Olympus

         I've been in this hell for almost ten years. Give or take. It is hard to know. The sun is berating year round and the heat scorches no matter the season. The sandstorms last days and blot out enough light so as to make it impossible to distinguish day from night. Still, it feels like it’s been almost ten years. So, I must assume, it has been nearly ten years. It is all I have.

         The only thing I have left to my name is my number, etched into my arm, and my name, etched into my brain. I am 64. I am Kinder.

         Ten years ago - or thereabouts - I lost everything. My family, my life, my freedom. I don't even remember how it happened, the torture ensured that. I remember very little of my life before this inferno. Those things which I do remember are hazy at best.

         I remember my wife sometimes, her belly growing and her spirits happy. For the first few months, I remember I was worried about her wellbeing without me. Now, I would hope, she has found somebody new to take care of her and our child.

         Her child. I was never there. Her child.

         I have been here longer than anyone else in the camp. After ten years, they are freed. I've been here for almost that long. I will be freed, as long as I survive the torture for so short a time. I am almost free of the Cave. And, unlike Socrates, I do not plan on returning. All I must do is not break, not crumble to their attempts at brainwashing and torture.

         I will keep this in mind, for the hundredth time, as they thrust pliers under my nails. As they fray skin from bones. As they show me hour upon hour of terrible footage of terrible things. It will end soon, I need only that comfort. They cannot hurt me anymore, not now that I am so near. I can feel how near I am. I can taste it.

——
         I was taken to the interview room today. It is the first time in many years I have been here. It is here that the warden speaks to us, the prisoners, when needed. I have not seen him since my first week in the camp. As they were taking me, I gazed upon the part of the compound prisoners weren't allowed in. The buildings were all low, even the concrete walls. There was only one tower, right at the main gate, which connected to the interview room. Rumors around the camp said that the warden lived in the tower, watching from above at all times.

         As I examined the front gates, I was astonished. I didn't remember there being so many guards here ten years ago. Maybe I was wrong, however. They forced me into the interview room before I could count them.

         He spoke with a strong accent — from where I don't know – and an equally strong stutter. He told me to call him Zeus. He told me I was to be freed tomorrow. He told me to turn left upon exiting the camp and keep walking, passing right below the tower before heading out to the nearest city. He told me not to tell anyone about this compound. He told me that my wife has been informed to await me in civilization, and will be waiting there. He told me all this through a radio on a table in the interview room.

         Then the guards took me out of the room, and took me to my cell. I shared with the other prisoners my experience. Those who were near enough to be called friends congratulated me. All those who weren't eyed me with jealousy. I will not sleep tonight. To be killed by them now would be the greatest tragedy of all.

         Every day has been a thousand days. Every year a millennium. Today has been but an hour.

———
         I looked down from atop my heavenly spire as my angels freed him into the world. I prepared my bolt as he went out into the infinite sands and salts and heat of the desert. He walked out as the happiest man in the word as I tossed my spear of lightning, the thunder echoing through my Olympus, begging him to join his wife in Hades.

         He never saw it coming.