(CW: Torture, interrogation, electricity, sadism, military whump)
Thereâs something about the blindfold.
They sit there, row after row after row of prisoners, under the looming walls of the compoundâs outside courtyard. They are totally silent. They do not move.
That strip of cloth lends them an unnatural stillness. I donât know what it is, but I have never seen a person hold quite as still as when theyâve been blinded. Maybe itâs a defensive mechanism. Maybe itâs something lingering over from when we were all small creatures in the jungleâif we canât be found, we canât be eaten. If they canât see, then their only choice is not to be seen. If they donât move and donât speak, maybe the predator will pass them by.
In this case, though, theyâve already been found, and stillness isnât going to do them a bit of good. They are the prey, and I am the hunter. And the hunt is already over.
My boots crunch in the gravel as I pace slowly through the yard, flanked by a pair of guards. None of the prisoners move, although they can hear us coming. I imagine their heartbeats quickening at the sound. This group is fresh off the battlefield, captured just last night. Some of them are woundedâand if it wasnât life-threatening, it wasnât treated. Some have patches of blood on their uniforms.
Itâs hot. Midday. Thereâs no shade in the courtyard, and theyâre baking as they sit. No water since this morning. No food since their capture. We want to give ourselves as much of an opening as possible, and the dehydration and hunger and heat will do much of our work before we even begin the interrogations.
Already they are suffering. I see a few panting with the heat, dripping with sweat. Wrists tied behind their backs. Most of them are hunched over, drooped, heads hanging. It might be the easiest posture to maintain under these conditions, but I have another theory. Even when we capture rebels in cooler weather, or when theyâve been well fed and watered, they still sit that way after the blindfold goes on.
Itâs a submissive posture. Whether they do it on purpose or itâs merely instinctive, most of them adopt it. Like a dog groveling before the alpha of its pack, they cringe and drop and make themselves as small of a threat as possible. All of them, row after row after row, are shrinking before me.
Except one. Along the third row, after bowed head after bowed head, one stands out.
Heâs sitting upright, back ramrod straight, shoulders back and head up. Eyes forwardâat least, the blindfold is. I get the feeling that if the prisoners hadnât been forced to the ground, heâd be standing at attention.
He is not leaning forward. He is not submitting. His jaw is tight, and even though he doesnât move, even though he doesnât speak, even though I cannot see the look in his eyes, I can feel the hostility radiating from him.
Now that Iâve seen him, I canât un-see him, and the sight of that single defiant head in a sea of bent shoulders makes me chafe. I turn to head up his row, staring at the taut muscles and straight spine, seeing the ever-so-slight scowl that twists his lips.
Suddenly I have a vision of him, broken, lying on the ground in front of me. His scowl is gone. Heâs curled in a ball, all the fight driven out of him. He is begging me for mercy, and the thought fills me with a warm rush.
I came out here to choose the first candidate for interrogation. And now I think Iâve found him.
I march up the row, guards trailing behind, and stop right in front of the defiant prisoner. âThis one,â I tell the guards.
To the left, the captive at my feet twitches. He canât see where Iâm pointing, who Iâve chosen. When the guards drag his neighbor upright, he visibly sags with relief.
As soon as my target is on his feet, he shakes the guards off his shoulder. âI can walk on my own,â he mutters. It surprises me a little to hear him speak.
The guards respond by seizing both of his arms tightly, so tightly that it must bruise the skin and send pain stabbing through his muscles, and although he doesnât cry out or wince he does stop talking. I turn and begin striding towards the interrogation chamber, the three of them close behind.
Inside, itâs suddenly very dark after the brightness of the courtyard. Cooler, too. We move down a hallway and into the main debriefing room. It has a single high window and a reinforced door. There is a chair in the center of the room, bolted to the floor, with large equipment cabinets around the walls. The guards force the prisoner into the chair and begin fastening him down.
I watch as they do so, analyzing him, planning out my strategy. I wonder how this prisoner will react. Thereâll be screaming, of course, but sometimes they just let it rip out of them and other times they make an effort to avoid reacting to the pain. I suspect heâll do the latter. Itâs a pride thing, and this man seems very proud.
Thatâs why I donât think heâs going to cry. They occasionally cry, but this one isnât going to. Whimper? Maybe.
He is, of course, going to break, whether he sheds tears or screams his throat raw or simply decides to give up before the agony begins. They all break, in the end. Some sooner, some later, some without a fight and some after epic battles of willâbut they all eventually break. This one will be no different.
I take pride in my work, and I am very good at my job.
Heâs tied in, feet securely fastened to the legs of the chair, arms bound in the back, chest and hips and thighs all tightly strapped down. And his blindfold still over his eyes, still keeping him powerless in the dark.
And yet still, despite it all, heâs sitting ramrod straight, perfectly at attention. I feel the longing in my gut.
I want so badly to see him slump.
But first things firstâinformation is more important than my gratification. And information has to come from the right psychological state, and I have to start laying the base before I can reap the rewards. So I gesture to one of the cabinets. âWeâll start with the electrodes.â
My assistants obediently move to the cabinet and start digging out the equipmentâpower pack, metal alligator clips, control pad. âDonât forget the knife,â I remind them, and one grabs a blade from the shelf and moves back towards the prisoner. We hear the fabric being cut, and with a few deft strokes the uniform is reduced to ribbons.
When the guard gathers the scraps of material and pulls back, the prisoner is naked from the waist up. It gives us better access to the torso, so we can work, but thereâs a significant sense of humiliation and fear that comes with having his clothes ripped away. Heâs bound hand and foot and thereâs nothing he can do.
âShould I get the bit?â asks the other guard, still back at the cabinet. He holds up a wooden dowel covered in tooth marks. Sometimes we let prisoners bite down on it.
I shake my head. âNo. I think itâll be good for the others outside to hear the noise. Besides, look how tight that jaw isâI donât think youâll be able to get anything into there.â
The prisonerâs lips twitch. We are, of course, holding this conversation in large part for his benefitâitâs business as usual, and weâre talking about him as though he isnât even there. Heâs an animal, an object, blind and immobile.
The guard moves away from the cabinet, holding the clips. He has two of them, and he connects the wires that link them to the powerpack before tapping the ends of the clips together. A few sparks fly between them, crackling. I imagine the sound is terrifying. The guard pinches the skin over the prisonerâs chest so that he has a place to anchor the clips. The prisoner doesnât react as they bite into his flesh. Itâs probably painful. But itâs going to get much worse.
I watch from the corner. âStart calibration.â The other assistant picks up the control pad and then waves his partner away from the chair. Once they both have their distance, he pushes a button.
The prisoner stiffens, sweat springing out across his brow as his breathing quickens. I can see his toes and fingers curling, his head tipping back, the way he locks his jaw to keep from making a sound. It does not take a highly trained eye to see that heâs in pain.
âCurrent flowing,â the guard reports. He releases the button and the prisoner relaxes, taking a few shaky breaths. Heâs still disappointingly upright. I come by and take a look at the controls, examining the readouts.
âIncrease the voltage to twelve hundred and drop the current five milliamps,â I order. Current measures how much electricity is flowing, while voltage measures how quickly it moves. Current is the one that can kill you. Voltage is the one you can feel. A high voltage and low current is excruciating, but unlikely to leave any permanent damage.
The guard complies with the order and presses the button again. The prisoner gasps, the pain forcing air into his lungs, and arches his back. His muscles twitch and his chest heaves, straining against his bonds. They are unyielding. After a second or two my assistant releases the button, and our captive sinks back to his original position. I check the readout again.
âTwelve hundred volts,â I correct. âNot ten.â
This time the prisoner cries out, a shout forcing itself through his teeth that echoes around the small room and hopefully out into the courtyard. Thereâs a thud as he bucks, once, jerking against the chair. His lips draw back and his face contorts into a grimace.
The guard releases the button. The prisoner sags forward, and just for a moment I feel the thrill of satisfaction. But just for a moment, because then he takes a deep breath and sits upright once again.
Looks like this will be a long session after all.
âGood,â I say quietly, and motion for the guard to put down the control pad. He does so. âI believe we are ready.â
The prisoner is sitting in his chair, blind and upright and very, very still, and aside from the fact that his breathing is hard and shaky youâd never guess that his muscles are on fire. His nostrils flare as he draws in the air, and his jaw is still clenched shut just as firmly as ever.
We didnât, strictly speaking, have to run those tests with him connected to the device. We could have just as easily done it with the clips off his skin. But Iâve found this is an effective way to show the prisoner what weâre capable of, to teach him the consequences of a wrong answer. We want to soften him up before we actually begin questioningâafter all, the hunger, the thirst, the heat, the pain of the electricity have all been things that he has no power over. Once we hand control to a prisoner by offering a way out, he tends to take it.
I doubt that this one will. No, what will happen here is resistance, a battle to avoid saying anything, a fight to keep his mouth shut against wave after wave of electric current. But as the painful seconds turn into minutes and the painful minutes turn into hours, his resolve will begin to waver. Nobody is invincible. They all have a breaking point.
At first, heâll probably hope for the solace of unconsciousness, a lapse into darkness where he canât betray his cause and canât feel the agony we pump into him. But I know the signs that a blackout is coming, and Iâm going to ease back right as it nears. Weâll douse him with water or wave smelling salts and heâll find himself jerking right back into wakefulness. If that doesnât work, then weâll shift methods to keep him from passing outâmoving from electricity to a beating, or maybe mock drowning. These cabinets are full of lighters and knives and needles and everything we need to keep him awake until weâve extracted every ounce of information that he has.
As the hours wear on and it hurts more, and more, and more, heâll keep fighting, continue resisting, hoping desperately that something, anything will help him find a way out. Nothing will. And I will always be there, asking questions, harrying him, catching lies, befriending him and betraying him, rewarding cooperation and punishing disobedience. Weâll play the game of interrogation over and over again, and Iâll always have the edge.
Eventually, his willpower will drain away. He will break. He will tell us everything he knows. And thenâI feel that familiar rush of pleasure againâhe will beg me for mercy, lying here on this floor. And I will be victorious.
But first, we have to begin, because that moment is many hours, maybe days away. Right now, he is sitting before me, back straight and head upright, breathing returned to normal, ever-so-slight scowl upon his lips, waiting for me to ask the first question.
So I step in front of his chair, lean over him, and for the first time I address him directly. Heâs waiting for me to ask my first question, and I do.
Thereâs a long moment before he answers. I can almost see the confusion in his eyes, the racing mind as he decides what to say. When he does respond, his tone is contemptuous. âWhat kind of a question is that?â
I almost laugh. I smile, but he canât see that. This one has spirit. âItâs the kind I ask to assess my projects before I begin,â I tell him, straightening up. âAnd your answer is the kind that a man gives when he doesnât want to reveal exactly how terrified he really is.â
Iâm right, of course. He didnât actually answer the question, and heâs trying to mask his nerves with false bravado. The contempt is probably real, but at this point, having had a taste of the agony to come and waiting for the rest to begin, fear will be the dominant emotion.
I begin to pace around him, making sure that he can hear my footsteps. Iâm examining his helpless body from every angle and I want him to know it. âI donât blame you,â I say, after a moment. He does not move, facing straight ahead, and the guards donât move either. âIf I was in your place, Iâd certainly be afraid.â
He takes a deep breath, as though steeling himself, and I pause to wait for his response. Probably a denial of terror, or a declaration that I wonât get anything from himâwhich we both know is a lie.
But then thatâs when he turns to face me, almost as though he can see me through the black strip of fabric, and I blink, nonplussed. This is new.
He speaks in a low voice. âIf I was in your place,â he says, âIâd at least have the courage to look my victims in the eye.â
I stand there for a long moment. I do not say anything.
And then I pick up the control pad and slam that button down until he passes out.
