"Summer in Paradise" by Fox
Chapter 4
The military truck trundled along the pothole strewn gravel road. Macaws
screeched and chattered in the dense jungle on either side of the twisty road.
In back, one of the soldiers whistled one of his favourite songs. The
words were about love and heartache and pain and the rewards of being taken back
into someone's arms; still, his whistle was just a melody. The other soldier sat
quietly, lost in his own thoughts. Both swayed as the truck rumbled over ruts
and swerved around potholes big enough to eat the truck's front end.
The long wooden crate rumbled and slid on the truck floor as the driver
missed avoiding one of the smaller craters. A cardboard box, one of several
stacked up near the crate, fell over and skidded off the wood to land on its
side against the metal truck bed. It popped open.
The whistler stopped his tune and leaned forward to pick up the box. As
he did, he very discreetly took a chance to peer inside at the contents. He let
out a low whistle, and quickly shut the box. His fellow rider looked over,
quizzically raising an eyebrow. The whistler signed "silence" and jerked his
thumb toward the cab. The other soldier nodded, and settled back patiently. He
knew he'd find out sooner or later, and he figured later was just fine.
Using his legs as a shield from view, he forked his fingers, making the
sign of a witch, at the passenger in the front.
The truck rambled and clattered noisily down the road, clouds of dust
billowing in its wake. Occasionally, a tire caught a piece of gravel just so,
and the stone fired off into the brush, bouncing off a tree trunk with a crack
as loud as a rifle shot.
Trapped in an unyielding cocoon of sticky tape, then wrapped in blankets
and stuffed into a wood crate, Summer was covered in sweat and, to her shame,
urine. She was desperately thirsty, and could hardly breathe. Movement was
impossible, but she felt every single jolt and bump. Her body, already punished
and tormented in the resort suite, was going to be a mass of bruises by the time
she got wherever she was going. And she no longer cared.
Geoffrey was gone. Her future, her lover, was gone. Her freedom was
gone. None of it mattered anymore. She would never see Geoffrey or her friends
or her cat, ever again. All destroyed, lost, in a jerk of a hand, a shouted
word, the twitch of a finger. And she had been tied up, on top of a table,
completely helpless. All she could do was cry and weep, as everything she knew,
everything she ever wanted, was gone in the crack of a gun and the splatter of
brains against the floor.
The sight of Geoffrey, dead, shot, executed in cold blood, had stunned
her into a space she had never dreamed was possible.
Geoffrey had been beaten with a gun, kicked to the floor and stomped
again and again. Why? She wondered. It had all happened so fast, and that damned
bondage had made it hard for her to hear what was being said, and anyway, she
didn't understand Spanish, but obviously Geoffrey did, but why? Why? Why?
Geoffrey had tried to get up, and his hand was inside his jacket and when he
said something in Spanish to them right back and moved his hand, the one soldier
had hit him again with the rifle. And then Geoffrey rolled over to his back and
moved his arm again and bam! The Captain pulled out a pistol and shot Geoffrey,
right in the face!
The scenario played itself over and over again in Summer's mind. First
Geoffrey was beaten, then shot and there was blood and brains and god knows what
else all over the floor, but nobody seemed to panic or be upset. Then that
woman, Angelita, she had walked over to Summer, calm as could be. Summer was
struggling uselessly to get free, and the soldiers were laughing at her, and
that, that bitch Angelita, she took a piece of tape and sealed off Summer's
nose.
And I almost died, remembered Summer. I couldn't breathe and I didn't
want to breathe, not anymore. But my body betrayed me, and I struggled and just
as I blacked out, the bitch ripped the tape off and I could breathe again. And
that cunt Angelita was telling me to be good or else, and I wanted to just spit
in her face. Then she kissed my left eye then my right eye, and then covered
both eyes with tape. And I was in darkness, and I am in darkness now, and my
life will always be in darkness ...
The wooden crate bounced and slid in the truck bed as they jolted along
the jungle road to their destination.
