I woke up gasping. The pain returned instantly, and I coughed.
What despair. It hurt to breathe so I coughed, and that hurt more.
Everything hurt. Everything. Nothing was dull anymore. Everything was a sharp pain, like a million big needles pierced through my body, and small ones down my throat, scratching up my insides, filling me up to my neck. It hurt everywhere, in numb places and tough places and new places and I was crying at it all. Nothing but needles. I was hollow with needles and I was filled with them.
The world looked grey.
My neck is bent downwards and it won't move. The fear is rising up in me. I try to move my arm, to tilt it back…
… My arm won't move.
Not my left arm.
Not my right.
Not my legs.
Not my hands.
They hurt. They hurt. I look down in horror. My limbs are twisted, snapped into the wrong angles. A broken scream forces itself from my lips. It cracks and cracks and twists against itself but it looks like every bone in this body has been broken. They are breaks in my arms, a series of crooked jags.
How am I still alive?
Why am I still alive?
I'm in rags.
I remember them being torn off.
I remember them breaking me.
I remember them.
"I REMEMBER THEM!!!!"
Was I screaming again?
***
I looked to the side as best I could. I was sitting in the corner of the cage, propped up against the bars. I could slightly move now, but it had taken me hours to get here.
There are other cages around me too. Infants, Kids, teenagers with hollow eyes. Sunken skin. Ratty hair. We looked like death. Someone was screaming. The others were silent.
Nobody looked up when the doors opened.
"Alright kids, it's time ta eat!"
Two men walked in. They were probably paid to feed the slaves. They went from cage to cage, prodding at us. When they were satisfied, they put a bowl in. Others would take away the bowls later.
Then they came to my cage. They grabbed at my hair, and I closed my eyes in defeat. I knew what was going to happen. They dragged me by it, and every limb in my body was forced to move. I was dragged all the way to the other side, and then they dropped me against the bars. My scalp burned.
"You're the special one. The boss loves ya, ya know tha'? Can't 'ave you dyin or 'e'll 'ave our 'eads. Now eat up." They grabbed my chin and pulled it down, and I winced. Too harsh, too much, to fast. He poured the sludge into my mouth, and I was swallowing desperately, in pain, to not let it go down my windpipe.
Pathetic as it was, I still didn't have the courage to die.
They moved onto the next cage.
"Agh. This one's dead. Damn, those nobles don't know how to go easy!"
They simply dragged away the body and left.
The month went on. I was carted back there again. And again. There were less people allowed at me, I suppose, because my bones weren't snapped again. I suppose they need me alive too.
I thought about life, a lot, and wondered about death. In a moment of mania, I'd tried to bite off my tongue. They put a cloth in my mouth and gagged me after that.
****
I didn't bother to count the days anymore. What use would knowing the days do? I'd only make myself more miserable.
There are only six of us left now. By what I could make out from the voices of the guards the job would be over the next day.
Supposing that was the case, I could see the ending of my life. Though it was a life of pain, I didn't want to die like this, used like a toy by those beasts.
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