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The whirring of the machines outside ground loud and reverberated inside the container. I clamped my hands firmly over my ears but it was still deafening. I thought my head might split open.
“I have to go!” Ohara yelled. “I love you!”
He shut the hidden door and was gone. I was alone.
I pressed my hands harder over my ears and fell onto the makeshift mattress on the floor. My muscles shivered and my bones shook.
Shouts erupted outside and the thick bunches of chains rapped hard on the outside of my cube. It might have been rain… if it was made of solid chunks of iron.
The heavy machine whirred and the cube rose. I instinctively lay flat on my back, my hands grasping at the metal floor, my heels digging into the soft sponge of my bed as the cube rose and swung around. My stomach trailed two yards behind me.
That was when I realized another big difference between a long-haul flight and escaping in a cube — safety belts! They might have been useless when you were thousands of feet in the air but at least they gave the impression of safety!
I shut my eyes and tried to imagine the calmest, most peaceful thing I could — a gorgeous sandy beach somewhere, with cool water lapping at my feet. Ohara would lie beside me — no, I would be wrapped in his arms. He would clutch me close like a priceless heirloom. And right then, at that indistinct moment in the future, I would recall this moment in the cube and it would make the beach all the sweeter.
It was the rough times we went through in everyday life that made such moments beautiful and important.
I felt my shoulders relax even as my stomach swung back and forth like a pendulum on the arm of a grandfather clock. My entire body rattled when the cube was finally put down.
The chains were released and rasped as they slid off my cube and went off to fetch another container. After that, everything was relatively peaceful.
I peered around at my surroundings. My reading material was — bizarrely — pop music magazines from the 1990s and ragged secondhand books that had seen better days. There was a mixture of genres, from science fiction to adventure, thrillers, and even a couple of romances.
My heart soared at the thought of Ohara going out of his way to source these things for me. It was the little things that made all the difference.
There was a heavy thump as another cube was placed on top of mine. The metal groaned ominously and I lay there, staring up at it, concerned it might give way and crush me.
But what was the use in worrying? If it was going to crush me, it was going to crush me. There was precisely nothing I could do about it.
The loading process seemed to take forever, but once it was done, an eerie silence came over the entire cube. Pervading silence amplified every noise I made. It seemed cacophonous in my ears.
I wondered how I would know when we had taken off, and the moment the thought came to me, I felt the familiar movement of an airplane taking off — that inertia when my stomach lurched somewhere behind me. And then the soft yawn as the ship rose higher, presumably into the atmosphere.
It was only then that I realized Ohara’s plan was working.
I had left Ikmal.
The prison was huge but even it could not cater to the upward movement the ship was now making. I had to be outside and that meant I had escaped.
Tears streamed unbidden down my cheeks. Compared to the past five years I’d spent incarcerated at Ikmal — as much a prisoner as all the other inmates — twenty-four hours suddenly seemed insignificant.
Were there any difficulties I wouldn’t put up with if it meant freedom?
Even torture didn’t seem so bad so long as freedom waited on the other side. And this was not torture. All I had to do was lay there and wait. Hopefully sleep would claim me and I could drift off into the abyss. By the time I awoke, I might have already arrived.
I felt giddy and excited, knowing that soon the sandy beach dream I had imagined would come true. I drifted off and floated away, dreaming of places so distant from Ikmal that it was like I existed in another galaxy.
But I had seen these fantasies before. They were the same ones I stamped down and refused to contemplate after he had left me.
Now, they came flooding back, only they were imbued with something else, something special — reality.
Fantasy would become real.
I tried to read by torchlight but none of the words sunk in. I laid back and for the first time that night, sleep came unimpeded.
* * *
I awoke when I felt a sudden thump.
