Interrogation waiting

Illustration for EC's novel "The Courier" - www.asstr.org/~caligula97030/c…

Maria Elena sat in silence. The cell was cold and she curled up to try to keep warm. As she sat in the darkness, completely naked in the small dismal room, a despair and anguish unlike anything she had ever experienced swept over her. Her bottom continued to ache from the cruel paddling she had received, but what had followed tormented her soul even more. Even though she was unfamiliar with Danubian culture and spoke nothing of the country’s language, she fully understood the extent to which they had humiliated her in that room.

Oh, to be lost in this horrible place in Central Europe, in a country she never had heard of before her plane landed and where no one spoke Spanish…would she even make it out alive? No one knew she was here, so, what was to prevent the Danubians from simply killing her? Was that possible? But then again, did it matter if she died in Danube City? Even assuming she would be released within a few months, she didn’t see how she could return to Colombia and face her family, not after that experience in the interrogation room. But then, even if she wanted to return to Colombia, that option was no longer open to her. She had lost her cocaine load due to her own negligence and probably would be killed by her trafficking group. If she wasn’t killed for that, she would be killed for having given up what she knew about her handlers. God knows what the Danubians would do with that information once they translated it…give it to the Colombian National Police, most likely. No, she couldn’t go home…better that she simply die here and be forgotten…

So this was it for Maria Elena Rodriguez-Torres. At age 19, her life was over. There was no future for her; she never would amount to anything. All those wrong choices, wrong people, quitting school, quitting her job, leaving her boyfriend for that guy with the flashy car, not listening to her mother…this is what it had led to. Sitting alone and naked in a dark holding cell in Eastern Europe, waiting to die…

She did not cry. She was past crying. She thought that she could actually feel Death creeping into the cell, cloaking her with darkness and preparing to take her into Hell…