The Gulag

The Gulag

By:

Steve Smith



I awoke abruptly, still in my cell. This five by five foot cinderblock hell that had been my home for four years welcomed me as my eyes focused. Without any windows, I never saw the sun and with no clock I never knew the time. I figured the time only by the choice of gruel that was fed to me through the steel door. A cold biscuit for breakfast, a crispy piece of toast for lunch and a slice of roast beef for dinner; though I wasn’t certain if the roast beef was really roast beef or something entirely different. The “food” barely kept me alive.

Every morning, noon and night, the plate was slid through the hole in the door and I devoured every bit without a moment’s hesitation. Until one morning, the food didn’t come. Nothing. Not the click-clack of the guard’s boots, not the metallic clang the hole made when it was opened. Nothing. I sat for what felt like hours until a noise rang loud in my ears. A noise I had not heard in four long, tiring years. The lock that kept the door closed was being opened. It slid backwards and fell into the open position. The door creaked and groaned loudly as it swung open. I stared at the open door for a solid minute. No guard was standing in the doorway. No one was there. I crept forward thinking that any second now a guard would burst in and beat the hell out of me. Still nothing. I poked my head through the doorway and looked left, then right. Emptiness opened its arms to me like an old friend. Was I free?

I stood, and looked again. The hallway I had entered four years ago was completely different than what I remembered. The walls were painted a hospital white, the floor was white tiles. Everything was impeccably clean. There were also no other doors, windows, anything, for as far as the hallway went. I crept out, my bare feet meeting the cold floor ever so softly. A staircase was ahead. I made it halfway to the steps from my cell when a voice froze me. The noise was coming from the top of the stairs. Then, footsteps. They were heading down the stairs toward me. I had nowhere to go, no corner to hide behind. My cell was too far for me to make it in time. The footsteps got louder and louder when, all of a sudden, they stopped. Another voice called out but I couldn’t hear what was said. Whoever was on the stairs responded in a language I had never heard. Then, the footsteps sounded distant. They were going away from me. They faded into nothing and I was left standing in the deafening silence. After waiting for minutes, I edged forward to the spiral staircase. The stairs weren’t tile like the floor below me. The stairs were a cold steel that numbed my bare feet. A chill came rushing down the stairs and made me shiver. I could hear the distant howl of the wind as I stepped softly upwards. I started counting the steps as I went. Twenty, forty, sixty steps passed with no end in sight. My thighs burned; I was tiring. Finally, after 120 steps I reached a solid steel door with a single word written in a language I’d never seen. I was free.

I pushed the door with all my might and fell through the doorway onto a flat field with snow patches scattered here and there. In the distance I saw a snow-capped mountain range. There was no fence keeping me in, no alarms had sounded signaling a prisoner trying to escape, no dogs and their gnashing jaws, no men with guns and orders to kill. Nothing but the epic stretch of open land to the mountains. Where were the guards from the stairs? Had they disappeared into thin air? I turned to close the door but that had disappeared as well. I was standing in an open field miles in diameter with not a living, breathing organism in sight. I wanted to run but couldn’t move; my feet had turned to concrete blocks and I was cemented to the ground. The concrete was inching its way up my legs, swallowing them. The concrete reached my waist and I frantically tried to shake it off. I needed to get it off. It was at my neck now, inches from swallowing me whole, this relentless concrete parasite. It filled my mouth; I could feel it filling my lungs. Every breath I took filled more concrete in my lungs. I tried to scream but couldn’t was I free?

I awoke abruptly, still in my cell. A metallic knock at the door and a heavy-set guard with tired eyes and a pot belly entered. He was carrying a tray with a steak, fries, a bottle of coke and two bars of chocolate. The aroma of the meal filled the room and made my mouth water. “Eat hearty, Inmate 5188, for tonight, you dine in hell!” He chuckled to himself as he placed the tray on my concrete bed. “I’ve always wanted to say that,” he said to himself on his way out the door.