Letters from a Cambodian Slave Camp

Dear Susan,

I have been imprisoned now for 37 days. I wish you could read my letters, but unfortunately I am only able to carve them into my feet with a rusty nail I pulled from the wall. Yes, it is lonely here.

Here, in the darkness, there can only be dark. I am only given one aspirin and one cracker a day. For water, I am forced to drink my own sweat and tears. For comfort, I think of you my dear Susan, and it is only then that I can have hope.

Every hour I am systematically beaten about the arms and face. Shortly afterward, a man with several skull tattoos on his shaved head reads me a page from The Cat in the Hat before whipping me with a dead but still poisonous snake. Still, I think of you Susan and of my daughter, Dove Sky, and once again I am able to endure.

Mostly I am forced to eat the mortar from between the bricks for sustenance. Although both my arms are fractured in well over a dozen places, I would still hold you Susan so tightly. And although my legs are covered in second degree burns, I know I would run to you and frolic with you among the Bermuda grass and haystacks.

Today they brought me a bag of poison ivy for lunch. Of course I ate it, gratefully, and went back to writing to you. My feet are now badly infected, possibly because of the rusty nail I've been using, but still I write to you Susan, hoping that I will see you soon. Please do not give up on me. The guards have been saying you met a much younger, much more attractive and much more successful man, but I know they are just trying to break my resolve. Even when they supplied photos of you two having sexual intercourse in our bedroom, I knew it had to be a fake.

I've run out of space on my left foot, and I also cannot feel any sensation from it any longer, so I'll have to move on to my right now. The itching from the poison ivy has been a bother, I will admit, but aside from the excessive vomiting and hair loss, I know I can make it. I think about those nights when we would lay in bed listening to Moby and you would just be so adorable, going on about how you wanted to divorce me to see other people. You were always such a flirt.

It looks like for dinner I'll be having biscuits and battery acid, just like you used to make Susan! Remember those delightful Sunday mornings when you'd lace my omelets with arsenic and stare at me with those gorgeous, expecting eyes. Such a kidder you are. I loved how you joked about hiring someone to frame me for embezzlement. How you'd have me thrown into the worst jail you could ever find because your new boyfriend was a criminal prosecutor and how he was much better in bed. I must have laughed for days! But still I do wonder how I ended up in this Cambodian slave camp. The nights pass as my bowels do now: Slow and with excruciating precision. I can't wait to come home.

Well I am all out of space, but if the tetanus doesn't kill me in the next few days, or the poison ivy, or the battery acid, I know I'll write you again. My body may be turning yellow from jaundice and severe internal bleeding, but I like to think I am turning yellow out of love—out of my love for you dear Susan, and the love for Dove Sky.

Susan, since we never had what one would call 'sex', I know now that Dove Sky really was the result of immaculate conception, and I'm sorry I didn't believe you before.  Take care of our little angel. 

Also, I'm so glad you pushed for that prenuptial agreement just before I was thrown in prison.  Just like you said: "If you are imprisoned and/or sentenced to death in somewhere like Cambodia, it will be best that I maintain indiscriminate and total authority over all your money and possessions." 

You always did had a way with words.

I love you dearly and please stay strong. For the both of us.

Sincerely,


Billy Dreyfuss