Право на жизнь

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As the hit came, I took it, waiting for more.
It was the 22nd today, and the 42nd day. Counting them was the only occupation I still had, aside of watching my own blood drip to the floor and form red patterns on the tiles, another weird pattern every day.

I didn't even fight back. Thinking back to the last time when this had happened to me, I remember that I had fought back then. I had taken every chance to pay the men back what they were doing to me.
But not now. Had I become wiser? Or just older and tired?
It was a welcome refreshment that they seemed to lose their interest in me, when I didn't fight back. Some of the things they did, I realized, they were only doing them to make me fight back, so they'd have a reason to be even more brutal.
But I wouldn't give them that pleasure. Not this time. Whatever they'd do, whatever tools they'd use or how much they'd humiliate me. It was strange, but I realized that I didn't care about that any more, not about my life and above all, not about my body, which got weaker, skinnier and bloodier every other day that I spent here.

I still felt the pain. Not when the hits went down on me, but in between them, when the tension of waiting for the next hit wasn't already overshadowing the pain from the last one.
Why should I care?

The longer I watched the red patterns on the floor, the clearer it got to me: I deserved this. I deserve to be treated like this.
In no possible way can I think of an excuse for all the things that I did in my life. All the other lives that I took… must be a few hundred, over the years. Unthinkable. That a single man kills a few hundred people and can still sleep every night. What a monster.

At least can't I sleep now. I lie awake every night, thinking. Most of the times I'm not even tired. Well, there is nothing that I can do, I don't get to exercise, being locked up in a 20 square feet cell all day, there's nothing that makes me tired enough to be able to sleep – aside of the torture.
But the pain that it brings, the one that stays, all day, even after they are finished, the one that stays through the night… it keeps me awake. I can't sleep. I just can't. I keep staring at the cold stone walls around me. How much blood of others is already on these walls? Must be a lot, I'm sure that nobody makes it aroung here very long. There's no way of surviving their torture for more than a few months maybe. This house looks like it is two hundred years old. There must be a lot of blood of others on these walls around me. I hope it's the blood of men like me- real monsters- and not the blood of innocent ones who shouldn't have ever come here.

How many innocent ones did I kill?
I don't even know, I have to admit. There must have been collateral damage, I'm sure. Ryan. Paul. My god, I don't even want to think back. This is worse than torture, thinking of Audrey, as she screamed and shouted, when I killed the man she had once loved.
She called me a monster.
Probably that was the only moment in all our time together that she saw me in the true light of what I really was.

I feel the cold shower on my back. I'm cold through and through, anyway. But thinking back to what I have done throughout my life makes me shudder. I am a monster. I deserve to be here.

As much as I try to push the thoughts of her out of my mind – just because I can't cope with the thought of her, being dead, I grab the tiny stone again that lies next to me.
I found it, a few days ago – a small stone that lay on the unpaved surface of the room in which I spent most of my recent life - and I started to scratch her name into the stone walls. It took me days to write it, letter by letter. In the end, my fingers were bleeding because that stone was way too small, but at least I can read her name when l lay down.

When I stare at the letters I get reminded of all things I lost. She was the last thing, the one that broke me.
I would have never exchanged myself for Chloe, if Audrey had still been alive. God, what an asshole am I? Am I really thinking of letting my best friend down just because I would have had a possible prospect on a 'normal life'? That's nonsense. Wake up, you never had a chance on a life with Audrey, not one second, not even after her second marriage failed and not even after Heller pardoned you, you fool! Not even if she hadn't been shot!
But when I read her name, I have to hold on to that dream, for just one second, to make me feel better. If she hadn't died… if I had been there for her, instead of trusting someone else with it… if I hadn't spent my time fighting for some useless national security stuff… What would have happened? If I could have saved her from Cheng's men? Probably they'd have shot me. That would have been okay. What if I had survived?

It's almost like I see her now, standing there, looking at me. We're looking into each other's eyes again, like last time I was with her. She didn't hold anything against me. She had forgiven me everything that I had ever done to her- killing Paul, faking my death that left her shattered, leaving her when she had actually needed me, after coming home from her ordeal that she only had because of me.
When she looked into my eyes, there was nothing, no regret, no accuse. They were… I can't find any words to describe it. She forgave me. Why? Why did she forgive me for all things that I did? When even I can't forgive myself?

Well, it took me long to start crying tonight. Normally I just have to look at her name.
I'll be alone in here for the next few hours, there are no cameras anyway in this old building, so why care? It doesn't matter. I gave up hiding how bad my status was. A few years ago, last time, I never let it show how bad my condition really was. I wouldn't let them see me cry or lick my wounds.
But now, I don't care. It's different now. I must have grown older, I guess.
I'm not fighting them back.

Two weeks ago, they put me in front of something worth being called a court. Actually, I had thought of two options, when they got me: that they'd put me in a hidden prison somewhere, denying that they even had me, or that they'd publicly sentence me to death for having murdered one of their ministers, four years ago.
But neither happened. They just put me in front of a court, it was a tiny room, old fashioned, there were a few spectators but nobody made any pictures or seemed to be interested in the case.
I guess they did it while I was still in a shape to be put in this cage, which was so typical for their court rooms, being able to sit there without cringing of pain or looking like just coming out of severe torture. Back then I must have really looked better than I do now.

I didn't understand one word the judge said. Not one single word. At the end, somebody came to my cage and asked me something – I didn't understand it either. Then the one repeated it in English, asking me if I had anything to say in mitigation. What a great joke. I didn't even know what I was charged with.
So I said nothing. I stayed silent, I didn't even nod my head or shake it. Not once.

In the end, they brought me away again, and I still don't know what the judge's last words were, but they could mean nothing good. Was this even a regular court? Or was it some kind of a military court?
I hoped it was the latter and I still do now. I know that their regular courts can't sentence me to death any more, but the military ones still could. Death would be a good solution. It would end all the pain and the suffering, it would put an end to a life which should have never happened in the way it did.

I still don't know what kind of court it was.
I still don't know what I had been sentenced with. Will I ever know?
Fourteen days have passed since then. Were they waiting for me to appeal against the decision? Just so they could say in the end that they did wait the appropriate amount of time until finalizing the sentence? Just tell me how to perempt and I will!

It is awful to lie here like this, having nothing to do and so much time to think. The pain from the wounds all over my body doesn't really make it better. It just shows me how my life will continue if this – in the end – was no death sentence.
Maybe the judge decided that I should continue to suffer, for the rest of my life. Maybe his words, the ones that I hadn't understood, meant that they should go easy on me, making me survive for as long as possible, to give me hell for the things that I did to some of their people.

Damnit, the death sentence was too good to be true. I didn't even deserve their bullet. I deserved something worse than death, something that would pay me back for all the things I did to others, for all the kills and the times that I tortured, standing on the other side.
If the judge was a good one, then he'd look into the case and see that simply killing me would be too easy. If he wanted to bring justice to this world, then he must give the world a chance to do to me the same things that I did to it.

I don't have a watch now. Probably it's not even midnight now. My thoughts will keep circling like this for like eight other hours, until they push some food into the cell, give me twenty minutes to hurry eating it without any chance to enjoy it and then drag me along to the bathroom, hosing me down with ice cold water and then putting me back into the cell, making me wait for the moment they'd come to continue their other 'procedures'.

There is a little light that comes in through the metal bars overhead the door. The cell doesn't have a window to the outside, but a connection to the main hallway. I'm not alone, here. There are others as well, in other cells, some are screaming of pain, some are just screaming because they probably cracked up. I am not yet one of them, but who knows, probably I will be one of them, too, in a few weeks or months, when it all becomes too much to lie here silently and think about my mistakes. Maybe I'll start screaming out loud as well?

The light coming in from the hallway is just enough to see the name that I scratched into the wall, next to my face. Audrey.

I'm coming to you, one day, I murmur, stretching out my hand to touch the letters. It's just a cold stone, which I touch, but that's the next best thing to her that I have right now.

But then, always, the sudden realization comes. She is in heaven, for sure. And If died now, I could only end up in hell. I'm not ever gonna see her again. Not in this life and not in the next.
I lie in the darkness, listening to the occasional screams of the others. We are all here to atone for the things we've done. Maybe, if I stay here long enough, if I suffer long enough, if they treat me harsh enough… maybe then I could be delivered from the things I've done.

Right in this moment I hope it was no death sentence what the judge gave me… I know already, that in twelve hours I'll think differently, when I'm lying on their table or hanging from their chains again. But tomorrow night, when I'll be back here, looking at her name, I'll change my mind again, hoping that I'll get the chance to pay for my sins, no matter how painful and how many days it takes.

I want to pay, I really do, because I know that I have to.

Because I want to see you in heaven, Audrey. One day.

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