Zephyr Dorsey

“The Interrogation” from Wrought

“Steve!  Are you alright?”

He feels her hands on him, helping his as he rolls over to sit up, and he thinks– no, no– don’t touch me.  You’ll share the blood, you will no longer be clean–

Yes, that is how he has always thought of her, of Jaime.  Clean.  Pure.  So young and naturally healthy and well-featured that even the InfoTek Guardsman uniform cannot camouflauge her feminine beauty.  Many times since she her posting here, it has been her face that he pictured when he tried, during the worst of the days, to remind himself why he was doing all this.  It was for people like her.  Good people.  Kind daughters.  Sweet girlfriends.  Loving mothers.  And all the families and love and trust he associated with people like here.  They are the best the old bitch of a mudderland has left to offer.  But for them to exist, for them to stay clean and pure and noble– someone has to do the dirty work, the heavy lifting; someone had to pay the bloodprice for civilization, for cookies after school and long walks through the neighborhood– and that someone was him.

“Jaime…” The man says outloud, and he tries to focus beneath the glare of the painful white sky, to focus on that word, his two-syllable prayer.  “Yes, yes.  I’m fine.”

Jamie:  What happened?

Steve:  It was a long night.

Jamie:  Looks like it.  Is that blood?

Steve:  Uh, I can’t talk about my work…  I need to go bed.

Steve begins trying to stand, and though he does not like it, Jaime helps him up.  He pauses for a moment, looking toward the horizon, vaguely remembering something awful there, something terrible on the way.

Jamie bends toward the bloody mallet.  “Here.  Don’t forget this.  Be a shame to–“

“No!” yells Steve louder than he means to.  He forces his voice lower before he continues…  “No, don’t– don’t touch it.  I got it.”

Steve bends down and retrieves the bloody mallet, now dried dark red and caked with dirt.

Jaime:  I should take you to the Infirmary.

Steve:  No, I’m alright, Guardsman.  Just need a shower and some shut-eye that’s all.

Jaime (doubtfully):  Alright.  I’ll escort you to the Showers.  I’m heading that way anyway.  Pulled gate duty today.

Steve:  Fine.  You want to help me scrub those hard to reach places.

Jaime:  I’m sure you can reach all your places fine, sir.  I’m sure you frequently do.

Steve looks down at the mallet, then toward the small building.  The thought of stepping back in there right now makes him nauseous and weak.  He gives the mallet a toss and it sails through the air, end over end, slow motion in his tired mind and lands against the base of the building.  “Let’s go then, Guardsman.”

They walk down what is supposed to be a road, but which is supposed to be a road.  Steve thinks there may be a strip of asphalt somewhere beneath all the drifting sands.  As the pass the Weapons Depot next door to the small building, they are called-to by some Guardsmen playing an early morning game of cards in the shade of the small porch.  Steve knows who they are realling calling out to is Jaime, and they are only being respectful and nice to include him in their salutation.  One of the guards already has a wet towel wrapped around his neck, though the day has not yet become extremely hot.  When they are out of sight of the men guarding the Weapons Depot, Jaime touches Steve’s forearm.  He can’t help but to flinch back.  Protecting her.  Protecting himself.

“Now tell me… Steve… how are you really feeling?”

Steve knows that Jaime’s stressing of his first name indicates she wants to have a personal conversation as they walk.  A real conversation. 

Steve:  You shouldn’t see me like this.

Jaime:  Like what?

Steve:  Like the shadow of the very monster we’re fighting.

Jaime:  Everyone understands that what goes on in the Welcome Center has to be done.

Steve laughs abruptly at the use that name, “Welcome Center,” for the place where the prisoners are brought to be interrogated.  He has never found it funny before, but for someone reason now, he finds absolutely hilarious.

Jaime:  Evil doesn’t always come out to play, Steve.  Sometimes you have to go in after it.  Not many people are strong enough to do what you do.  You save more lives by the information you extract than an army can do guarding some borderline drawn in the sand.

Steve:  You think so? 

Jaime:  Yeah.  Of course.

Steve:  I’m not so sure…  Say I beat the enemy.  Hurt him.  Get him to tell me everything he knows.  Completely neutralize him as a future threat.  But what if, in the process of all that contact, he infects me with his evil, like some sort of virus.  What have I really accomplished?  The evil lives on.  Only inside a new host now.  Now I’m the carrier.

Jaime:  All I can say is that this world must be a broken place, when people like you feel like they’re carriers of evil.

Steve:  Things tend to get broken when there’s more might than sight.

Jaime:  And you?  How are you holding up?

Steve:  Truthfully.

Jaime:  To the bitter end.

Steve:  I’m shattered glass.  A jagged heap, dangerous to anyone who gets too close.

Jaime turns to Steve and grabs him by the arm and turns him toward her and this time does not allow him to flinch away.  “Does that include me?”

Steve:  That especially includes you… Guardsman.

He gently lifts her hand from his arm and turns to go into the Showers building.  Jaime grabs him by the shoulder.  He is so weak from the previous night that she pivots him easily.

Jaime:  Let’s be clear, then…  You mean not just now, but after– after we climb our way back out of this hellhole.  There’s still no me-and-you.   

Steve:  War destroys everything.  Relationships most of all.

Jaime:  Sometimes something must be destroyed so that it can be rebuilt.  Better.  Stronger.

Steve:  Stronger?  This war hasn’t made us stronger.  We’ve only formed calluses, calluses from stubbornly and stupidly continuing to touch things we have no business touching.  Good day, Guardsman.  Enjoy that gate duty.

Steve leaves Jaime outside the Showers building.  Inside, he takes off his shirt and goes over the sink and, leaning on it with both hands, stares at the man he has become.  Thin.  Scarred.  Dead-eyed.  He can only see himself from the waist up, and there are two deep cracks in the mirror– one running from his forehead, across his left eye, and down across his left shoulder… the other running just inside his right arm.  The general effect makes him look disjointed, undone.  He remembers his comment earlier about feeling like broken glass.

“Well, Captain,” he tells his fractured image.  “You’ve spent months breaking other men.  It’s only right you should go home broken, too.”

He catches sight of his dirty, blood covered hands and lifts them to the flourescent light in disgust and anger.  He runs some water over them, splashes the dirt off his face, then begins intensely scrubbing his hands and forearms, the steam beginning to rise and fog the mirror.  The rising steam reminds him of the smoke from the candles, many nights ago now…

—   —   —

He and Jaime are lying in bed, her head on his shoulder, her blond hair down and flowing across the pillow to the edge of the narrow bed.  She is playing with his hand, examining at its scars and calluses, knowing that beneath each one was a story, probably not a pleasant one.

Jaime:  Why does touch always have to bring pain?

Steve:  It doesn’t always have to.

Jaime:  Yes it does.  Sooner or later.  Touch follows desire, and pain follows touch. 

Steve:  And that’s always?  You’re sure about that?

Jaime:  Always.  What pain doesn’t catch-up to us quickly, waits for us at the end.

Steve:  Well, not this time.  We’ll outrun the pain.

Jaime:  You can’t outrun the pain.  You can never outrun the pain.   

She looks up at him and they embrace tighter and kiss more passionately than even before.

—   —   —

Steve turns off the water and wipes a space clear in the foggy mirror.  This place has changed me so much, destroyed so much of me, added so much that is hard and artificial.  He stares straight into his blue eyes, one of them splintered by the crack…  How do I know when there’s no longer enough of me left …to still be me?

—   —   —

Steve finishes undressing and enters the shower stall.  He closes his eyes and allows the water to flow over him as his mind travels back through time…

—   —   —

Inside a room of barren walls and covered windows, an African man, sweaty and shirtless, is seated at a table, staring up in pain and defiance.  One arm is bound behind his chair, the other stretched forward over the table, the wrist shackled by a large ring fastened to the table-top.  Steve approaches the shackled man in the company of another man, Shahreef, who is wearing the InfoTek uniform.  Shahreef is an older man, also African, wearing the bars of a commander.  Steve’s tan uniform is crisp and clean, but Commander Shahreef’s is a rolling mess of taut stretches and crumpled wrinkles struggling to encompass the rounded contours of the older man’s girth.  The dark, hard eyes of the seated man watch the two Infotek employees as they near. 

Shahreef:  But God’s will is man’s duty, Captain.

Steve:  So you’re saying that it’s God’s will that a man suffers?

Shahreef:  If a man suffers or does not suffer– both outcomes are God’s will.  Nothing can be done or undone that is not God’s will.

Steve:  But the logic of that statement, Commander Shahreef– pardon me, sir, but…

Shahreef:  Yes?

Steve:  If taken to its conclusion– you could justify anything and everything in this world as simply the manifestation of God’s will.

Shahreef:  Now you’re starting to understand.

Steve:  I don’t think I am, sir.

Shahreef:  Let me put it to you this way…  Do you think there’s a man alive who could go against God’s will?

Steve:  But the question presupposes–

Shahreef:  Do you think you can successfully oppose the will of God?  Do you think yourself stronger than God?

Steve:  Stronger than consoling myth?  Probably not, sir.

Shahreef (getting in Steve’s face):  Then, do you think you are stronger than me?  Can you successfully oppose my will?

Steve (straigtening to full attention):  It is my duty to follow your orders to the best of my abilities, Commander, sir!

A smile slowly creeps across Shahreef’s fat, unshaven face.  “Good.”  He turns abruptly from Steve and begins pacing around the second table in the room, this one displaying various tools and instruments.

Shahreef:  Do you know why are here, Captain?

Steve:  Because InfoTek needs a top-knotch interrogator, sir.  A non-miliary one.

Shahreef:  Why a non-miliary one?

Steve:  Because the enhanced interrogation techniques InfoTek has been hired to perform are forbidden for any U.S. personnel by both congressional mandate and international agreement, sir.

Shahreef:  A monkey can be trained to poke people until they scream.  What I mean is… do you know why you are here on this planet? 

Steve:  Ah, no Sir.  Can’t say that I’ve been read-in that high, sir.”

Shahreef:  You are here, Captain, because of the evil you contain inside of yourself.

Steve:  Sir?

Shahreef:  You are right where God wants you to be.  You are here– in this room, in this moment– to do God’s work.  And do you know what God’s work is?

Steve:  I’m betting it’s not procreation, sir.

Shahreef:  God is good.  Completely and purely good.  God and Evil can never mix– can never even touch.  For the Good is made impure by contact with the Evil.  It is for this reason– to do battle against the forces of Evil directly and on behalf of God– that humankind was created.  Evil cannot break us.  We are already broken.  We are a race of beings existing on a plane somewhere between the realm of angels and the realm of demons.  We are neither all good, nor all bad.  We have a foot in both worlds.  The only creature in the entire universe which is a mixture of both Good and Evil. 

Steve:  The only creature made purposefully broken.

Shahreef fondles a one of the sharp-toothed, metal instruments on the display table.  “It is our job, the job of humanity, to do Evil in the name of Good.  We can grapple with Evil without losing our purity because we are impure to begin with.  Shahreef steps sideways and begins fondling a clean, wooden mallet.

Steve takes a deep breath before speaking and squares his feet and shoulders, clasping his hands behind his back.  “What is it you want me to do, Commander?”

Shahreef:  How long have you been employed by InfoTek?

Steve:  Four months, sir.

Shahreef:  Four months… You are bright, hardworking—our only on-site employee who speaks both Hutopei and Pahtu.  And yet, during your four months here, your interrogations have yielded us a third less names than the work of the interrogators.  Why do you think that is?  Could it just be coincidence that your subjects also spend a fraction of time in convalescence with Doctor Well?

Steve:  Sir, will all due respect to the other interrogators, I think my leads will prove of a superior quality and accuracy than the names extracted from subjects experiencing extreme duress–

Shahreef:  Extreme duress?  I’m not familiar with that terminology.  What are you trying to say?  That our captives are not comfortable? 

Steve:  Studies have shown that when subjects reach a certain threshold of pain, sir, they will do or say anything to make the pain stop.  Anything.

Shahreef (swinging the mallet):  Perhaps what you say is correct.  Perhaps ninety-nine out of a hundred leads we gather here will prove unfruitful.  Ahh… but we still will have is that one extra, legitimate name we wouldn’t have gotten utilizing less extreme techniques.

Steve:  And ninety-nine cases of unnecessary torture… sir.

Shahreef (flipping the mallet in his hand)::  I think that’s a fair price. 

Steve shifts his weight on his feet.

Shahreef:  These men are scum.  The lowest of the low.  They hurt women, children, civilians– they make no distinction between military and civilians, between professional soldiers and innocents.  And as long as they are willing to play the game dirtier than us, to go farther than us– they will always have the advantage.  They will always win.  Always.

Steve:  Am I correct to assume, sir, that you do not believe that I am not tough enough in my interrogations?

Shahreef (still holding the mallet and walking around the table and beginning toward Steve):  Sometimes we must tap the lesser evil inside in order to combat the greater Evil outside.  I have come here today for one purpose, Captain.  To help you find your manhood.

Steve:  And is my manhood to be found in the torturing of people who have never been granted the privilege of facing their accusers and who have never been granted a fair trial?

Shahreef (the spark of anger in his eye immediately replace with a forced smile):  “Believe me…  No one brought to this place is innocent.  You don’t end up sitting in that chair [pointing to the shackled man] by keeping your head down and playing by the rules.

Steve:  I see, sir.

Shahreef:  Good.  [Shahreef hands Steve the mallet].  Now we must make the others see.  It is our job to lead the others into the light and to help the blind to see.  Take this man for instance…

Shahreef puts his hands on the seated man’s bare shoulders.  The man fights wildly against the trespassing touch but his shackles hold.

“We caught this one stealing food from the stockpiles of one of the local incompetent warlords.  One of our local incompetent warlords,” says Shahreef.  “We know that he belongs to a group of lawless bandits roaming this part of the country who offer fealty to no warlord.  We don’t want to continue holding him here indefinitely.  It costs us money to feed and shelter his sorry ass.  We’d prefer to let him go, to let him live out his meaningless little life.  Yet, he will not give us the name of a single other person associated with his pack of dogs.  And so… we hold him.”

The man spits up at Shahreef.  Shahreef leans up and takes a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes the spittle from his neck and chin and rumpled shirt.  He gestures toward the captive.  “See?  This is the kind of animal we’re dealing with.”

Steve nervously strikes his palm a couple of times with the head of the mallet.

Shahreef:  You hold the hammer of truth.  Wield it.

Steve:  I have not seen this man before.  What state of interrogation is he–

Shahreef:  Wield it!

Steve stands over the prisoner’s outstretched and shackled arm.  “You look Pahtu.  Are you Pahtu?”

The prisoner looks straight ahead.  Shahreef speaks to Steve, also in Pahtu, which is Shahreef’s native tongue.

“Where is your manhood, Captain?” says Shahreef, switching also to Pahtu, his own native language.  “Do you think that the largest military contractor on the planet recruited you for your delicate sensibilities?

Steve tries speaking to the prisoner in Hutopei…  “Or maybe you’re Hutopei?  You could save yourself a world of pain, brother, if you would—“

Shahreef interrupts Steve, snarling, “Pull down your dress hem, Captain.  Your weakness is showing.

Steve turns aggressively to Shahreef with the mallet: 

“I’m not weak!  Don’t push me!”

“I don’t have to push you.  The man inside you will pull himself out.  Eventually.”

Steve swings back around toward the prisoner, switching back to Pahtu, which his intuition tells him the man understands.

“Last chance, dungheap.  Something you want to say?”

The prisoner remains quiet, staring at Steve with eyes of blackened ember.

“Wield it Captain!” orders Shahreef.  “Wield the hammer of truth!  Do your duty and serve your God!

Steve tightens his grip on the mallet.  He looks into the face of the captive for… he does not know what, but all he sees in the man’s face is fearless resistance.

“If you are not man enough to do your job, Captain, we can always get someone else who is.  Perhaps your little friend, what is her name?  Sommers?

Steve glances resentfully at Shahreef, then turns, roaring with rage, and swings the mallet down.  The prisoner cries out…

—   —   —

In the shower stall, as the washed-off blood whirlpools over the tile floor and down the drain, Steve leans against the shower wall, his tears lost within the streaming water.