Anna Royko had been beaten so savagely that, in addition to cuts, cigarette burns, and multiple broken bones, both of her eyes had swollen shut.
It was a blessing, of sorts, not being able to see. Her captors were monsters. Just looking at them for the first time, up close, face-to-ghoulishly-painted-face, had made her want to die. Without them saying a word, she had known what was going to happen to her, what they were going to do to her. Then they had given her a preview by committing unspeakable atrocities at the orphanage before tying her hands and feet, putting a bag over her head, and spiriting her away.
After four days of torture, she had prayed for her life to end—right there, at that very moment. Though not terribly religious, she had found God in that moment and had asked Him to take her, to end her life. And as the pain and the abuse were compounded and wore on, she had turned from asking God to end her suffering, to begging Him, and finally challenging Him to prove that He existed by striking her dead.
But no matter how fervently she prayed, no matter how badly she begged, and no matter how bitterly she challenged Him, God did not answer.
It was the lowest, darkest place Anna had ever been in. It was a black, bottomless pit of unimaginable anguish and sorrow. Had she not been restrained and had the means, she would have done the job God refused to do. She would have taken her own life.
The only thing worse than the suffocating despair was the flicker of ridiculous hope that ignited itself from time to time and for no reason. Like a pilot light suddenly visible in a darkened basement, it would show itself, tempting her to envision a bold escape and a life outside wherever she was being held captive. She knew all too well, however, that often in bad situations, it was the hope that killed you.
Hope, Anna had convinced herself, was something she couldn’t afford. Hope would only help give her the will to continue to live one more day. And living was the last thing she wanted to do. She wanted to die.
If she could just go to sleep and never wake up again, that would be an amazing gift. She no longer believed in God. And if there was no God, how could there be any heaven? Not that any of it mattered. Even if there was nothing other than empty, cold darkness, she would take it in exchange for what she was suffering through.
These foul-smelling, feral animals who beat her and forced themselves upon her had seen to it that she no longer even saw herself as a person, a human being.
What life could she possibly have after this horror? Who could possibly relate to what she had been through? How could she ever form a loving, tender partnership in which she trusted and gave herself to someone else? She had been taken, tortured, and broken by evil, wild things and could never go back to life among civilized people again.
To go on living was now a curse and the only way to break that curse was through death. But how?
She was chained to a bed, which was bolted to the floor. She was not allowed to use a bathroom. There was an old paint can under the bed that she was expected to use as a chamber pot.
Ten minutes before the men wanted to use her, they would bring in a bucket of freezing-cold water—likely drawn from some well outside—and hand her the same dirty rag she had been using over and over again.
The room itself was made out of stone. There was one small window at the far end. It was up high, which made her think she was being kept in a basement of some sort. The window had been covered with newspaper, so even during the day, not much sunlight filtered through.
On the occasions when the door to her room had been opened and she could see into the hallway, it appeared to be lined with all sorts of art—paintings in gilded frames, old statues, large altarpieces, and various sorts of religious icons.
She had no idea where the trove had come from, but assumed that it must have been looted. The men who were holding her were most definitely not a cabal of secret preservationists.
These Russian pigs were not different from countless invaders throughout history. Art and artifacts were stolen for two predominant reasons—profit, and as a means of cultural genocide; the complete and utter destruction of a nation’s heritage.
How and why the men had ended up at the orphanage, she hadn’t a clue. Based on the amount of substance abuse she had noticed among her captors, she assumed they had been drawn to the building because it had once been a hospital and they had entered in hopes of finding drugs. It must have been a daily, full-time job finding enough narcotics and alcohol to keep all of the men as numbed up as they were.
She assumed that was what they were doing when she heard them pile into their vehicles and drive off every morning. That, and stealing more art, as the mountains of it in the hallway only continued to grow.
From conversations she had overheard, she had learned that the men were not conventional soldiers. They were mercenaries. Many had been recruited from prisons and mental asylums. It explained their brutality, heavily tattooed bodies, and some extremely frightening mental health issues.
As best she could tell, the men were not engaged in any combat operations. The only resistance they discussed was that put up by the inhabitants of the villages they passed through—usually women and seniors.
The only authority she had seen in the organization was wielded by a bald, muscle-bound gorilla of a man referred to as the “Colonel.”
The Colonel had never touched her. He was a sadist who enjoyed sitting in the room, watching his most brutal men—the ones he called his “war dogs”—have their way with her.
Once she realized that he got off on her pain, she stopped giving him what he wanted. She stopped resisting. She stopped crying. She just lay there. After that, he lost interest and she hadn’t seen him since.
It was an infinitesimally small victory, but a victory nonetheless. The Colonel, however, seemed to be able to read her mind and had known what she had done because immediately thereafter, the amount of food they gave her was scaled way back. She didn’t think it was a coincidence.
If they intended to starve her to death, that was fine by her. She just wished they would hurry it up.
Of course, that wasn’t going to happen. They would keep her alive for as long as she served their purposes. Once that had happened, or once they had found a fresh replacement for her, then they would kill her. As far as Anna was concerned, the end couldn’t come soon enough.
In the moments when she was left alone and she was not plagued by nightmares or despair, she dreamed of revenge.
She envisioned locking the doors of the building, setting it on fire, and burning the men alive. It was the worst torture she could think of—for the monsters to know that they were going to die and for their deaths to be racked with as much fear and pain as possible.
Once or twice, she wondered what she might do with the art—how she would go about burning the building to the ground but save the artifacts from destruction. In a way, they were her fellow hostages. If she could escape, didn’t she have an obligation to them as well?
She was losing her mind. Seeing the stolen pieces of art as anything other than inanimate objects without agency was the rambling of a madwoman. Yet she hadn’t been able to shake the thought. And the more she tried to expunge it from her mind, the more firmly it took root.
It began to give her something more powerful than hope; it began to give her purpose. Purpose was a reason to stay alive. She didn’t know that she wanted one.
In fact, she was quite certain that what she truly wanted was for her life to be over. But the more she struggled to push the sense of purpose from her mind, the more insistent it became. It took on a life and a voice all its own and began speaking to her, pushing her, arguing with her.
In her moments of clarity, which were happening less and less often, she grasped that she was having a complete and utter psychotic break, but she had neither the energy nor the will to fight to hold on to what was left of her mind.
Maybe to escape the trauma of her captivity, it was better to go crazy. If she couldn’t escape in body, then why not escape inward, into the boundless expanse of her own mind? There, she could be safe. There, no one could touch her. No one could hurt her. Not anymore.
And so, with her eyes swollen shut, she severed her mental tether to reality and allowed herself to let go.