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muffled
screaming tore at his heart and provided a grim reminder that he wasn’t
dreaming. He was convinced his captors had found a way to turn off sound as
additional punishment. Mycale was unable to see outside his soundless prison,
so he couldn’t say if he’d been in this place a week or a month. Since there
was no way to measure time, it didn’t exist in this place. There were only two
sickening constants: the increasing number of empty beds and an endless supply
of abuse.
     
    ****
     
    Partnered with a girl this time,
Mycale saw snatches of her crying helplessly  as he was being dunked and held
face down in a tub of water. His lungs were burning, ignited by an invisible
fire. Swallowing the taste of his own blood, each breath turned into acid as it
rushed down his raw throat.
     
    Coughing uncontrollably as water
squirted from his nose and mouth, Mycale fought to get oxygen into his lungs.
The men were determined to suffocate him one way or another.  A fist flew into
his chest, causing him to lose the breath he’d been struggling so hard to
catch.
    Having no control, Mycale’s hand
was forcibly slapped hard atop a hard wooden desk that had been added to the
cube.  The slap of his hand sent peppering aches of pain up his already bruised
wrist. As one man held his hand firmly down, the other placed a circular
cutting device around the joint of his left pointer finger.
     
    Mycale pleaded, “Please don’t. I
promise I will show you my ability.” Listening to the men tell him that they
were about to peel the skin from each of his fingers, Mycale’s nerves flew into
a chaotic frenzy.  His hand shook uncontrollably, which sent the instrument
slicing against his finger. With a scratchy and sore throat, he could hardly scream
when the man tightened the instrument around his finger and started to pull.
Since his voice and strength had been beaten from his body, tears were all
Mycale had left to beg with, but he refused to let them fall. He lost skin from
two of his fingers before they stopped.
     
    Mycale found that watching the
other kids suffer was far worse than his own agony. His abuse had been harsh,
but it was now his turn to watch the girl’s torture. Fearing something was
broken, he could hardly stand upright. The men left his cube, consulted with
the man and woman behind the desk, and walked into the girl’s cube.  Mycale
didn’t know the girls name, but he often saw her struggling four beds away from
his. The girl backed into the corner and folded her body into a tight ball when
the men approached.
     
    The girl was slammed face down on
a table facing him. When Mycale saw the men unbuttoning their pants and taking
off the girl’s gown, he screamed like a child gone mad. The men were
deliberately looking at him as they undress the girl. Shaking his head, tears
slid down his cheeks for the very first time. He pushed his voice box to the
max, but only cracked words and horse cries made it out of his mouth. “No! Sack
it la’. You can’t do that. Please!”
     
    The men controlled the girl’s
body as she laid helpless. With only her eyes, she begged Mycale for help she
knew he could not give.
     
    Although Mycale didn’t fully
understand sex, his father and mother had given him the-birds-and-the-bees
talk.  He knew enough to know the men were about to do the worse thing an adult
could do to a child.  Turning away from the horrific seen in front of him,
Mycale lowered his body to the floor and hid his face behind his trembling
hands and knees.
     
    Seeing what the men were about to
do to the girl had broken him so severely, he couldn’t control his raging
thoughts.  He slapped at his head, fighting himself to ward off the image he’d
just seen. He spoke softly to himself, “Az if. They blaggin’ me ‘ead. It’s not
real. It can’t be real.”
     
    Hearing the girl’s muffled cries
tore a hole in his heart.  Exhausted, beaten, and broken, Mycale couldn’t
stomach the thought of what was