The last day they saw each other, they
didn’t say a word. They just stared and finally left, each own his or hers on
way. They were six people and they had all been there as the war had happened.
They had been useful servants, slaves if you will. They had done everything
they were ordered and even then the ones that ruled over that place had beaten
them with sticks or solid rods. Everyone was cruel and sick during the war and
the secret that they all shared was proof of that. When it happened, they all shared
that moment but they never really spoke about it. First, because there was no
time to do so and, second, because it was extremely hard for them to do it. The
war then pressed on and reached its desired end; they were liberated one
morning and found themselves to be free.
Clara was the youngest of the group and the
first one to leave that horrible place. She noticed, as she left in a truck
filled with liberated people, how the surrounding forest was still dark and
scary and how it had no life inside of it. It had been rendered lifeless by the
atrocities of war. Eventually, Clara made it to the nearest town and there she
desired to get to a port and then away from that forsaken continent. But she
never got to do it because she had no money. She decided to work in the town,
doing small chores all over. It was doing so that she met a nice young man, a
baker, and she fell in love. They eventually married and had a very large and
happy family. She was almost seventy years old when she received a phone call,
one she never thought she would get.
Robert, the youngest man, left in the
following truck. Its destination was another place like the one he had come
from, which made him sick. He vomited several times and made the soldiers think
he was sick with something. They left him in a provisional hospital, not too
far from there. He wasn’t sick, just nervous and scared. In the hospital, one
of the doctors asked him for help, as nurses were very scarce. Eventually, Bob
followed the medicine man to a big city in the south and there he paid Robert’s
studies to become a doctor. The man turned to be a second father who loved
Robert as his own son had died months earlier in battle. Bob turned himself
into a great doctor, getting the call too after one of his lectures.
The oldest was Irina, a woman that didn’t say
a word and that left the place by foot. She was not that older but she had seen
more of life than Clara and Robert. She was hunted by the violent deaths of her
family, which she couldn’t forget. Feet bleeding, she collapsed and was rescued
by a group of women, who nursed her back to health. They were also escaping
violence, so she joined them. The group eventually settled in the east and
became of the first feminist groups of the area. They were adamant in their
convictions and Irina proved to be a real fighter. She did good things for
women all over the region and was in a frail state when she got her call.
Next was Alexander, who was the first one that
talked publicly about the atrocities he had seen. He became a renowned writer
after been able to travel abroad and reunite with his family. He was member of
an aristocratic family who had disowned him but now that everything had change,
they recognized him again and even more as his fame grew larger. Alexander
published books about the war, all very successful. He did novels, and
documentaries and short stories. He even sold his rights to make movies about
the subject. By the time he was an older man, he was one of the richest persons
on that side of the world. Privately, he had grown tired of the subject but as
it was his life, he couldn’t drop it. His call caught him in the middle of the
night.
Marissa was the only one that had been
transferred from a proper prison camp. She had seen other atrocities and when
she was transferred she thought she would have a better life but she didn’t.
After the liberation, she had to be institutionalized because of her mental
state. She received shock therapy for several months and was even the subject
of several dissertations about paranoia. She was finally released to a resting
home when she was a woman in her forties. She had no skills and had been
permanently damaged but that didn’t stop people at the home to make her clean
floors and bathrooms, use her as many had used her before. Then, one morning,
someone came and took her away.
To complete the group, there was Louis. He had
been a musician but after the war his fingers were not the same ones. He
couldn’t play anything and he did not have any other skills. He tried finding a
job as a waiter or as a chauffeur, but he would always ruin it by having awful
breakdowns that involved hitting himself repeatedly. His guilt always showed
itself to others, and it couldn’t be controlled. He was violent and
unpredictable so, when one day he shot himself in the head, no one really made
a fuss about it. So many people that had been liberated were committing
suicide, so it wasn’t a real shock. When they called Louis, trying to locate
him, the news hit hard and deep.
The person who called was Clara. She had
started to contact everyone else for one simple reason and that was because she
had received a call by a state officer who was investigating the events that
took place in that place in the woods all those years ago. They had identified
her as a resident for some time, as well as some others. They wanted to talk to
them in order to know exactly what went on there because there were these
rumors and it was necessary to know if they were true. Clara just hung up,
asking her husband never to pick it up again. When the government came to her
doorstep, she chased them away.
For her, it was too much. Her children and
husband didn’t understand, but for Clara it was all a disaster. She was an
older woman now, someone who had already done what she had to do, and someone
that was already planning to come to terms with her existence as a human being.
Clara was almost ready to meet her maker and she had no intention to face the
human justice. That was when she had the idea to track all of the people that
had been there with her, in those basements with rooms with no windows or
proper lighting. She looked for them and after some time she had called them
all. They had all agreed to meet, no questions asked, in the town where she
lived.
It was fun, at least for a while, to see how
different everyone was. Clara had been a housewife all of her life so she did
an effort to look good. She was the one who picked up Clara and, with the help
of her husband, nursed her back to a better health in order to be more aware of
the world. But Marissa was gone and would rather play with the dogs than talk
to those people she didn’t know anymore. Bob and Alex looked fantastic. They
were all so dapper and successful in their respective fields. But once there,
once they got all together, they went back to being young and simple. Irina
walked slow and needed to be waited and helped. But her demeanor was strong and
resilient, having struggled all of her life for others. They reunited and, once
again, just stared.
But those empty looks turned into tears and
hugs and kisses. They had never done that while at the woods, they had never
shared a moment of love because love had been outlawed. They only law, the only
real thing there was violence and cruelty and they had been poisoned by it.
They talked about their lives and about how everything had changed but had
stayed the same in some parts. They also spoke about Louis and Marissa was the
first one to smile when hearing his name. She had helped him once and they were
the only friends in existence in that awful place. They went there and the cold
wind that greeted them made all the memories come back.
The place was now a museum with a park. A
young woman came to them as asked if they wanted to take a tour of the place
but they told her they knew it too well. They each told the story of how they
had gotten there and how they had gotten out of it. They also confessed to have
helped to the killing of several people, including children. The place was used
as a testing site for several weapons: biological, chemical and
radioactive. They also tortured them
with other experiments and them, who were prisoners, were made to watch and
help. If they didn’t, they died. So they did. That place had been hell and now
they had liberated themselves from it, in order to leave it there forever.
