The man in charge looked down upon him, his features twisted with a sadistic cruelty.
“I thought we had agreed you weren’t going to cause any trouble, boy?”
Gus shook his head as he worked his mouth silently.
“Look at this, boys. It thinks it can speak.” The man in charge said. The other hands laughed, Gus’s subdued attacker lying at their feet. The rest of the captives kept their heads down in a submissive manner, their eyes fixed on the bowl in front of them.
“Maybe a night in the box will teach him his place.” The man in charge said before the emptiness swelled up from the black depths around him to envelope him in its smothering embrace.
He drifted across a black sea buoyed by a single thought that anchored him to the reality of his past. He was not like the others. He had a life, a family, a wife who loved him. The thought of abandoning her as he had, even though everything that had happened to him up to this point had been out of his control, sent a dagger of guilt into his heart. She would be frantic, not sure what to do, lost within the terror of being deserted.
What was her name?
He searched his memory for her name, the throbbing at the base of his skull growing as he struggled to remember even the simplest details of his past life. They had children, or did they? If only he could remember her name, it would strengthen the anchor that tied him to the reality of his past and give him hope to battle the despair his life had become.
Around him the shadows were deep, the sides of the steel box in which he lay were pressed tight against his shoulders, the crown of his head was wedged against the top while his feet were pressed flat against the bottom. It was a cramped space with a narrow slit along the top that allowed a soft breeze to dance across his naked flesh.
They had taken his poncho.
With shaking hands he reached for the top, his palms encountering cold steel as he pushed against its unyielding surface.
He was trapped within the confines of a box too small for his frame, filled with the need to get up and move around, a restlessness that became the center of his world. Beyond the box the night moved resolutely towards morning, the sky to the east growing lighter as the world continued to turn upon its axis, unaware, uncaring, following a course that had been plotted long before he’d been born and would continue long after he was gone.
His legs grew even more restless, and he struggled to keep them under control as spasms racked his muscles. He didn’t know how long he’d lain unconscious in the box, but judging by the pain in his legs it had to have been the better part of the night.
Maybe they’d let him out with the dawn, to work the fields, to move about freely with the others. The thought gave him a goal to focus on as the birds sang in greeting to the approaching dawn, somewhere a rooster crowed as he concentrated on that single thought.
They were going to let him out soon.
Somewhere a door slammed, keys jingled, and a muffled shout came from the low-roofed building where the others were being kept.
As the first light of the coming dawn crested the roof of the barn the doors of the barracks swung open, and the workers were driven towards the building where they had been fed the night before.
They’ll be coming soon, the thought whispered through his mind, followed promptly by another. They’ll let me out soon. His legs had fallen asleep, his buttocks was numb from resting on the unyielding steel, and the flesh covering the nubs of his shoulder blades felt like it was becoming raw.
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Richard Schiver 
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