EsCApE

    I would have thought they would have let me go by now, I’ve nothing left to tell them. They did say they would let me go, if I gave them some sort of information. At first I resisted, well you do don’t you at the beginning, it was just questions they asked. It was easy to resist, by simply not answering their questions with no comment. No comment I said, to each question I answered no comment. But then they start playing tricks, by getting some young attractive woman to use her feminine wiles against you, to play on your sympathies, and play the damsel in distress. But I was having none of it, mind you Number 9 was damned attractive. But then they start playing with your mind, they twist things so that you don’t know what day of the week it is, not that you can ever be sure what time of day it is, what week, month, year it is in The Village.
    One chap said he could be my friend, could be but he wasn’t, he had me half electrocuted! Another filled me with mind bending drugs, and that was that, I talked oh God how I talked, I talked so much they couldn’t shut me up! I told them everything I knew, and quite a bit I didn’t think I know.
    Now I’m here, still waiting to be released from the peaceful atmosphere of The Village. Mind you it’s not so bad, they look after you here and for as long as you live. Three square meals a day, with nothing to do and all day to do it in, my god I’m bored!
    In the beginning there was the desire for escape. I’d talked with others and listened to what escape attempts they had all tried, they’d all failed of course because they were still here. So seeing no-one had tried to escape by digging a tunnel, like that Count of Monte Cristo, I started digging. My cottage was less than one hundred yards from the edge of the woods. I had to stop my maid coming to the cottage, couldn’t have her discovering my secret and give the game away before I had hardly begun. But she wouldn’t go away, go away I shouted, your services are no longer required. I drew the curtains and blinds across the window, but that made her even more curious. She whispered to me through the letter box “What are you doing?”
   What I was doing was taking up the floorboards in the living room, and digging a hole in the bare earth with a spade I stole from the gardener’s hut, that’s what I was doing. “Are those floorboards piled up there, and what’s that heap of earth, are you digging a hole?” the maid asked peering through the open letter box. I’m digging a tunnel if you must know. “Oh good, let me in and I’ll help you with it.” What are you doing there Number Twenty-nine?” a man’s voice asked. “Number Nine is digging a tunnel, and he’s going to let me help him with it.” “Oh goody the man said, perhaps he’ll let me help as well.” Before I knew it there was a line of people outside my cottage door, and all I could do was open it and let, all twenty two of them, in. Curiously they had all brought shovels and spades with them.
    We all dug for days on end, in shifts, half would dig while the others slept and vice versa. Then one day, it was around the noon of day when one of the diggers reported that we’d broken through. I was much relieved because my calculations had us having dug our way through to the other side of the woods, and should now be digging upwards to break through to the surface. And yet, we entered a tunnel, a tunnel which opened into a small cavern. It soon became clear that we had dug our way into a little gold mine! In the end it might be thought that wealth bought us all our freedom, but no. Number 2 couldn’t allow us to leave, after all who would work the mine?

Be seeing you