Daybreak Song It was a work day, and for prisoners like us that meant heaving pickaxes to crush rocks and scrape dirt under the sweltering midday sun. The agonising lift, each inch tearing muscle from bones, wish, smash. A rhythmic trance took hold of us and, forgetting the harsh hold of our leg shackles, we felt something beyond the sharp twitches of our traitorous muscles. The rattle of our chains with every swing, the clash of tool and earth with every impact, the scramble of feet with the reverberation of force through our skeletons – there began a song. I closed my eyes. A shout! A command. A disruption – like a mistimed accompaniment, except it demanded the song’s end, but, against expectation, the song grew yet louder. The previously confused scramble of feet had turned into a sure march following the crashes of our picks. A shout! Again, another disruption – yet with a lesser effect. The now overwhelming song overpowered the cries of the few guards on duty. Soon enough a whistle was blown, as perfectly off-beat as one would think possible. Other guards poured into the field where we worked like an infection entering a wound. Armed with batons, they gave us a final, full-volume warning to cease our indignation. However, a thought entered our collective minds all at once: the guards were holding batons, rarely something an unarmed prisoner would try to contend, but we were not unarmed. Our pickaxes became our keenest defence and we immediately began to put them to good use. No, not as weapons, but rather there started a decidedly irregular clattering as we all took them to our chains and shackles. A few swift crashes and clangs and we were free. Like leopards, we leapt through the field of jagged rocks and crusted mud. We were fatigued and bruised, attentive and deaf, free and fast. Almost implausibly, we made it to the woods without a graze. Not a single trip nor stall hindered our forward freedom march, but there was no time for rest. Next came the barks – a most unpleasing tone that did not complement our escape. Without a word we agreed to separate into smaller group and ran through the woods, trying desperately to dodge the dogs of our savage captors. I was in a group of just four men, each one of us prepared to shove the other out of the way if the force should accelerate him so much as an inch further from those poorly tuned animals. As it would soon turn out however, I did not need the assistance of these men to come tumbling to the ground. I tripped on a tree root and my head stole the occupation of my pickaxe as it smashed against a rock. That should have been it – the end of my escape, if not my life, but I hadn’t even reached the chorus just yet. When I woke, I found myself not in the cold cuddle of the forest floor as I had expected, but rather the warm embrace of a freshly laundered bed. I looked around the room; the glow of the setting sun had been replaced with the fervent crackling of a fire, and the trees of the forest with their deceased brethren who now composed the walls of my new abode. I noticed the proud moose-head on the wall opposing me, and it occurred to me that we undoubtedly had a similar experience, going from forest to room with little explanation for how or why. Of course, the experience had been far more beneficial in my case than in that of the moose, but I contemplated the similarity all the same. After I had indulged this thought, the next that entered my head was to check for handcuffs – or indeed leg-cuffs for that matter. Perhaps I had run further than I thought and a guard had found me with enough courtesy to help me to the nearest medical authority, but not enough to leave me there free. Or maybe there had been a bounty placed upon us escaped prisoners and the person who’s bed I now occupied was inclined to make good on its prize. Paranoia – all of it. I found my wrists as ungrappled as only my mind had been back in captivity. Likewise, my legs were now completely free of the
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