Journey to the Republic of Taeyoung: Chapter 1
Sadists of Silla / Confessions of a Captive
Speculative Fiction on a Dystopian Not-so-distant Future
Note: I plan to publish this story on RoyalRoad under the username AriChaseRamos.
Michael
“Wake up!”
My body was shaken. My eyes popped open. As a 20-something-year-old guy in military fatigues shouted into my face, beads of spittle landed on my cheeks and lips. His eyes were bulging with rage. These prison guards could act as quite the sadists.
I groggily lifted myself off the cement floor and rubbed my eyes. There was no bed. They had taken the thin rice-straw mattress they had given me as punishment for my not complying. The room was full of light from the bulb they never turned off.
“Get up!” the man shouted. I’d never seen him before. The guards seemed to change every day. Another man walked in to help.
They put metal handcuffs around my wrists. They locked them extra tight so that the manacles dug painfully into my bone. (And it was not the kind of pain that doubles as pleasure.)
They attached another metal chain around the one that connected the handcuffs and pulled on it as a leash, jerking me forward.
“Follow me, maggot!”
“Be careful. You don’t want our prisoner to get too excited. You know where we caught him.”
“He should feel right at home here!”
I was led into the interrogation room. They pushed me to sit on an uncomfortable metal chair across from a desk. A portrait of the commander-in-chief and the red, white, and blue flag hung on the opposite wall.
There were cold bars across the back of the chair. They redid my handcuffs, locking my hands behind me and interlocking the chair through the bars of the chair so that I couldn’t try to move my hands and arms. Then they left me there. They always made me wait--sometimes for twenty minutes, sometimes for more than an hour, it was hard to tell--before starting their interrogations.
***
I should have known better. Should have known that I couldn’t escape the virus that would spread over half the world. Nowhere is safe. Of course, I had read the news, I had studied history, I knew the risk. But I was bored. I would have done anything to escape my home country. To start a new life. I just really wanted an adventure.
So, foolishly, recklessly, I took the job. I bought the ticket. And I took the ride; I hopped onto the Chinese-made COMAC C949 supersonic jet, the fastest in the world, and ended up 6,800 miles away in under four hours.
Some of my friends had told me, “Don’t go. It’s too dangerous.”
They were becoming less welcoming to foreigners, I was told. Don’t worry, I’ll learn the language as best as I can. I’ll adapt.
You could get in trouble. The way they’re enforcing the law is extremely arbitrary. It’s still a democracy. How bad could things really be?
For how long? There’s going to be a civil war any day now. People always say that...
The man who had once been president returned to office after winning a controversial election. His campaign had focused on cultural wars grievances and calls for revenge. Ever since his attempt at a coup had failed, ever since he’d been thrown out of office, his people had been focused single-mindedly on getting back in power and punishing those they held responsible.
I was aware of all of that. I read the news. I had studied International Relations in university. I paid attention to the election. It took the world by surprise, but it was understandable considering the economic downturn and the massive changes upending politics in every country. I just thought it was their domestic shit and that it wouldn’t affect me. I put all rational worries aside because I wanted the excitement, the thrill, anything to distract me from my rapidly deteriorating life in my place of birth.
In the end, I guess you could say, I got my wish.
***
I still wasn’t completely sure where exactly I was being held. Obviously, it was somewhere in the U.S. (short for Unified Silla), and it must have been on the southern half (of the southern half) of the peninsula. Because by the time those brutish men had grabbed me, blindfolded me, and thrown me into the back of an unmarked van, their side had lost control of most of the land they once controlled. There were no windows in my cell, nor in this interrogation room, so I couldn’t even try to guess my location based on the scenery. They told me I was a “national security threat” and deprived me of food for days at a time. It was my most enjoyable experience getting kidnapped. (It was certainly a lot less sexy than the time I had been “kidnapped” by two dominatrixes in Seoul a couple of years back--back when it was still called Seoul.)
A gruff man wearing a peaked cap with a crescent moon insignia--the military emblem of Silla--walked in and slapped me on the back of the head as he passed. He bowed to the portrait of General Yun (I refuse to call him “President,” even in these pages, and he’s been taking to calling himself “General,” anyway, ever since the war started), and he sat down at the interrogation desk.
“Be a good boy this time,” the interrogator began. “We know you were creating propaganda for the Bitch of Baekje and her terrorist supporters. You could be executed for that. But if you help me out and provide names, I can get you returned to Americanada. It’s up to you how long you stay here.”
“I think it’s up to the North Koreans,” I muttered.
The interrogator huffed and pounded the table.
“I’m recording everything you say. I’d be happy to note any more violations of the National Security Act you commit in this room.”
I guess referring to the military success of the “main enemy” was the equivalent of “praise.” The last I read, they had already taken the capital and continued advancing, and that was four weeks ago.
The interrogator pulled an ornate mother-of-pear box out of the desk and took a cigar out.
“Let’s begin again. Would you like one?”
I shook my head.
He lit his and blew smoke in my direction.
“Tell us the names of the other women involved in the insurrection. We know you were whoring around with them.”
“I don’t see anyone.”
It was true. I was blindfolded half the time.
“We have you on video with a lot of them.”
“Great. Then watch the videos.”
“You don’t want to make this more difficult for yourself?”
He took another long drag and blew the smoke directly into my face. I coughed.
“You will tell me the names of the insurrectionist feminists.”
He spit the word “feminist” like it was bile.
“They didn’t do anything wrong.”
He shuffled through some papers on the desk and began reading off the top.
“Article 3. Any person who induces another person to join an anti-government organization shall be punished by imprisonment for a term of two or more years.”
“They didn’t stage the coup.”
“Article 7. Any person who incites or propagates the activities of an anti-government organization shall be punished by imprisonment for up to seven years.”
“They didn’t declare martial law.”
“Article 6. Any person who has escaped to an area under the control of any anti-government organization shall be punished by imprisonment for up to ten years.”
“They didn’t give the order to fire on civilians.”
“A person engaged in the function of ringleader of an anti-government organization shall be punished by capital punishment.”
He looked up from the papers and smiled at me in a twisted, evil way, taking more pleasure in my misery than anybody I had ever met.
“Do you know where your ‘Prime Mistress’ is? Taeyoung? The ringleader of your perverted group? If you’re holding out because you’re hoping to see her again, you just might be disappointed,” he said with a guttural laugh.
“Fuck you.”
“I bet you want to, you sick freak.”
The interrogator approached me. He stood right in front of me and looked down at me. He slowly removed his cigar from his mouth, reached it towards my face, and shook ash on the floor in front of me.
“You might be surprised. I’m usually pretty nice in my interrogations. But with someone like you, a disgusting degenerate, who committed all manner of terrible acts against the state and against morality, I won’t be so nice.”
He pushed the cigar closer to me. The cherry at the tip was an intense orange, the hue shifting into red, the flame flashing and fading.
“I’ve never tried using a cigar to directly aid my interrogation before. But, then, again, I’ve never had a slave in front of me who would let me do it.”
He blew on it again and pushed the over 1000-degree tip of the burning stick of tobacco closer. I gritted my teeth and swung my head and shoulders to the right. I tried tipping the chair, but it was bolted to the ground.
“You’re excited, aren’t you? You’re gonna like it.”
I closed my eyes. I braced for impact.
I saw a red flash under my eyelids, and my eardrums shrieked in pain. The whirring siren sound of an air raid screeched from cloud range. Shouting erupted from the hallways. I opened my eyes, and my tormenter had lost his desire. He rushed to rub the cigar out in the ashtray and then ran out the door, leaving me locked to the chair.
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