I have mourned for three men. Their names... are in a specific order: A****, J*****, C***. Their faces - Unrecognizable... Irrelevant. Their voices, their words, transcribed in text or etched in memory, will continue to haunt me... Unless I man the fuck up and capture Bae, otherwise there will be no salvation.
Her [1]
- September 2019, Undisclosed Location
1) Translation Error
"SPEAK TO ME FOR FUCK'S SAKE!" C screams. Please, don't scream at her, I've wanted to say, my ear hurts - but I also do not recall him sounding more frustrated. Anger? More disbelief and... impatience. We are running out of time, and now this.
I've wanted to say, she's cold, could you please stop. And I mean her body temperature... Our body temperature, in this ice house. It is uncomfortable enough to have a casual conversation out here in the back, and now this.
She is cornered in this room and she is hiding under some metal table, hugging herself in a foetal position.
"You stupid fucking bitch, you stupid fucking bitch..."
My brain no longer registers any verbal abuse that I hear, in whichever context - not that those words still cause any real damage whatsoever. To be fair, in this male dominated field, everyone is by default a motherfucker, some faggot, and any female subject a stupid fucking bitch - if you know what I mean... Courtesy has no place when you actually hear the tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock in your ear.
Please vary your use of abusive language, I've wanted to say, it is getting repetitive. Try a different accent, I would have advised - if my snarky comment matters in this moment.
He grabs the back of her head and pulls her out, I flinch, I can feel that my neck hurts on her behalf. She kneels in front of him and won't look him in the eyes.
She has no overt pain response... Is that a fair statement? She has trauma response - I try as accurately as I can to label her.
"You ruined everything... you..." C goes on and wraps his right palm on her throat. She reaches out as if to caress him, he pushes back and holds her in place.
"Speak. To. Me."
"I cannot tell. I cannot tell."
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CANNOT TELL?" C, on the verge of breaking her collarbone, screams again.
"I cannot tell."
I worshipped C even though I don't seem to have a good reason to, perhaps I still do - a character flaw not unique to me. Disregarding all conspiracy theories, it took me months to figure out what she meant - but we've already lost her. It makes no difference to him. Me, I regret not speaking up, for her and for myself - then again, I'm not able to.
She has previously stated, in a variety of situations, that she is, in fact, face blind. And then what? Nobody is willing to acknowledge the strategical failure of sending her to meet some rather important personnel without regards to the possibility that her intel might be inaccurate - and therefore deemed worthless. Something very bad happened and now she is "confused"? Untrue - she "cannot tell", she can't tell these people apart. She is unable to identify the individuals that she has encountered on her mission. "They all look the same," she said. They do look almost identical and dress the same way. That is what makes them so good and so bad.
"If she can't tell, neither can you," said C. By that logic, if she fails, so will I...
I've wanted to say Love was my default position in any conversation or any argument... Liberty means nothing - and it is such a fragile concept under any State. I've said Bae was too good to be confined in Texas of all places - we might have met but that is irrelevant... What remains true is the fact that I'm still alive and very much fixated on Some Things.
Dispense Hope, if there is any left in the current state of our world.
