It is winter, that is all I can tell from being in here. It’s about fifty degrees, which is fairly lower than usual for Rangoon. I’m cold. The walls are too frigid to lean on, so I lay on this painful, rough piece of cardboard, people like me have to call bed. I don’t’ know what to do, but panic. I’m trying not to because when I was younger my mother always told me “Panicking shows weakness and that is exactly what they want from you.” I didn’t do it. I didn’t commit those awful accusations. I don’t even understand how it could be me, and now I have to pay for it.
I have never felt so inferior and less than a person than I should be. As I have lied in this isolated eerie and frightful cellar for these past thirty days, I have become more and more terrified to think about the end. Living in Isan under an open tent my whole life, it was always hard being able to get food for my family, taking care of my two younger sisters, and even getting a proper education. When I was 12, I remember going to the beach with my older brother. It was the first time I ever went to the beach. That burst of wind that hit my face as I ran into the water was the first time I have felt like I was living the life I was supposed to be living. For the first time in my life, I felt free. I felt like the water, I felt infinite. I hope my brother doesn’t forget that person on the beach, oh God I really hope he doesn’t.
My hands are shaking. I can’t hear anything, but footsteps. Each footstep, I think it is them coming for me to bring me to hell. My time to leave is at three-fifteen, I don’t how much time I have left. Why me? Why did they choose me to blame? I was 15 when it happened, just sitting with my sister, Mali, in our tent when they came and grabbed me. They threatened to kill me, if I didn’t tell them where the others were hiding from the group. I told them that I didn’t even know them, let alone where they were. Three years later, sentenced for harsh treason, they’re finally fulfilling their threat.
I hear them coming, I hear the footsteps getting louder and louder each step. Okay, now I’m really panicking. These three years in this god-awful place have been gruesomely horrific. From being regularly beaten to having to drink toilet water as a privilege, still, nothing has compared to what’s about to happen soon.
I don’t know if it’s them I hate, the idiots who grab the people in here as if they’re just scraps of meat with no soul or if it’s those imprudent fools who put me here in the first place. This shouldn’t have to happen to anyone, whether someone did it or not. This isn’t a rational consequence, it’s just viciously inhumane. It is still cold out and the walls are still frigid and I’m sweating. I feel drops of water coming down my cheeks. This is it, it’s about to be over.