... dream. I dreamt I was inside a helicopter, flying somewhere. It wasn’t a smooth ride. The copter was shaking. There was a lot of noise. My ears buzzed and I felt like I should swallow. Then my ears popped. It was an acutely unpleasant sensation, one that I was keen to end, so I opened my eyes and saw that I was inside a helicopter, flying somewhere.

The helicopter was huge and there was a cage in the middle of it, and I was in it, along with a whole bunch of other people, all inmates like me, piled up like eggs in a wire basket, with not quite enough space to fit everyone. It was at this point that I realized I really was awake. My ears really had popped and I really was uncomfortable. And that’s not all; I realized that I was shackled to another inmate. My left hand was handcuffed to the right hand of a grey-haired flabby white guy with a squinty eye. He was at least twice my age and mean-looking. He squinted at me and grinned, but said nothing. Nobody in the cage spoke. Some people were asleep and the rest were sitting there handcuffed to their neighbours, quietly wondering at the situation like I was.

At each outside corner of the cage sat a guard, armed to the teeth. The copter was buzzing like a mad bunch of bees and the noise was so loud I felt my head would explode. It was very hard to think, under the circumstances. So I sat there observing my surrounds through half-closed eyes, trying to remain calm. I observed that my neighbour was not asleep, though he appeared to be. Keeping his eyes closed, he was slowly pulling at the length of the chain between us, drawing it closer to him in a very deliberate, methodical fashion. I realized he was counting the links on the chain. Eventually our hands touched and he released the chain and I don’t know why but I started doing the same; I pulled the chain over to my side and eventually counted a hundred links, which I estimated was about half a meter long. Maybe a bit more. So there was a bit of a distance between us, which was good ‘cause my neighbour did not fill me with confidence. He looked kind of crazy, grinning to himself with his eyes closed. He frightened me, it was that simple and I turned my head away from him to keep myself together.

I lost track of time; I may have even fallen asleep, or even unconscious, who knows; I felt nauseated, really weird in my head and stomach when I woke up, which is when I realized the copter was descending. I had no idea where we were; all I saw around us was sand, endless stretches of it. I was terrified. Suddenly the craft stalled midair and then something totally unexpected happened: the helicopter floor underneath the cage opened! It was such a surreal moment nobody even made a sound. We were stunned. I looked down and saw that we were about five to ten meters above the ground. The copter was shaking now and the guards were no longer sitting idly outside the cage but had their rifles at the ready, pointing at us as if we posed a danger. It was really quite surreal, this scene, quite bizarre and very scary now that the cage began to move downwards, through the hole in the floor, with us inside, scared stiff. Nobody moved or said anything; the entire operation was proceeding in grim silence barring the helicopter noise which grew even louder, now that we were underneath it.

It was windy outside. The cage was descending quickly, swaying in the wind like a paper lantern. At this point everybody grasped that we needed to brace ourselves for impact so everyone gripped the rails behind them and put their head down. We hit the ground, releasing a cloud of dust which temporarily blinded me. The air was full of sand and I found I couldn’t breathe so I clamped my free hand over my mouth and nose and was finally able to take a breath. The cage lifted and hit the ground again, then dragged along the ground a bit. It was a scary moment; people were screaming as we were knocked about in the cage like skittles. Then the cage stalled then jerked upwards and began to ascend just as the bottom of the cage opened and we rolled out of the cage as one man and hit the ground in a heap.

I lay on my back, stunned. I couldn’t move but I could see now and I perceived the cage stalled again and was hanging above us; the floor panel, which had come loose with the impact, was swinging above our heads dangerously close so everyone lay still not daring to raise a finger, but one guy copped it regardless. Knocked unconscious, the fellow lay there in the dust, bleeding from his cracked skull as the cage floor panel swung above us for the next few moments before it began ascending. It was being pulled back into the copter which was higher now, so high that it was hard to see the guards inside. I watched the cage until it disappeared inside the craft. Then the floor gap closed and the helicopter took off. It went behind the dunes pretty quickly, and soon you could no longer hear it. Then there was just me and the other inmates, lying in the sand, in the middle of nowhere.