Blog against torture day...from my lj

Wrote the following story... links are highlighted...please feel free to click.

Imagine Free

By rcloenen-ruiz 2008

Imagine you live in this city called "Free".You moved to this city when you were a child, and your parents told you there was no place in the world like this city where the sky is wide and blue and the possibilities stretch out into forever.

“Here, you have room to dream and to become what you dream,” your parents say. “Everyone in this city is free to be who he is and everyone in this city no matter where they are from is part of the fabric of what makes Free a wonderful place to live.”

One night, there is a pounding on the door. Your parents wake up, you wake up, your baby brother wakes up.

“Open up,” the voice shouts. “Open up in the name of the law.”

Still half-asleep, your father stumbles to the door and opens it to a nightmare.

Lights shine into your faces. Harsh voices make your baby brother cry. Hard hands slam you up against the wall, and you hear your father asking, “What is it? What have we done wrong?”

Pressed up against the cold wall, you think of a movie you have seen. Of men in uniform with dogs in tow, slamming helpless men and women to the wall, shouting accusations and curses and finally snatching them up and tossing them into the back of a truck.

“This is just a dream,” you tell yourself. “In the morning, I will wake up and laugh about it.”

All through the long ride to a place outside the city, you think you must be dreaming. When they shine light into your eyes, and spit into your face, when they call you names you don’t understand, and threaten you with pain, you think you are simply trapped inside a nightmare, and you wait for your mother to come and shake you awake.

In this nightmare, these people tell you that you are a threat to the fabric of all that is Free. They tell you that your very presence in this city gives birth to terror and unrest.

“Confess your hatred of the city,” they say.

“I do not hate the city,” you reply.

But no one seems to hear you.

You are put in a room that looks like a box. They pour water down your throat and when you pee in your pants and soil yourself they laugh and mock you.

“What an uncivilized beast,” they say.

They set you in front of a table while a man hurls accusations and words and threats and curses. You wish they would let you sleep, but when you ask for rest, they look at you with wild eyes and tell you there is no rest for beasts like you.

“Confess,” they say. “Confess your crime.”

“Please,” you whisper. “Can I go home?”

But you have no home, they tell you. You came to this city, a stranger, and strangers must pay if the city demands it.

“We have informers,” they hiss. “Make it easier on yourself. Confess your crime.”

But you don’t understand what crime they mean. The only crime you ever committed was in loving the city. When you tell them this, the man-in-charge grows red with rage.

Before they tie you up, before they hitch you up to the beam on the roof and turn you into the parody of a crucified man, you think of all the dreams you once cherished about this city. When they stretch your body wide, and mock you with guns and threats, when they drag you back from oblivion into pain time and again, you wonder whether this is what your parents dreamed of when they left behind a country to embrace this city called Free.