Price of Defiance

The dog had been a friend to him. Accompanying each other in captivity, in otherwise complete solitude, trust had grown between them. She had no name. She didn't need one. Neither did he for that matter. Not anymore.

Three days ago one of his captors had come in with food. His heart wrenched when he realized that he was in one of his nasty moods. Something must have happened, and the captor decided to take his frustration out on him. But the dog had protected him. Relieved as he was about being spared from yet another scar, fear of what he knew was coming soon clouded all other emotions. Jamal had ordered the dog killed. Not only that, he wanted him to do it. He handed him the knife and said he expected to see a dead body when he came back in the evening. He knew there was more to the decision than just retribution. Jamal wanted to break him. To whittle away at his will power and defiance until there was nothing but loyalty, paralyzing fear and submission left. He eventually realized that he placed the dog with him in the cell for this sole purpose. And it was working. When he gave the order and waited for a response, the prisoner couldn't do anything but nod his acquiescence.

How low he had sunk. From the unyielding, unrelenting beacon of change to the whimpering, cowardly shell of a man he is now. He had refused to conform to the norm, to be weathered by the flow of the masses, he had refused to submit. He vehemently fought against the growing tide of religious radicalism growing everywhere. He had been very vocal with his opinions, too vocal it seems.

He knew the explosives they were forcing him to make were going to be used to murder, to instill fear in the masses and to take them several steps away from the peace he had envisioned for his people. He contemplated suicide every waking moment of every day; there were no shortages of ways to die in his cell littered with explosives. But Jamal had hung up pictures of his family around the walls to remind him of the stakes. How he regretted his actions, how fervently he prayed for forgiveness and how he wished for an end to the maddening grief that left him so hollow.
He couldn't continue. Deep inside the shell still lived the spark that drove him all his life. He couldn't be responsible for any more lives, he couldn't live on in isolation while his only friend died by his hands but most of all he needed the voices to stop. He wanted silence. He needed silence.

With substances as temperamental and volatile as the materials he works with. A slight stimulus is sufficient for an accident to occur. He turned to the dog sleeping peacefully beside him. The peace he craved so dearly. He mouthed good bye before tossing one of the finished bombs into the fire.