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Hi, um… excuse me, I’m not used to this kind of exercise. But well… Steven advised me to write down my whole journey so far. That’s what helped him hold on until now. So here we go, let’s try it too and see where it leads. Let’s start at the beginning… a little before my captivity.
My name is Romain, I’m seventeen years old, and honestly… I still wonder how I’m alive. It’s been a year since I got stuck here, in Canada, on the other side of the world, in a country that isn’t mine and that I only knew from the postcards I used to see. Today, there are no more postcards, no more normal world. Just a frozen, silent landscape where each day feels like a challenge I never asked for.
Winter here has nothing to do with what I knew in France. Back there, I used to complain when it was zero degrees, when I had to scrape ice off the windshield with my parents. Here, the cold bites into your bones, seeps into every gap in your clothes, clings to your skin like a curse. And me, I’m lost, all alone, with no one, in a setting that feels more like punishment than a season.
I won’t lie: I’m not made for survival. I’m clumsy, even a bit stupid sometimes. Before, I already struggled to hammer a nail straight or cook pasta without sticking them together. So imagining that I’ve lasted a year in this mess is a miracle. I’ve learned one thing, though: how to start a fire. But that doesn’t mean I’ve mastered it. No, me, I manage to set fire to my own clothes when I try to dry them. My underwear and socks still bear the marks… when they aren’t simply full of holes.
My camp looks more like a failed bird’s nest than a real shelter. Crooked branches, an old torn tarp, snow packed down in places to block the wind. When I wake up in the morning, I often find a thin layer of frost on the sleeping bag I found at the beginning. That’s my house, my fortress, and my hell.
Food? Ah, the big joke. Not long ago, I managed to raid an abandoned convenience store. I was overjoyed to bring back a bag full of canned goods. The problem is, I never knew how to open them properly. So I bang them against rocks, I try with my dull knife… and half the time, I end up cutting myself instead of eating. I think if I die, it won’t be from the cold or a wild animal, but because I’ll have sliced my finger open on a can of ravioli.
Sometimes I laugh about it, sometimes I cry. I’m afraid of dying stupidly, like an idiot, alone here, with no one even knowing I existed. Yet every morning, I get back up, I relight my clumsy fire, I look at my crooked shelter, and I tell myself: “One more day won.”
Hunger has become a faithful companion. It gnaws at my stomach, bends me in two, never lets go. I feel like my body is shrinking day by day. My arms are thin, my legs tremble when I walk too long in the snow. Every effort costs me. I have cuts everywhere—on my hands, on my knees—and some are starting to blacken, to get infected. The cold prevents the pain from being too sharp, but as soon as I warm up a little by the fire, it burns, it throbs.
When I close my eyes, I always see the same image: my parents, still in France. It’s been so long since I had any news… I try to convince myself they survived, that they’re maybe somewhere waiting for me. But the truth is, I don’t really believe it anymore. In my head, they’re dead. And that thought tears me apart. I wasn’t there, I couldn’t help them, couldn’t say goodbye. I live with this guilt that weighs heavier than hunger.
So I talk to myself, sometimes. I speak to them as if they could hear me. I tell them about my day, my little victories, my big miseries. I imagine their voices answering me, their reassuring smiles. It’s silly, but it keeps me from completely falling apart. In this frozen silence, it’s better to talk to the void than to stay quiet.
Yet, these past few days, another kind of silence has disturbed me. A silence broken by noises I can’t explain. At night, when everything should be frozen by the cold, I hear crunching in the snow. Sometimes a faint rustle, fleeting, like a presence moving among the trees. I try to tell myself it’s animals, but deep down, I know it’s not. Someone is watching me. I’m almost certain. And that idea chills me even more than the wind.
Evening falls and with it, the cold grows sharper. I try to feed my fire, but my logs are damp and the smoke blinds me more than it warms me. It crackles weakly, as if the fire itself is too tired to fight. My clothes hang on a branch above the flames, still wet. I already know I risk finding them charred, like last time. Nothing is more humiliating than watching your underwear or socks go up in smoke when you barely have anything left.
My stomach tortures me. Every growl is like a slap. I have my treasure in front of me, those canned goods from my last raid. But most remain closed, sealed, as if mocking me. My hands shake too much, my tools are too weak. I feel like I’m starving in front of a feast I can’t touch.
So I close my eyes, and I dare to dream. I dream of stumbling upon people… kind survivors who’d know how to handle things better than me. Men or women who’d share their knowledge, their food, a bit of human warmth. I imagine laughter around a real fire, a bowl of hot soup offered to me, a hand on my shoulder telling me I’m not alone anymore.
But as soon as this dream lifts me, it crushes me, because it reminds me of what I’ve lost. I see my parents again, at the table, one winter evening. I see the steam rising from a dish, the warmth of a house sealed tight against the wind, the hum of an old radiator. All of it feels unreal, like an invented life. And yet, it was mine, not so long ago. Today, all that’s left is the smoke of my clumsy fire and the cold creeping everywhere.
My shivering becomes uncontrollable. The cold devours my bones. And worse, fever joins in. My thoughts blur, my forehead burns while my hands freeze. I feel myself weakening, losing grip. Between hunger, cold, and illness, I don’t know what exhausts me most. I’m afraid to fall asleep and never wake up.
I fight sleep for a few more minutes, but my eyelids are heavy as lead. Each breath is a battle, each movement an enormous effort. The cold seeps under my skin, into my bones, and fever adds a sickly heat that confuses everything. Finally, I lie down on my makeshift bed, unwillingly ready to let my body sink. Maybe in the morning, if I make it, I’ll have the strength to go on.
That’s when I hear them. First, just simple crunches in the snow, barely distinct from the moaning wind. But soon, they come closer. Several steps, heavy, uneven. My heart races, pounds in my chest as if it wanted to escape before me. I widen my eyes, scanning the darkness. Between the shadows cast by my dying fire, I make out shapes. One, then two, then five. They surround me, cutting off any escape.
I want to scream, to shout in fear, but my throat releases only a hoarse breath. My weakness betrays me at the worst moment. I try to stand, but my legs buckle immediately. And then everything happens too fast.
A brutal blow slams me to the ground. The icy snow tears a muffled groan from me. Strong hands grab me, hold me as if I were nothing more than a child. They’re broad, sturdy, trained. Their movements are precise, confident. And worst of all, I feel like they’re enjoying my panic.
Someone stuffs an old rag into my mouth. The stench makes me gag, a rancid mix of dust and damp. The fabric scrapes my throat while a strip of tape seals my lips. My protests die in a pitiful gargle. At the same time, my wrists are bound, squeezed so tight the blood nearly stops flowing. Then my ankles are taped together, trapped by the same merciless tape. In seconds, I’m nothing but a human package, tied up, silenced.
I feel myself being lifted, torn from my camp, carried away like loot. My head spins, my memories blur, my thoughts scatter under the fever. I barely catch a few words exchanged between them, deep voices, maybe mocking, but their meaning escapes me. All I know is these men are taking not only my body, but also what little I had left: my shelter, my cans, my illusion of survival. Before, I used to watch or read fictions about kidnapping and bondage, but I never thought I’d live it myself, let alone in this situation.
Everything becomes hazy. Fever, fear, cold… it all mixes in my head until it’s just a confused mass. I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. Voices echo like through a wall: deep, muffled, sometimes breaking into laughs that seem monstrous. Bits of sentences reach me, disjointed, meaningless to me. All I understand is that they’re talking about me, my belongings, my camp.
I see them moving around what was my shelter. They tear down the tarp, overturn my meager supplies, gather everything without hesitation. I hear the metallic clatter of my canned goods as they pocket them, my pitiful treasures I never even managed to enjoy. It’s like watching my whole world collapse a second time. They destroy, plunder, take away… and I can do nothing but groan through my gag.
Suddenly, I feel my body lifted. My bound arms and legs dangle uselessly, like those of a broken puppet. They carry me roughly, tossing me around, each movement sparking dull pain in my numbed muscles. I’m nothing but dead weight, a useless sack dragged without care. My face sometimes scrapes against the snow, sometimes against the coarse fabric of one of their coats. I want to struggle, scream, cry… but nothing comes. Only my feverish eyes burning and my lungs struggling to keep up.
The cold gnaws at me. The pain of my tied wrists, the humiliation of being reduced to this state… it overwhelms me. It’s as if the night itself is swallowing me, with its biting frost and brutal silence.
Little by little, my eyelids grow heavy. Each blink lasts longer than the last. The noises fade, the shapes blur. I try to fight, to stay awake, to understand where they’re taking me. But it’s impossible. Sleep crushes me, forced, relentless.
And, in the end, everything disappears. The cold, the laughter, the pain. I close my eyes… and I sink, carried away from what was left of my life.
