From the moment they came for him, escape had been out of ...



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Contents

1. Bundled 2

2. Back 3

3. Waiting game 4

4. Solitary confinement 6

5. Deprivation 9

6. Caged 11

7. Caned 14

8. Cargo 17

End. 18

1. Bundled

From the moment they came for him, escape was impossible. They’d kept the chains on his wrists in his windowless cell. Quickly, they had him on his front shirtless on the cold concrete floor and were roping his elbows together behind.

Braddock winced at the rope biting into his elbows. Then he felt his ankles being lifted and tied together, too. Unable to walk, he was hauled out, his feet dragging behind, hanging between them from his back-stretched elbows, grimacing.

They’d backed a covered truck up to the loading ramp outside. Braddock was dumped unceremoniously inside. Gritting his teeth with the effort, he struggled to right himself. The three armed guards had jumped in after him. One of them pulled a heavy-duty plastic sack over his head. It stank of fish inside. Sightless, gagging at the stench, Braddock struggled to resist. Quickly, a rope bound the sack round his waist, trapping him inside. The stench of fish was suffocating. He tried to control his panting. He was using up valuable air. Inside the sack, the temperature soared. He was soon dripping sweat.

A knife blade punctured the sack beside his head. A few air holes punched in the sack for him to breathe. A knee kick to his head knocked him to the floor. Gears grating, the truck lurched off with him, his head spinning from the blow.

Braddock felt himself being dragged out of the truck. Dragged again over rough ground, his feet trailing behind him. Inside the sauna of the sack everything felt unreal.

Hooded still, he was lifted up and dumped with a heavy thud inside another vehicle. Only when the engines started did he recognise a helicopter’s rotors.

The circulation to his hands had been cut off by the ropes round his elbows. Inside the plastic, sweat covered his face, poured off his forehead. He could sense his bare chest drenched with sweat. On the floor of the helipcopter, he painfully kept his face twisted back towards the air holes, gasping in much needed air.

For an eternity, it seemed, he lay juddering on the metal floor of the helicopter, drenched in his sweat, his lungs choking on the overheated humidity inside the sack, gagging from the stench of fish.

Wherever they were taking him, it seemed to take an age inside that sack. Time stood still and sweated. His brain numbed by lack of oxygen, overdosing on his own foul breath. Quoc had him in his clutches again. He planned to keep Braddock there.

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2. Back

He was back. Unbelievable. History repeating itself. Backwards five years in time.

When the helicopter settled, the blades still whooshing overhead, the guards rolled him with no concern out of the hold on to the earth. Braddock landed painfully on his front, unable to protect himself. His chin cracked hard on the earth, his teeth snapped painfully together.

For a while, a commotion moved around him. Voices, grunts of effort, human steps. Then the helicopter lifted off and faded into the distance.

Braddock lay there, ears pricked. A deafening silence when the copter left. Wary. Tense with expectation. Then the call of birds. The chirp of insects. Like in the jungle.

Hands suddenly hauled him to his feet. Hands by his feet sliced through his ankle ropes. The rope round his waist loosened and the sack ripped over his head.

Braddock clamped his eyes tight shut against the blinding light. Greedily, he gasped in fresh air. The normal sweltering humidity of the tropics cooling on his bare chest, now free of the airless sack

Slowly he struggled to see, squinting against the glare. He made out armed guards on either side. And in front, arms folded across his chest, masterful, in charge, in control, Quoc. Gloating. Waiting for the shock on Braddock’s face.

Straining still against the light, Braddock looked about him. To take in his surroundings.

It was like a dream. His heart missed a beat. He recognised it. He’d never forgotten it. His eyes were not betraying him. The helicopter landing pad where they’d loaded up cargo. The rope bridge over the chasm. And on the other side, the guards’ huts. The prisoners’ hovels.

It was a nightmare. He was back. Back at the camp from which he’d broken free. Back in the nightmare he’d escaped from five years ago. Quoc here to settle scores. And there was no better place. Isolated. Surrounded by miles of hostile jungle. Back to settle scores for Quoc’s humiliation. Back for revenge.

Somehow the camp was still in operation. Quoc had kept it going, the heroin funding his rehabilitation, his climb back to power. MIAs – gaunt, haggard, exhausted, demoralised – still worked as slaves, tending and harvesting the poppies that had fed his captor’s return.

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3. Waiting game

It started immediately. He was made to strip. In the open. Naked, watching his clothes and every mark of his identity burned before his eyes. A pair of thin black pyjamas and cheap plastic sandals were his only possessions in the world.

It was late afternoon. Hours before the slaves would return from the fields. Braddock waited for them. Hanging by his wrists, feet off the ground. Suspended from a tripod of poles, coarse rope digging into his wrists, his arms pulled high above his head. Waiting for the others to return.

The electric shocks had left his nerves shattered. The trip in the sack had left him dehydrated. And the greatest shock to his system: the sight of this old camp, the one place on earth he’d never wanted to see again.

Already his neck ached from the strain of hanging. Pain in his head was grinding. The coarse rope bit into his wrists, his fingers tingling, drained of blood. From elbow to waist, every joint, sinew and ligament suffered from the stretch.

Braddock heard exhausted shuffling returning from the fields. A dozen silent men in their soiled black pyjamas, dragging themselves back to their rest, barely able to put one foot in front of the other. Weighed down by heavy sacks on their backs as they brought back a deadly harvest.

They stared at the newcomer out of eyes devoid of life. Taking in the new arrival. Curious but exhausted, too shattered to show interest. Zombies. Lifeless. Sapped of humanity. Caught on a wheel of suffering. Trapped in their human hell. Their only hope for relief - their death.

They lowered his feet to the ground but left Braddock hanging all night. The MIAs shuffled off to their hovels, their meagre rations in their bellies. Some turned and looked at the new captive, still tied up from the tripod. But they all been there themselves at some time. They’d all spent their ration of sleepless nights there. There was no look of sympathy. Or concern. They’d all learned to suffer. This was their reality.

With nightfall, Braddock, through a nagging ache in his arms and shoulders, heard the prisoners snoring a sleep of exhaustion. Alone. Destitute. He’d not eaten for over a day. The guards in their huts talked, got drunk, played cards. Not even Quoc appeared to gloat at his captive. Abandoned to the dull despair of reality.

Braddock knew better than to hope for escape. He remembered too well the hell through which he had lived. Back then he had learned to suppress any hope that a torture would end, that the pain would pass. Down that road, having hope, lay regret and despair. He had learned to suspend any sense of hope, abandon belief that things would get better. Because the guards could always take that away, they got off on denying prisoners their hopes.

Survival lay in taking whatever they gave out to him, while it was happening, whatever they gave, whenever they gave it to him.. And when they had had enough of torturing him, when they thought he could take no more, or when they simply bored of hurting him, - then, and only then, would his mind move on. It was the only way of life he knew back then. But never once giving up. Watching, preparing himself, waiting for that one elusive day when a chance to escape might come.

Overnight the temperature dropped. He got little or no rest. Despite complete exhaustion. A nagging despairing ache gripped his whole torso. His jaw hurt from continuously clenching his teeth at the strain. The muscles of his face burned with screwing up his eyes against never-ending pain.

Dawn approached. And with it, a chilling fog came rolling off the mountains adding to his torment. His aching, pain-racked body shivered in the freezing air. His teeth were taken by uncontrollable chattering.

Birds were coming to life. Animals screeched around. But still the guards slept on. Still Braddock hung off the rope, sleepless, tormented, in his hopeless agony. The joints in his elbows ached with being dragged down by the weight of his slumped body. The raw flesh at his wrists burned and stung. Down his biceps and into his shoulders, elongated muscles nagged, pleading for relief. The exhausted muscles of his chest and stomach struggled to draw in air. And still, the nightmare of living went on.

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4. Solitary confinement

Before they were led out to the fields, the prisoners were paraded before Braddock. Still at the tripod, feet on the ground, his arms raised above his head.

They watched him vaguely curious, saw him swaying as his knees threatened to collapse in exhaustion. Quoc walked up and down before them, scrutinising each prisoner. They had learned to lower their eyes, knew better than to provoke punishment by an inadvertent look. Even after a night’s rest, they looked haggard, shattered, robbed of spirit, stripped of hope.

“This one!” Quoc said. A look of fear shot across the young man’s bearded face. Two guards pushed him forwards.

“Shirt off!”

Braddock watched in curiosity and growing anxiety. Feeling guilty. He’d seen it happen before. Take punishment instead of another man. The frightened prisoner pulled his shirt over his head. He was tall, broad-shouldered. Before captivity, he’d no doubt been a good looking, a well-built guy who turned woman’s heads. But now, unkempt. shaggy beard. Now too, still broad across the chest, strong shoulders. Thick corded arms. But from years of slave labour. Every muscle stood out. From years of starvation. Underfed, every bone stood out. His stomach muscles, framed by a caved-in ribcage, protruded. But not a body-builder’s six pack. A slave’s starvation combined with heavy labour. No body fat. Just muscle and bone. Quoc’s workhorse.

He was pushed forward shirtless towards Braddock. Too cowed by years of punishment to resist. The stink of stale sweat and unwashed body filled Braddock’s nose as the man’s arms were raised and tied to Braddock’s wrists. A rope passed around their waists, pulling them together. They stood nose-to-nose, their foul breath mingling.

“This man”, Quoc announced to his captives, “ he is a troublemaker. I have had dealings with him before. He made trouble then. He’ll try again. He got men beaten, punished. They followed his lead. They suffered for it”.

Quoc was patrolling the length of their line but no one looked up.

“He will try and make trouble here too. He will tempt you into trouble. For your own sake, take my advice”.

The men were not looking up. But they were listening. Attentive.

“Any man seen consorting with this trouble maker can expect severe punishment. Any man seen talking to him, that man will be held to account. He will pay”.

Quoc scanned his row of muscled ghosts.

“Am I making myself clear? This is said for your safety. Any man dealing with this one will pay”.

Social isolation. A trick as old as the hills. But effective. Quoc was isolating him from the others. These men had nothing. They had their flimsy black pyjamas and plastic sandals on their feet. And otherwise nothing. No life, no dreams, no hope.

But when the chips were down, they had each other. When the torment became unendurable, when they could take no more, they had each other. When a man was at breaking point with despair, in the midst of their nights of desolation, he’d find a comforting arm wrapped around his shoulders. Or wrapped in another’s arms as he’d sob himself to sleep. No one in the world could understand the depths of misery they endured. Except those who suffered like them.

Quoc was putting Braddock into solitary confinement. Quarantine. They were being frightened off having contact with him. Any sense of solidarity, togetherness or human comfort to be denied him. When he had been brutally mishandled and could take no more, there’d be no comforting words. No kindly human hand. He would suffer in isolation.

No one would dare to be seen mixing with him. Even though they stuck together, helped each other, the offer of an extra bowl of rice was a strong temptation to betray a secret. And if Braddock allowed one of them to show him kindness, he too would be guilty. Guilty of their punishment, - just like the innocent man strapped to his own chest now.

Quoc was putting him in solitary. Solitary confinement without walls. Isolated from even the most minimal of human comfort. Isolated from human contact.

They were eyeball-to-eyeball. Braddock could feel the other prisoner’s heart pounding in trepidation against his chest. He eyed Braddock with a mixture of hatred and fright. He knew from experience. Being tied against this troublemaker, shirtless, spelled bad news.

Braddock could feel the tension in the big torso pressed against him. Barely breathing, both aware that, in his fear, the prisoner’s dick was thickening and hardening, pressing against his own thigh.

“Anyone found talking to the troublemaker will get ten lashes”, Quoc announced.

The prisoner eyeballed Braddock and tensed. Eyes slitted. He held his breath.

“Anyone showing him a kindness will get twenty.

Braddock felt the prisoner give a sharp intake of breath. Braddock looked away, avoided the accusing glare of anger, the tight mouth, lips pressed hard together.

“Anyone giving him any kind of help will deserve 30”.

The body pressed against Braddock tightened. The shoulder muscles twitched. His dick jutted into Braddock’s leg.

“Give him thirty”.

The prisoner gasped.

“Fuck you”, he swore at Braddock. Venom in his eyes burned into Braddock. “Whoever you are…”he spat out, “f…”.

The first cane lashed across the broad bony shoulders before he could finish. Cut off his curse with his jerk. The prisoner yanked hard in surprise on their bound wrists and jolted forward into Braddock. The grunt and the forward jerk almost knocked the exhausted Braddock off his feet.

He gasped out loud.

“Fuck…”. The curse was killed in his throat by the pain lashing into his back. Inadvertently his head butted Braddock in the face.

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5. Deprivation

Braddock slaved with the others all day in the fields. He’d tasted little water in over 24 hours. No food had passed his lips. He’d barely rested. Every movement from dawn to dusk took a superhuman effort. He took plenty of lashings to keep him moving, to get him motivated. When he stumbled and failed to rise, the canes beat into his legs till pain overcame exhaustion and the guards saw him struggle to his feet.

The others stayed well clear. If he approached the bins to empty his harvest, the others backed away. Did not even look him in the eye.

At the end of the day, he tottered back to the camp under the unbearable weight of the sack on his back. He was in a daze of exhaustion. Stumbling. Ponderously forcing one foot in front of the other. Step-by-step closer to the camp and a night’s rest in the prisoner’s hovel. Hopefully some inadequate ration of food. Then a night of coma-like sleep before the cycle of hell started again.

Oddly Braddock needed enormous effort to throw the meagre rations down his throat. His eyes kept shutting on him, sitting isolated in the dirt, swaying with fatigue. His body screamed out for sleep. Till he forced himself awake again, blinked hard and fingered another handful of the tasteless rice down his throat. He needed his strength.

He turned over onto hands and knees to struggle to his feet and follow the others back to their hovel to spend the night. But guards blocked his way, kept him on his knees. Instinctively, he resisted and feebly tried to nudge them out of his way. A rifle butt driven hard into his shoulder felled him to the ground on his knees with a loud grunt.

“Up! Up!” Kicks in his side encouraged him further.

Braddock struggled up to his feet, slowly, painfully. A hand twisted in his hair and yanked him up. Bent over double, pulled by his hair, was dragged stumbling forward over the compound and thrust face down in the dirt.

Braddock’s hand went to his scalp to comfort the pain as he pushed himself with effort up on one elbow. He was under the tripod again. A guard stood glaring, the rope in his hand. Ready to rope him back up for another sleepless night.

Braddock desperately need to rest. His heart lurched. Another night of torture. He would break if he got no rest.

He was too feeble to resist. And where would it get him? He winced as the coarse rope burned into his lacerated wrists and tightened. Cutting in deep as his feet lifted off the floor.

Above all, Braddock feared dislocation. He hung in increasing pain but motionless. Afraid that his fatigued shoulder joints would give way and separate. Injury out here, he knew too well, went without treatment. The agony of injury went on, the pain of mutilation persisted. And so did the canes mercilessly driving the injured prisoner out to the fields.

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6. Caged

All day in the field, Braddock had tottered, fighting to stay upright, struggling to keep awake. All day he had taken the lashings. Canes swiped across the back of his thighs, stinging him pitilessly through the thin cloth. Two nights with barely any sleep.

The others had shunned him, avoiding eye contact, avoiding touch. Once he was near the prisoner who taken the beating for him. Stretching the tightness out of his whiplashed back, easing out the cramp of bruised flesh. He saw Braddock looking as he grimaced with the painful bruising. He glowered and turned away.

In dread, Braddock staggered back to the camp under the crushing weight of his sack, fearing another night hanging out. He’d expected torture from Quoc. It seemed, he was to be tortured into exhaustion. Quoc had remembered Braddock had been tough to beat. Resolute. Determined not to give in. Quoc had first-hand experience how much punishment he could take. He’d cried out in pain. He’d cursed through his agony. But his spirit had remained unbroken.

This time, it was sleep deprivation. Worked till he dropped. Slowly his shattered body would be losing control, begging to conform, pleading to obey his masters. Slowly coming face-to-face with the vulnerability of his body. His being craving to give in to them. Painfully aware of knowing his tough determination was at risk of crumbling, breaking point. His spirit under threat of being betrayed by morale-sapping tiredness. No doubt, he would undoubtedly break without being given some rest. Exhausted physically and emotionally, he would collapse. All the punishments in the camp had been trained on him alone. Weakening his body, sapping his spirit, intensive mental torture. And another night hanging on that frame would push him down the slippery slope. Without rest, his entire body inundated with strain and ache.

Daring against hope, after shovelling an indigestible bowl of tasteless rice down his throat, Braddock crawled to his feet. He joined the sorry line of exhausted slaves shuffling back to their hovel for a night of fatigued rest.

This time, remembering the rifle blow, Braddock did not resist when they blocked his path. The guards noted it. Braddock was learning.

He was so exhausted that despair hardly registered on his haggard face. But his heart sank. Despair threatened to overwhelm him nevertheless as his body cried out for sleep. A third night. The ropes lacerating his wrists. The pain in his shoulders would be instantaneous the second his feet lifted off the ground. His body craved rest. It pleaded with his mind for them to grant him one night of sleep. But his pleas went unspoken, unheeded. His body was offered no choice.

But not tonight. It wasn’t the tripod tonight. Partway across the compound, they stopped him at a box. They opened the hinged bamboo lid and gestured him to get in. Braddock stared at it, questioning, listless. A rectangular box made of bamboo staves bound together with rope. A cage for an animal, a pig.

The guards gestured him to get in. Sit down. His backside pressed against one end, his feet at the other, he had to bent his knees to fit in. A hand on the back of his skull shoved his head down between his bent knees, his chest jammed against his thighs. Braddock wrapped his arms around the outside of his legs, his hands resting on his ankles. Keeping his head jammed down, they forced the hinged lid down on to his back..

It wouldn’t close shut. Force was applied, the bamboo poles digging into his shoulders, crushing into the back of his skull. Braddock couldn’t move. And still the lid would not shut closed. Shouts and curses screamed at him. Fists punched through the bars into his back. They pushed harder, bouncing the bamboo hard into his skull.

Braddock had to force his knees outwards, jamming them against the bars at the side. The poles creaked as they resisted digging painfully into his knees. Two guards threw their full weight onto the lid, crushing Braddock’s head down between his knees, squeezing his shoulders against his thighs. With a shout of triumph, the guard shot the bolt in place. Braddock was caged.

He was totally immobile. Except for twitching his toes and circling his hands, nothing could move. Tonight it was not his lacerated wrists that hurt. It was to be everything. Helplessly crushed into a box too small to permit any movement. His shoulders and skull were constantly under pressure from the thick poles of the bamboo lid digging into him. Already tension on his neck was like a screw twisting painfully into his brain.

His knees and thighs dug painfully against the ungiving sides. His chest forced against his thighs; he could only breathe in light pants into his stomach. His heart filled with dread. He was being driven to exhaustion. A third restless night. Just snatches of sleep. Until pain and discomfort overwhelmed him again and he was back facing a never-ending night of exhausting aches and cramps. He had to get some sleep or Quoc would have him. Body and mind.

It was no time at all before the cramps set in. He was immobile, sitting on one small area of his backside. Nothing could move, no reprieve. One small area of muscle took the full weight on the box pressing down on it. Cramps started within minutes.

His thighs, crushed down by his body weight and trapped by his knees, started quivering first. A slight but uncontrollable shaking. Then they cramped up totally. Searing, mind-numbing cramps with no hope of relief.

The pain was so intense that Braddock felt himself on the point of screaming in agonised frustration. But who would hear? Who would care? Stinging, morale-sapping cramps held him in their steely grip through the long deep desolation of the night.

He felt the winds before the rain fell. Gusting up the hills from the valley, gathering momentum, the sound of trees noisily bending to the heavy gusts.

In the downpour, he was soaked within seconds. The deluge pounded into his cramped back, thudded into the back of his unprotected head. Driven by the wind, gusts of rain lashed at his back like a whip. Rain trickled off his hair, filled his eyes, flooded down his trapped face. In agony and frustration, Braddock groaned out to himself his fear of living. Fearful that Quoc would win, would bring him face-to-face with his own weakness. Have to face his defeat.

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7. Caned

Two nights they let him sleep with the others in their hovel. Braddock found the only place left. At the end, away from the others, where the roof leaked and the rain had soaked into the clay earth. He was so weak with exhaustion that he did not notice the damp earth beneath him. The others heard his breath stuttering through the night. Whether from sobs or from shivering with the cold, they did not know. Concerned for him perhaps but they still dared not find out. He groaned as he rose the next morning. Muscles stiff and sore from a coma-like night on the cold damp earth.

Days in an exhausted daze followed working the fields. His brain fought to keep control. Survival lay in keeping his mind and body under his own control. He’d survived before. He’d do it again.

But Braddock knew he was in deep shit. He was taking the full brunt of the guards’ abuse. As and when they felt like it. For no reason. Singled out by Quoc. He was failing like never before. Deprived of sleep. Getting no rest. Robbed sometimes of even the meagre rations. The exhaustion of his body cried out for a quiet life. To give in, cooperate, to acquiesce. Back-breaking work in the day after a sleepless night. Canes lashing out at his feeble body. Quoc was breaking him with exhaustion. He was a walking zombie. Tiredness was taking its toll, sapping at his morale. Deprived of human contact, shunned, spurned by the others. Left to his own reserves. Reserves constantly under attack, already well depleted. He wasn’t fighting the guards, he wasn’t resisting. He was taking it all. Giving them no cause. Come what may. Whatever they gave, with no defiance. But Quoc wasn’t interested in him cooperating. He wanted only one thing. His suffering. His weakening.

The groan of disappointment and despair was automatic when his path again was blocked another night on the way to his place of rest. The others passed by, giving him only a glance. He was alone with the guards. He’d rested two nights. Now another night of punishment. Was it to be the frame or the cage?

Braddock’s head swam with exhaustion as they led him back to the cage in the middle of the compound. His heart sank as he recalled the agonised night of cramps.

But instead of packing him inside, a rifle butt behind the knees felled him to the earth. He squirmed clutching his leg. They whipped him onto his front. He felt his wrists being bound behind his back. Dragged by his feet over the earth, his face ground into the dirt. Then they flipped him over onto his back and hauled his legs over the cage. Too weak to resist, Braddock lay back. His guards wrapped his legs over the top of the cage, his knees folded over one edge and his leg stretched over the closed lid. Quickly rope was tied around his ankles binding them to the edge on the other side of the cage.

Braddock came to himself too late. His sandals were off. Too late, he realised what was about to happen. He’d seen it before. Feebly he protested. He was on his back, his arms trapped beneath. His legs folded at the knees and his calves resting on the lid of the box, his ankles roped to the cage on the other side. The soles of his feet exposed, vulnerable, ready for the beating.

The first bow with the bamboo cane he managed to contain. The cane lashed into the bare exposed sole of his foot. Braddock’s face contorted at the pain. He grunted. He hissed. His back twisted on the earth. His face contorted but he held back the cry that welled up from his chest. The second lash had him hissing wildly at the pain. By the fifth, Braddock was crying out. His head rocked wildly from side-to-side. Each blow seared pain up through his feet into his knees. Jolts like lightening cut through every nerve ending from foot to gut. His nose ran. Tears flooded his eyes. And he screamed.

The cane whipped agonisingly into the soft flesh of his foot arch. Repeatedly slicing into the same small area of skin. Raw welts beaten till his flesh swelled and burned. Each lash catapulted Braddock’s body up into the air. Each slash at his tenderised foot erupted in an agonised cry shot into humid tropical night air.

The guard rested, wiping the sweat from his brow. He took a cup from another guard and gulped down the water greedily. Beneath him, Braddock’s face squirmed in agony. His breathing rasping down a throat lacerated by his unstoppable screams.

The second guard, a left-hander, took the cane. To work on the other foot.

The MIAs stood in silence at the gaps peering between the wooden planks that made up their hovel. They winced as the first slash shot Braddock’s back off the ground. Their guts turned to water at the spine-chilling cries that shot from their tortured compatriot. Again and again, his whole body was rocketed up by pain. Cries turned to screams as brutalised flesh was pulverised. Screams twisted by agony. Shrieks wrenched from a tormented human being writhing in the dirt.

Feet released, Braddock lay there unmoving, still groaning, sobbing. Tears flooded down his face. His feet were on fire. A brain ablaze with anguish. A slash from the cane against his thigh brought him to his senses. With a final effort, he rolled his legs off the box. Struggling, arms still bound behind, Braddock fought to rise to his knees. His head swam with the burning that rose up from the soles of his feet and consumed his entire being.

At a cane slashed across his shoulders, Braddock attempted to rise. As his foot flattened on the earth, he cried out and collapsed. A deep agonised yell. Instinctively he curled into a ball, hissing and groaning at the suffering that was eating him alive. He could not walk. Another slash of the cane bit into a shoulder. He tried again to rise, his hands still bound behind him. Tears flooded down his face as he struggled to crush the cry in his throat. Braddock was bent forward, on his knees, as he absorbed the pain. His teeth bit into his lips at the pain of trying to walk. Again, a cane bit into his back.

Slowly, agonisingly, bent double, Braddock shuffled forwards on knees. His knees scraped through the flimsy cloth on the hard clay. Agonisingly slowly, he shuffled over the compound towards his hovel. His head lowered, his jaw clenched to manage the pain welling up from the soles of his feet.

Canes kept him shuffling onwards. One small shuffle at a time, grunting and groaning with effort. A slash across his shoulders felled him to the ground. Hissing through pain-clenched teeth, wincing with pain. Agonisingly slowly, humiliated and broken, he crawled bowed on his knees back to the hut.

The men melted away from the walls as the guards approached. They cut the wrists ropes. Braddock shuffled alone into the hut on his knees. Alone, ignored, a grunt breaking into a strangled sob. He shuffled along on all fours past the men towards his place. The guards were gone.

The big guy who been whipped against him knelt down and offered him water. Their eyes met. Braddock wanted to warn him of the risk. But he gulped at the water offered. He wanted water, he needed human touch. The other simply put a finger to his lips. With another helping, he lifted Braddock to a bed space next to him. A place in the dry had miraculously appeared.

Braddock sobbed himself to sleep. For the first time since he’d fled the camp, he spent the night in the arms of a man. Comforted. Cared for. Comatose.

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8. Cargo

The drizzle had come down for two days without a break. They were still chased out into the fields, clearing and deepening the channels to prevent water-logging to the plants. They were soaked to the skin from dawn to dusk and slept the nights shivering in their wet rags.

The kindness shown him after his foot-whipping was not seen in the daytime. Still no one had spoken with Braddock. And the next morning he was forced into biting his lower lip raw as, unhelped, he hobbled out to work on feet massively swollen and bruised.

And some nights he managed to rest with the others, squeezed together away from the leaking roof. It was the sheer unpredictability that sapped away at his strength of mind. Exhausted from hard labour, as the day drew to an end, his stomach began to churn. Anticipation. Fear of the unknown. What would it be tonight? The chance to get some shut-eye? Or stretched from the frame? Would he manage to hobble back to the hovel with the others?

Or would they step in his path, hold him up while the others passed him by? Beat him? Cage him? Go for his feet again?

The fear of the night’s unknown ordeal ate away at him as he stumbled under the weight of his harvest back to the camp. Tension stuck in his gullet as he crossed the compound. The frame. The box. Waiting just for him. Tonight? Or not? Frustrating he failed to suppress his nerves that jangled on edge as he forced the tasteless rice down his throat. Dread churned away in his guts. He fought to keep strong. He fought to get his fears under control. And it would work. He would manage to master himself. Until the next moment of weakness turned his innards to water.

One mid afternoon, as the rain clouds began to ease, two guards had come for him in the fields. The soles of his feet still burned like hell and he hobbled wincing over the rope bridge to the landing pad.

There he was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, staring down at the dishevelled Braddock as the helicopter landed. Quoc had come back for him. The rotors still turning, Quoc had stood in the cargo hold and watched Braddock unload on agonised feet the cargo he had brought. Braddock was determined not to show his pain. Men like Quoc, he knew, fed off the suffering of others. But every step was crippling. He could not fail to grimace as he shuffled on the sides of his feet back for the final items of cargo. Quoc stopped him, bent down and theatrically removed the tarpaulin covering them. Heavy duty batteries. Truck batteries. Quoc’s words flashed into Braddock’s brain. The prophetic words spoken that torture-night in the warehouse: “A pity we had no power in the camp back then. Perhaps you’d have been less troublesome”.

The sun was struggling to break through the clouds when Braddock hobbled on painful feet over to the compound. Between two of the stakes set out for punishment, he put down the two batteries. He put them beside another box: holding jump leads with vicious metal claws; a coil collar.

The slaves shuffled back from the fields that night. The sight stopped them in their tracks. The newcomer standing spread-eagled between two uprights. Shirtless. Fully conscious. Some kind of collar round his neck.

Braddock’s eyes were screwed up, mouth contorted with pain. Fear over-writing the pain in his face. A cable running up to his crutch. A jump lead attached to him through the thin cloth. Claws crushed his balls between powerful jaws. Metal teeth bit deep into his nuts. A continuous moan spread-eagled between the posts. A constant squirming failing to dissipate pain. Loud hissing as the gnashing ache on his nuts got unbearable. Mouth contorting, teeth on edge.

The other end of the cable lay ominously in the earth in front of Braddock. Trailing away to a battery. The claw waiting to be connected to a terminal. A heavy-duty battery packed with power to hurt. Waiting for its audience to return from the fields.

Braddock expelled the pain in his balls with a sharp breathy groan. The vicious teeth sunk deep into sensitive organs. His crutch burned. Sharp stinging pain spread from knee to stomach. His teeth clenched hard together, face twisted, eyes screwed up tight. The claw seemed to bite down harder, he released the long strangled whine in his throat. Pain, frustration, anger mixed.

Unseen by him, blind in his agony, the men were being seated, rice in hand, lined up to watch. Entertainment while eating.

Quoc was back. Back for his revenge.

End.

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Braddock is missing

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