I woke up with a severe headache, so bad my hair felt as if it was pulsing. Disoriented, I opened my eyes. I couldn't see. There was a bad-tasting rag tied tightly across my open mouth, and my jaws hurt from being held open. I smelled sweat, stale air and the old smells of food cooking.

From the beginning, I heard the voice. Male. Fast. Speaking a language I couldn't understand, had never heard.

My body ached and I tried to change my position but couldn't. My left leg was stretched and pinned to something by a cuff around my ankle. My right arm was stretched above my head, immobilized by a similar cuff around the wrist.

Where the hell was I? I tried to remember what had happened, difficult when my head was pounding this way. I felt queasy, sure sign of a migraine. Slowly, it came back to me. I'd been on my way to the site we were investigating. I was in a hurry to do the survey I'd come here to perform and get out of this pesthole.

But as I sped along the rough jungle road, I heard a popping sound and lost control of the jeep as the tire blew. That was the last thing I remembered.

Had I been kidnapped? Who had me? This wasn't the language that the locals spoke, that much I knew. I heard the sound of the voice move around me, felt someone grip my chin and turn my head from side to side, then the awful-tasting gag was removed. I took deep gulps of air.

"If it's money you want," I said shakily, trying to stay calm, "I'm sure my company will pay for my return." Something hard jammed into my side, and I got the hint. I shut up.

The voice was closer now, and I felt a hand touching my throat and trailing lower before withdrawing. Unbidden, a phrase from high school burst into my mind. "If rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it." We'd thought it was funny back then. It didn't seem too humorous now. I wondered if that was one of the treats in store for me.

My husband Jack had warned me not to come on this trip. He used to be a field anthropologist, but now was an college anthropology professor, and I'd laughed at him. He always had some politically correct reason for me not to involve myself in mineral exploration in some underdeveloped country, but I ignored him. There was nowhere else for me to work. The "developed world" was just that -- developed. All the mineral resources had been identified and exploited. The underdeveloped countries were all I had left.

The company had lured me to Brazil with the hint that what they'd found might be bigger than Minas Geras. From what I'd seen so far, they might be right. Was that why I'd been taken? Because some local guerilla faction wanted to take control of the site? If so, what purpose did taking me hostage serve? Did they think that the company would relinquish a multi-billion dollar mining claim for one piddling $100 a day plus expenses consulting geologist?

The voice was still talking, and I still couldn't figure out what it was telling me. "I don't understand," I said, shaking my head. I needed them to know that. I got another jab in the ribs in response, and shaking my head set off even further painful vibrations within my skull. I became absorbed by my own pain, unable to focus on anything else.

But all the while, he kept talking at me. I still couldn't see him, but I sure could hear him. I began to imagine him, dark hair and eyes, thick mustache, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth as those foreign syllables tortured his mouth. Was he reciting something? Or had he simply had too much coffee? Why was he speaking so fast?

Forcing myself to relax a little on the bed, I tried to will my migraine into submission. I couldn't do or think about anything until the pain subsided.

I must have fallen asleep, I think, because the room was silent when I awoke again. I took me a couple of minutes to realize that my headache had faded into a dull throbbing. I almost sighed in relief, then remembered that I had bigger trouble than a headache.

I reached up and pushed the blindfold off my eyes, blinking at the sudden light. There was a bare bulb glaring in a socket overhead. Slowly, I became accustomed to the light, and turned to look at the rest of the room. A grimy man in sweat-stained clothing was chained to the wall opposite the bed. Bruises and cuts marred his face, and his arms were chained to rings set into the wall.

"Hello," I said in a whisper, "do you speak English?"

He looked up at me, one eye swollen shut, and nodded.

"Who are these people?" I asked, eager for information, "and why have they taken me?" I wanted to keep asking questions, but realized he'd need time to answer the ones I'd already asked.

"They are nationalists," he muttered thickly. "And they've taken you to kill as a publicity stunt. The same reason they've taken me."

My stomach jolted, and I covered my mouth with my free hand, afraid I'd vomit. As if on cue, shots rang out somewhere close, and a woman screamed. "Publicity?" I asked, stunned. "Publicity for what?"

The man sighed. "To warn companies from other countries to stay out. To keep them from plundering their country." He looked up at me again. "They'll video tape your 'execution,' and they'll sell the tape to the American news as a warning to others."

There was another shot, and the woman stopped in mid-scream. A ragged laugh erupted, followed by some loud comments that I didn't need to know the language to understand. I began to cry softly. I didn't want to die. Ruefully, I thought about how I'd laughed at Jack's warnings, so sure I'd be able to take care of myself. "Pride goeth..." I thought.

"I probably shouldn't have told you," the man said, shaking his head. He looked down and went silent.

"My name is Alice," I said. It seemed absurd to be introducing myself so formally to someone who just told me I was going to die, but I needed to talk to him to keep my tenuous hold on reality. "What's your name?"

"Armand," he replied. "I'm a hydroelectric engineer from France. We were looking at building power plants on the river." Then he looked up at me again. "Why did they take you, Alice? What were you doing here?"

"Geologist. Gemologist. I was looking at a deposit of emeralds over in Jacaraci for a mining company." She laughed ironically. "My husband didn't want me to come. He said it would be dangerous. I didn't believe him because he always says that."

"Children?" Armand asked, and I shook my head. "I've got three. Two boys and a girl. And a wife." He sighed heavily. "It's going to be really hard on them."

Suddenly, I heard shouting outside. Armand groaned, and I looked toward him as I heard footsteps coming toward the room. "They're coming for us, Alice." I wondered what Jack would think when he saw the tape. He had sided with the guerillas when he told her she should stay out of it. How would he feel when he discovered that his side had killed his own wife?

I sighed. I couldn't see any way out. It seemed ridiculous to me that I would be killed just for visiting this god-forsaken clump of green. But if it was going to happen, I was going to meet it on my feet, not on my back. I reached up and unbuckled the leather cuff on my right wrist, then sat up and bent over to unbuckle the one on my left ankle. I sat on the edge of the bed, momentarily dizzy, then crossed the room and knelt next to Armand.

He rubbed his wrists after I'd freed him and I helped him to his feet. "Can you run?" I asked him, and he nodded. I walked to the door and slowly tried to open it, but it was locked. I pulled a chair to the high, barred window and stood on it to look out. The edge of the jungle was just twenty yards away, and there didn't seem to be anyone guarding the perimeter.

"Listen, if they're going to kill us anyway, we've got nothing to lose. As soon as they unlock the door, we rush them. Maybe we can surprise them enough to get a head start." Armand nodded. The footsteps were coming closer now, and I felt genuinely afraid for the first time. If I ever got out of this, I swore to myself that I'd never take another out-of-town job again I might have to go to work in the local supermarket, but I'd never be in this situation again.

Armand and I stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway. As soon as we saw the door begin to open, we both slammed into it with all our strength. The two men who'd been sent to get us were knocked to the ground, and we jumped over them to run to the cover of the brush. We reached the edge of the jungle as they started firing after us, and Armand was hit in the leg.

"Go on, Alice," he groaned. "I can't run on this leg. I'm finished."

"No you're not," I told him, and reached down to help him up. "You're not leaving those kids without a father."

We half-ran, half-crawled through the dense vegetation until the sky grew dark. We hadn't heard anyone behind us for an hour or more now, but I knew we couldn't stop yet. "Let's rest for a minute," I told Armand and eased him to the ground. "I need to catch my breath." I was hungry and thirsty, and way beyond tired. But the fear was still in me and I wouldn't feel comfortable until I was back in my own home.

"Any idea which way we need to go?" I asked Armand, and he shook his head.

"They knocked me out before they took me, and I was already chained to the wall when I woke up."

I groaned in exasperation. "Me too. How are we going to get out of here?"

"Did you see where the sun set?" he asked. His leg had finally stopped bleeding, but he was shaking now. If I didn't get him some help, he wouldn't last long.

"Yeah, over there," I told him and pointed. "That has to be west."

"Urandi should be west of here. Not too far." Armand said. "Go ahead and come back for me. I'm only slowing you down, and I've lost too much blood to keep going."

I nodded. I didn't want to leave him, but I couldn't see any other choice. I kissed his forehead and took off toward the west as fast as I could. After an hour or two of heavy slogging, I came across a road, a dirt track, really. I followed it along, choosing a direction I judged to be away from the camp.

The sky was lightening when I came to a small town. The sign read "Santa Alicia," and I smiled at the irony. I found the town's police station and banged on the door until someone came out of the building next to it. The woman took one look at me and went back inside for a blanket and sent a young boy off at a run, I hoped to get the constable.

The boy returned with a priest, who spoke some English. I was able to make myself understood at last, and the priest went off to call the closest army post in Urandi. When he returned, he took me to the parish house and fed me breakfast. "I have no clothes to offer you, signora," he apologized. I told him it didn't matter and asked him how to get back to Vitoria da Conquista, where I'd been staying.

He told me that there was no public transportation, that I'd have to ask the soldiers to take me back. I asked him to call the American Embassy for me, and gave him the number. I put my head down on the table, exhausted, and it seemed as if I'd just fallen asleep when the army arrived. The priest translated and I explained what had happened. I went with the captain and showed him where I'd come out of the jungle. His men followed my trail and found Armand's body. I told the captain everything Armand had told me about himself and his family, and the captain promised to do everything in his power to make sure that his family was notified.

The soldiers took me back to Vitoria da Conquista, and I immediately returned home. My bruises were just blooming into their full color when I got off the plane. Jack rushed to meet me when I left customs, and held me close for several long minutes before he pushed me back to look at me.

"My God, Alice! You look terrible," he exclaimed. He insisted on taking me to a doctor friend of ours, and after a thorough checkup, he assured Jack that I would be okay. Feeling a little easier, Jack took me home at last. When we got home, we both went straight to the bedroom without saying a word.

Later, after we'd made love, I told Jack what had happened, and about Armand. He just listened, holding me, and waited until I'd finished to speak. "Did you mean what you'd said, about not going back out into the field?" he asked quietly.

I nodded. "The world's just gotten too crazy," I told him drowsily, and it was true. I fell asleep and dreamed that night about Jack and I having a picnic with Armand and his family. Armand was smiling, happy, a man who obviously loved his wife and doted on his children. I woke up weeping.

"What's the matter?" Jack asked in a thick voice. "Did you have a nightmare?"

"No, not a nightmare," I said, "just a dream about Armand." After a while, I fell back to sleep.

That was the first night I dreamed about Armand. But soon, he was all I dreamed about. And the dreams filled me with such melancholy that I began to dread sleep. I sat up in bed each night, reading, writing in my journal, doing anything to keep myself awake. Jack began nagging me about not sleeping, telling me I ought to talk to a psychologist or a psychiatrist or even a counselor about it. He cited studies on sleep depravation and the toll that sleeplessness could take on the body's various systems.

But he didn't see Armand every night, a silent reminder of the man I'd failed. I began to wonder if things would be different had I made the effort to take him with me out of the jungle instead of leaving him there to die.

When Jack left for work the next day, I went to the airport and boarded a plane for Marseilles. I'd spent weeks trying to find Armand's family, and had discovered that they lived in Avignon, just outside of Marseilles in the south of France. I didn't leave a note for Jack, and I didn't call ahead to announce my visit. I needed to see them, but I wasn't sure that they would welcome me.

It had been a crisp fall day when I left, but the Mediterranean breezes were balmy, and it was quite warm in Avignon. I took a taxi to the address I had for Armand's family, and rang the bell.

A woman in a housedress came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron. She was the woman I'd seen in my dreams. The realization stunned me into silence as she asked me in French if she could help me. After a few awkward moments, I stuttered that I'd been with Armand in the jungle when he'd died and just wanted to see her to tell her how sorry I was.

She started, then regained her composure, introducing herself as Yvette and inviting me in. She spoke passable English, and asked me if I'd like some tea. "Coffee, if you have it." I told her. While she went to the kitchen, I wandered around the parlor, looking at the photographs on the wall. I saw the children, the same ones in my dreams.

When Armand's wife returned with a tray of coffee and pastries, I began to tell her the whole story, or at least as much as I knew of it, while we sat. "You and the children were very much in his mind," I told her, thinking that if circumstances had been reversed, I would have wanted Jack to know how much I regretted the pain my demise would cause him.

She smiled at me sadly and recounted how she and Armand had met and fallen in love, married, and talked about the children. I apologized to her for my inability to save him, to bring him to help. Yvette touched my hand and told me that I had done more than many people would have.

"We used to argue about his work, about how much time he spent away from us," she said. "For a while, he gave in and worked in a civil engineering firm. But he was miserable. I could see it. I told him to go back to globetrotting, to traveling the world building power plants. It was what he loved."

"I'm sorry he died," Yvette said, "but he was there to do what he loved. I wouldn't have had it any other way." She looked at me and smiled again. "But surely you know all about that. Why else would you have been there, but to do something you loved to do?"

We talked for another hour or so, then I asked her to call a taxi to take me back to the airport in Marseilles. Our talk had clarified something, and I knew why Armand had been haunting me.

I got home the following day, to be met by a frantic Jack, demanding to know where I'd been and why I hadn't let him know where I was.

"I went to France to see Armand's widow," I told him, and before he could tell me how crazy that was, I held my hand up to silence him. "I'm going back to field work, Jack. I'm not cut out to work behind a desk."

"But you promised," he said, and I thought how whiny he sounded. Armand hadn't sounded whiny, even when he knew he was dying.

"Yes, I know I did," I admitted tiredly and began climbing the stairs with Jack at my heels. "I just can't do it, Jack. I'm not cut out for the lab or the office. I need to be out there, seeing it with my own eyes, checking out the possibilities for myself." He stood a few steps below me, looking up, silent. I reached the top of the stairs and looked back at him. "Think about it, Jack. Think about who I am and how much a part of me what I do is."

I turned my back on him and went to the bedroom. Quickly, I undressed, climbed into bed and turned out the bedside light. I wanted -- no, needed -- sleep. And I knew that even if I dreamed, I wouldn't see Armand. He was free now, doing what he loved to do. I would be free soon, too.

Props to the CHPercolator List for the prompt
March 3, 2001
3323 words