The walls are gray.

They always have been, but I wonder when their loud color became an itch in my brain. Those walls were one of the many obstacles keeping me from the outside.

I woke to see him sitting across from me. It was not the priest but someone else. His tie was red, and his face was gone. He stared at me, though he had no eyes. Despite that, it seemed he saw more than I ever did. Holding a lighter in his right hand, his thumb was a tic that constantly rolled the wheel, only ever conjuring sparks.

My mind never let the lighter light, even though I always see beautiful flames in my dreams.

"Light it up. Burn it down."

His voice was a grinder, chewing up my ears till pathetic scraps of flesh dangled from the sides of my head, and the blood ran down to pool in the hollow of my collarbone.

"Light it up." I can't.

"Burn it down," I finished for him, but he was not done.

"Take a breath. Do you hear that sound?"

I shook my head. "No. Only you."

He lifted his left hand to his nonexistent mouth to shush me. The finger he held up was long, with strips of skin torn off in a patchwork pattern and the nail missing—it was a duplicate of my own.

"It is loud and clear," he mocked me, and my chest burned with anger. Then, shaking his head, he seemed defeated. "But a mere ringing in your ear."

I blinked, and he was gone.

What led to the pyromaniac appearing? Some part of me knew it was because I wanted to burn this oppressive building to the ground, along with its inhabitants. The fury seared my bones, and sometimes I imagined the flames taking me with them.

I had begun to hate the small window. It teased me with what I could not reach; the blue sky only ever disappeared with the night.

Two days had passed, with nothing of interest happening. My ribs ached from a violent guard, and a pit in my stomach made clear its annoyance. Then, finally, I heard the familiar clomp of feet approaching me, and I hoped something new would happen—even if that something was my death.

Three men circled around me, two on each side and one behind my head. They seemed to wait, and my body tensed like it was ready to run.

The leader came in minutes later, his steps heavy outside the door. He looked less composed than when I first saw him as he walked inside the room, and crease lines marked his eyes and mouth. It gave me some satisfaction that he was frustrated, and I hoped I was part of the cause.

"I have come to the conclusion that you are useless. You have nothing to offer me. So, I have chosen the only suitable course of action."

The three men grabbed me, holding my arms and head down. I struggled, pushing against the hold, but I was too weak to stop them.

The bald man stepped forward, lowering his knee onto my chest. That weight was like an immovable rock, and it became harder to breathe.

My eyes darted to each man holding me down. Sweat trickled down my temple, the hot moisture landing in my ear. The man then pulled out a sharp-looking knife and stared me down.

He ran the blade across my neck, mimicking the action of slitting my throat open. A slight burn followed, and I felt the dampness of blood run across my skin.

I pushed against the hold on my arms again, fists clenched tight in the cuffs. However, it only pressed me harder into the knife as I glared at the man about to kill me.

He hesitated, leaning back. A snarl pulled at the corner of his lips. That knee crushed down even harder, and I hissed.

"I hate your eyes," he spat with venom. "Always watching me, with no emotion. Are you a doll? Do you feel anything?" He waited, and I suspected he actually wanted me to answer. In the corner of my vision, I saw the pyromaniac constantly flick his lighter.

"I feel plenty." I felt the corners of my mouth tug up, and the man growled audibly.

Steel hands gripped my head as the knife traveled up my face, drawing a line from mouth to eyebrow.

"You don't deserve these," he murmured. "If you didn't feel anything then, you will now."

The blade, cold and devoid of life, dug into the corner of my eye socket. It scraped against the muscles controlling my eyeball, cutting delicate flesh as I groaned from the pain. My throat grew raw from screaming as the knife traveled behind my eye and cut whatever was connecting it to my head. Vision from my right eye was gone; I distantly heard a plop as the wet sphere dropped to the ground.

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I focused my remaining eye on him to glare in hatred one last time. Then, with no patience left, he immediately stabbed it with his knife. I felt every movement of the blade as he indelicately popped my remaining eye out of its socket, and the muscles connected to the organ were ripped apart. My breathing was ragged by the time it was over, and I could feel blood running down my face, covering every inch of my skin.

The only thing I heard after his torture was, "let him die. There is no time, anyways."

The only thing I was aware of was the throbbing where my eyes had been. Had the man hated them so much? Only seeing my eyes twice, he had felt the need to take them from me. What gave him the right? But I was his captive, and I had no say in anything. Whatever that vile man wanted in this place, he got. I was only a prisoner in his realm, stuck to suffer from his whims. A part of me got a perverse sense of satisfaction that he hated my gaze that much. That hatred was not fake, and I knew it had shaken him up, if only for a moment. If that was the final act of my eyes, I would not regret their loss.

I fell to the floor of my cell as the men released me and left, unable to hold myself up. Wet blood pooled beneath my head, and the copper tang in the air settled on the back of my tongue and refused to leave.

It hurt, it hurt, it was agony. It was as if the pyromaniac had stuck his lighter in my eye socket and finally got it to light. Pain licked at the back of my head, and my desperate gasps for air filled my ears until I thought I would go crazy.

Sleep blessedly came at last as the pain became too much.

***

There was only darkness. Nothing else existed in my world, and nothing else mattered. I could only peer into the depths, imagining shadows and monsters crawling out to join my sightless contemplation.

Every other sense was unbearable. The mere brush against the floor caused pain to shoot up my arm. The drip of water from the ceiling was a spike in my ear, digging into my brain until it turned to mush. The smell of dried blood and sweat burned through my nose and throat, and I tasted it on my tongue.

My brain was trying to compensate for my lost sense, overstimulating the others to regain normalcy. What use was my occipital lobe except to process what I see? Its primary function was no longer needed, and it was left grasping for a purpose.

Grandfather's grave then came to mind; he had raised me along with my grandmother in place of my parents. I had only visited his tombstone once but never said anything to it like they always seem to do in the movies. Had I ever told him any of my secrets? I remember confiding to him that I had never enjoyed being with anyone. He had only patted my back and asked me, "Is it a crime to live as you are, just because you are different from others?"

That question had followed me through life, and I now found it glaring at me through the tenebrous view. Surely it would be a crime in societal views if I killed someone outside of warfare. But that was now part of me. Is it a crime to see what I see? To only seem to enjoy the company of my own fabrications? I guessed I could no longer see them now. But, since they were part of my mind, couldn't they also exist there? Or maybe they could only appear in my perceived reality. I would only know if they showed up again.

I wondered if I would miss seeing anything. I had always enjoyed looking at the ocean as it stretched endlessly to the horizon. The shifting sands beneath my feet had always fascinated me. The brilliant sky that was constantly changing would miss my gaze.

My eyes had been taken before I had the chance to weep.

***

Distant gunshots and rocking explosions woke me from my fitful sleep. I let myself hope that allies were coming to our rescue and I would finally leave this prison of concrete.

Pushing myself up to a sitting position, I crawled to brace myself against the wall, wrapping my arms over my head, chains clicking from my wrists. Even in my state, I could recognize an M4 and knew to stay where I was.

How much time had passed, I didn't know. If the attackers had left right after taking my eyes, I wasn't confident our forces would find any of them left. But there was gunfire, so all I could do was wait.

The room's heat and the helplessness inside me crushed my chest, and for a moment, I found I could not move. What use was I, without eyes? All I could do was sit still; otherwise, I'd be a liability.

Pushing the feeling away, I made myself breathe in deeply. How many people in the world are blind? I would adapt.

The concrete wall was hard against my back as I waited. Eventually, the gunfire died down. Then, forcing myself to listen, I heard my comrades breach the building far away, and the sound of heavy boots constantly grew louder.

Doors were constantly kicked in, and I stayed prone. Finally, my heavily beating heart settled—they would find me.

Despite the calm, I still flinched as the door violently cracked open, footsteps stopping as the men spotted me.

One spoke, but it was just untouchable smoke in my brain. I heard him step closer, then repeat, his American accent clearer than before. "What's your name?"

My voice was a pathetic croak. "Private Cain Miller, a soldier in sergeant Macbeth's squad."

"Good to see you, soldier. Let's get you out of here," he said. Then, gripping under my elbow, he helped me up, and I swayed unsteadily. He passed me off to another man, who draped my arm behind his neck. The two of us went right while the others continued down the hall.

I could think of nothing—all my focus was on placing one foot in front of the other. The man supporting me said nothing, and I was grateful for it.

He led me outside, and the sunlight showered me in warmth. I was helped into a helicopter, and a medic immediately came to my side as I sat, asking me questions about my health as he attached me to an IV drip. I couldn’t tell if anyone but us were also in the machine.

We immediately took off, and it made me assume that there was another chopper for the rest of the troops. Air rushed through the helicopter's open door to painfully press against my wounded eye sockets, and I shuddered. Resting my head against the back of my seat, I thought. It seemed almost anticlimactic. I was suddenly away from the hell I had been stuck in, but I had taken no part in my escape. Was it that easy?

In the darkness, I imagined the prison behind us burning in large flames, with everything left turning into nothing but ash.