************************************

YOU’VE LOST all track of time, but estimate that you’ve been strapped to the chair for at least six hours. There is a clock on the wall, but its hands are frozen at 2:17. The straight wooden back digs into your spine, the dark oak seat stained with your sweat. Leeching into the grain almost intimately. Strangely, you’ve begun to think of it as your chair, though surely you’re not the first person to sit here. In this room. With these men.

************************************************

THEY STARE at you from a few feet away, one seated in a chair almost identical to yours, the other two standing on either side of him. The one with the gloves steps forward, kneels before you, tilts your head toward the mirror over the sink. You stifle a cry at the ruined face staring back at you, unrecognizable. Eyes bulging like golf balls in their sockets; hair matted in crimson; nose bent at an impossible angle, a ghostly branch of bone peeking through. Your head drops to your chest, your whimper punctuating the air with a fine mist as you notice two of your teeth in the growing pool of blood in your lap. Another blinding flash of pain as his gloved fist connects with your jaw. Then blackness.

************************************************

MUFFLED LAUGHTER. Snippets of conversation. And again that terrible hiss-crackle that dims the light. White hot pain from the wires snaking between your legs. Electricity biting your groin like a clumsy, overzealous lover. One of your nails breaks off as the muscle spasms painfully contract your fingers against the oak.

You no longer need a question. Rational thought has abandoned you. The words gush from your mouth in a torrent. Prayers, lies, and pleas all blend together in an unintelligible stream. But you no longer care. You have to tell them something. Anything. Just to make this stop. The light dims again and you marvel at just how much pain the body can withstand…

Coerced confessions

manufacturing the truth

one blow at a time