33
(Breaking Benjamin- Give Me a Sign)
Vetia
Adam, look up you dumb fuck, I’m waving at you. Oh well. Maybe I am in my own isolated little world up here, and I can just fly away whenever I want. Hah, that’d be nice. Running off, living in the woods, hunting, eating, being free from this collar.
Usually I’d zone out and daydream about whatever the hell I wanted when nobody was fighting or training, because otherwise they’d just sit around gambling while the other two worked. Those two being Adam and the guy who seemed like he would be the type of kid to wear a trench coat to school every day and sit glaring at everyone in the cafeteria during lunch, so everyone tried to stay on his good side, y’know, just in case. Everything seemed so dull, like there was a film grain over my vision that made everything unfocused and exhausting to look at. Voices and words just passed through my ears, never being worth listening to.
My mind would wander so much, remembering high school, college, it had me feeling all nostalgic. I missed my old life, but that might’ve been in comparison to being collared up and stuck using all my jzanmah fixing people. I kept telling myself that I could make it work in this world, I just had to get out of here. I’d sit and plan. Nobody here really even came into this room unless they needed to be fixed up. They wouldn’t even tell me when food was ready to be served. I had to go out and check, and even then people would tell me there were no more bowls or spit in the stew scraps. Not that food really did much for me, but being hated- no, not hated- less than human, sucked. I got along with just about everyone in my old life. Then again, I never had to deal with being an untouchable in my old life.
Not everyone likes me though. That’s just how it is now. I’ve been saying that too much lately. It is what it is. God, what the fuck was I thinking, pushing Simira so much and thinking I’d be able to get away with talking to Tarynn. Where did I mess up? Like, was I in the wrong? Because undeniably, objectively, she was a total bitch, but I didn’t think I really pushed it aside from when she started shit. Maybe I should have just let him die so this would have never happened. Sure, she would have thought I was a random hussie across from her at one of the worst moments of her life, but at least I wouldn’t be the one that was all up on her brother.
Damn, I gotta stop thinkin about all that. I can’t live as a nervous wreck. I gotta fuckin’ stay alive because Ms bitchypoo decided I’m a little too goofy to have rights and I’ve got a promise to make and keep. Doesn’t she know that jesters are oft prophets?
What’s it been, like a few weeks? Somethin’ like that, I think. I still don’t know shit about shit, and I can’t really listen in on anything because people don’t talk around me other than when servants need me to check if they’re pregnant ‘cause they had an affair with a guard, or they’d talk about arena bets, or who they wanted when the brothel visits. Do people talk about anything other than fucking and killing here? No good plays? No neat clouds? No family drama?
Alas! Just you wait, my keenly observing audience, drama is but a season away. Cause I’ve been telling every cheating servant that she’s not actually pregnant (almost all of them are). I can see it already!
“You lied! You said I wasn’t pregante!”
*Mimes stupidly, as a stupid animal as myself does, because something as stupid and speechless as me obviously can’t understand them*
“Have at thee! Wicked shazgadj!”
“Oh nooooooo???!!!! What??? You’re beating me again??? But that would make it three times today! My quota that I surely must meet is the usual seven!”
These hoes gonna be mad.
If I start pretending I’m into getting beat, maybe they’ll stop. That or I might just end up with an unwanted trauma fetish.
Eh, whatever. I’ll probably be dead before they give birth. Or I’ll snap. I’ve come close a few times. I could easily take a few people down and fly out a window. I wouldn’t have to worry about Adam or Tells either. When I run, the world will know I’m a monster, and those two will play dumb to survive. Adam’s finding a place in the guard, and I’m almost certain that Tells will think she can fix Simira as every guy thinks he can be the one to fix crazy. Hell, even Desmond gave up, and crazy is his type.
i’M lOsINg MY FucKInG m i n d IN [ hErE ]
I fell out of my head as the wind blew through the window, shifting to a cacophony of whistles. No, it was more like a choir of wind instruments. At first it sounded disjointed and a bit piercing, but as I fell into the rhythm, I could hear a melody that was repeated through pitches like an echo. I couldn’t see where it was coming from, but it was soothing to hear such a strangely somber song.
Creaking wood behind me interrupted the flow and I opened my eyes, looking down at the scrawny guy who was scrubbing armor alone now. I still had the instincts to greet whoever came in, and a sharp shock to my neck cut off the sound.
There was just a kid standing there. I hadn’t ever seen him before. He looked about 16 or 17, maybe even a little younger. He had these tiny, beady brown eyes, and a tanned freckled face. I didn’t get the sense that he was angry, but he looked like he might’ve been biting his upper lip in, or maybe it was just really thin. Whoever he was supposed to be, the kid was not blessed in the genes department. It didn’t matter a whole lot to me. I plastered on a smile and looked at him, waiting for whatever he had to say.
The kid just kind of stared for a second before he furrowed his brows and sat on one of the cots, facing me. He started grabbing at the sheet, untucking it until he had a ball of sheet in his hand. He didn’t even acknowledge me, or maybe consider that I’m the one who has to keep this place clean and tidy. The other servants, particularly one maid who didn’t bother telling me her name, would do shit to my food or not give me clean clothes if I didn’t keep it spick and span in here. It was the same maid who gave me a small chalkboard because she was grossed out by the coke nail I grew to cut messages into my arm.
He kept untucking the sheet on the cot while I loudly scrawled “Can I help you?” on the board and walked it over in front of his face. He was already irritated with the sheets for some reason, but me holding the chalkboard up to his face made his temper spike and he slammed it on the ground, right out of my hands.
What a rude little shit. I picked up my board and went back to sitting. He didn’t leave, he just sat there untucking ANOTHER COT’S SHEETS.
OH MY GOD I’M GONNA FUCKIN’ KILL THIS KID
Who the fuck is he supposed to be? He’s dressed only a little worse than Simira and Tarynn usually are, but he’s acting like a child. Maybe just a big 12 year old with an anger problem? Oh, no maybe… no, yeah, he’s definitely got a slew of mental and developmental issues. How did I not pick up on that sooner?
The mothafucka threw up gang signs at me when he saw me staring. Or was it sign language? Or a sigil he’d put me out of my misery with? It had to be some kind of sign language, which I knew nothing about on Earth and even less about in this world.
I held up the chalkboard again, this time with his hand print on it. The kid looked at the board with his beady little eyes and took the chalk. He spat on my board and wiped it clean with his hands. Right on my board. Up close he smelled like he didn’t ever wash his hands or clean himself in general. I could handle being around blood any day, but even I was grossed out by his rancid body odor. He gripped my piece of chalk that was already thin and brittle, basically crushing it and using some of the smashed pieces to scrape his message.
LEAVE
What an idea! Why didn’t I think of it sooner!
He threw the board back in my lap. I wiped the board down with my shirt and picked up a piece of chalk that he hadn’t touched.
i can’t
YOU DIE
I recoiled a bit as he abruptly held the board up, expecting him to throw it or hit me with it, but he just kept that angry look on his face. It was certainly ominous, but I got the sense it wasn’t gonna be him to kill me.
omg im such scorpio vibes!!! xD
GO AWAY
He let me read it. After a few seconds of him holding it, I tried to grab it to write back. When he saw me reach toward him, he reared back and slammed the top of my hand with the board, then threw it down in my lap and walked over to another cot, where he started pulling the sheets up again. My knuckles throbbed and the collar sizzled around my neck as I growled from the pain.
He threw the sheets down on the cot and fished a strange cloth doll out of his pocket. It was some kind of small crocheted animal or creature. I didn’t recognize it, but it was also unrecognizably stained, torn, and worn.
The way he acted definitely pissed me off, but I couldn’t help feeling bad for him. Everyone here treated me like total shit, so I couldn’t imagine how they probably acted toward him. I looked around on my desk and fished out a sigil parchment. It was the sigil that I used on Adam when he got his guts ripped out. I’d completely committed it to memory in case I ever needed some strong healing in the spur of the moment.
Simira had already ripped the page from my book, albeit very cleanly, so it wasn’t bad to work with. I hadn’t done origami in a while, not since I was in middle school. I learned how to make a little cat sitting down to impress a girl who really liked cats. It didn’t really end up being anything, but it came in handy now. It took a painstaking and frustrating 5 minutes of remembering how to do it, but I folded the paper until it was a pretty rough looking cat. It was a bit tall because the paper for it sucked, but what I needed was done. I shaded on two little eyes and a nose with chalk.
He was sitting positioned away from me, so I flanked a good distance around until he could see, then placed it down about a foot in front of him. He glanced at me and then the cat. He reached out quickly and snatched it up, staring the little paper cat over. I slightly smiled at him and a big grin grew on his face.
Then he squeezed it. He crushed it in his hands while looking down at it, absolutely beaming. He beamed at the balled up little cat and started breathing heavily out of his nose. I tried to hide the pain of seeing my glorious creation crushed into an origami boulder. The kid released his grip and it still retained some of its shape at least, then straightened out the ears and the body a little, lost staring at it. I fixed the cots behind him while he was distracted. He just fiddled around with his doll and the cat like he was playing with them.
The door opened quickly and I shot up. Whenever the door was thrown open, somebody was always hurt like hell. Adam was shirtless and a bloody mess, being walked in by some dude who looked like a dollar store version of Christian Bale. I recognized his jzanmah, but I couldn’t place where from.
Jiminy H Cricket, Adam is thoroughly fucked.
His arm was a strand of muscle from falling right off. I had to get moving quickly.
Glaring at the random guy, I angrily gestured toward Adam to more or less convey “what the fuck happened to my friend?”
“Cool it, blood. He was in the arena, got a bit messed up by a river rizumir. Not that you even know what that is.”
My mocking smile cut through his jive, so he stepped back and awkwardly watched the kid who was still playing with his doll.
I scribed a sigil in the air before me, a tenkel that Mother Yeline taught me. The first shape was a wide rectangle, and the second shape was two eyes. The sigil presented a screen of jzanmah in front of the user’s face that let me see the internal workings of nearby living bodies.
Confusion filled me. My eyes locked on his shoulder, which was packed with sand. Not just like he fell in sand, but packed.
“WHO THE FU-” The collar shocked me to my knees, choking my vocal chords and burning my neck horribly.
I rose, reeling from almost blacking out and grabbed the hose and pump across the room. A line connecting to a well was powered by sigils or something, I didn’t know, but I aggressively pumped hot water into Adam’s sandy wound, thoroughly soaking the entire half of the infirmary. Once the sand was out of his wound, I ran over to the shelf, having not a goddamn clue what the unmarked vials and bottles of liquids and paste were for. So, I grabbed a bottle of clear alcohol, shoved a towel in his mouth, and dumped half the bottle in Adam’s wounds. He screamed and twisted and turned, but I didn’t stop. Had to make sure everything was disinfected since nobody would tell me what pastes were the antibacterial ones. Nobody had died of an infection or sepsis yet, so I was clearly doing something right. And hygiene was surprisingly good in this world, if you weren’t, oh, I don’t know, a slave. Even the lowest servants still got to shower. Me? Nah. But little did they know, I used the scalding hot pump and whatever smelled good on the shelf to clean myself during slow hours because I simply could not risk being discovered as a fireblood.
Once Adam was crying from having half a bottle of alcohol poured on his wounds, I got to work. I scrawled the triangle, the eye, and then the tears in the air before me and sat him down.
Adam was in a cold sweat and severely lacking blood, but was smiling like a madman. He put his good hand on my shoulder. “You shoulda seen me Vetia. It was just like Gladiator. There was a huge crowd, and a big rimjob, and a jester who made everything super uncomfortable.”
It was hard to focus on fixing his shoulder with him talking. The thing about fixing people with sigils is that if you didn’t know their anatomy, the sigil would just shock your body to get blueprints for fixing the particular area. Or rather, that’s how I interpreted it. Once I learned the anatomy, I stopped getting shocked. I had spent a while memorizing the general anatomy of local creatures that Simira’s planks depicted in varying levels of detail. The racial differences usually weren’t too intense between humanoids, but the tendons and bone lengths varied pretty heavily in different creatures. I felt pretty confident in jinian anatomy, considering I had to memorize it to fix Adam so often, but I was feeling minor twinges in my shoulder as I finished up a few ripped tendons.
Adam continued on his ramble, slurring his words. I was just glad he was awake. “What the hell kind of place is gonna make a new guard take on a bigass bird like that? Like, the fuck, dude?”
A big bird? What?
I didn’t know enough to even comprehend what was going on. Nausea gripped my mind. Adam’s blood was absorbing in through my hands and that sick feeling rose in my stomach.
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I can hold it. I can hold it. Or so I hope.
His usual tint of green was starting to return to him as I repaired the rest of his shoulder, but my brain was tingling a lot. The flow of jzanmah from my head to my hands intensified, thrusting me into a sweat. Generating body matter and blood out of jzanmah had a way of doing that apparently.
I quickly sealed up the wound on his head. It wasn’t too deep, and his frontal cranium was only bruised a little, so it was a quick fix.
Fiver Bale wandered over and slapped Adam’s back. Adam groaned and rolled to the side.
“C’mon big guy, roll over so she can fix your backside.” He looked over at me with a crooked, trying-to-be-suave smile. “Rezyn, by the way.”
I stared blankly at Rezyn, lamenting at the horrible bloodstains on the sheets that I would have to clean, and then to Adam’s royally fucked ass. There was a massive gash across his cheeks, tearing through most of the muscle and even into the anus. I clenched a little at the thought of that pain and began working my magic while leaning away from him. Of course the butt had to be one of the most complex muscles in the body. Pain shot through mine all throughout the fix until I stopped to fix his butthole.
I wasn’t religious, but at that moment, I prayed that I wouldn’t get my asshole shocked. I’d been hurt a lot, and an anal shock was something I wanted to go through life without feeling.
I thought really hard back to the planks of anatomy, to what the jinian anus looked like. I honestly never thought it would come up, but my luck paid off. In my wasted spare time, I basically turned into an immature highschooler giggling and comparing the genitalia of all these new fantasy humanoids, which included but were not limited to the anus. I had been reduced to a 3d printer that ran on magical energy to create poop shoots. In an instant, I channeled a surge of jzanmah to work quickly, repairing a section that had been ripped out and healing one that had been cut.
It was over. I looked up and thanked whoever listened to my prayer.
The back and leg wounds were more of what I was used to doing regularly. By the end of fixing Adam back to full health, my brain was thrumming like a gong. I’d have to eat a lot of kets to fix this pain. The head pains never went away easily, and they always made me a little more jittery, jumpy, and temperamental in a weird fun kind of way. Like my brain was actually getting fried. It was the same kind of pain I endured back in Poikla after fixing the others, but constant because I DIDN’T GET A FUCKING BREAK.
I couldn’t leave here, so my only way to get blood was through touching the wounds of the people I fixed, or by eating kets in my cell. They were basically this world’s rats. Little, nasty creatures that would burrow through stone, shit everywhere, eat everything. But they were food to me. And as it would seem, I didn’t get sick from eating them.
Honestly, I’m not sure if I can get sick as a fireblood, like my body actually just kills everything it touches.
I picked up the board and scratched on it with the chalk.
Take it easy, it’s gonna ache for a little bit
Adam leaned up, groaning and holding his back like a dad does. “I still can’t believe you can do that healing. It’s wild.”
I patted his arm and sat back, closing my eyes and holding my pounding head, trying not to cry from how badly it hurt and would keep hurting for days. Everyone looked so much more appetizing the more my head hurt. Snapping felt like it would be a little easier with every thrum, every pulse.
Rezyn scooted over next to Adam. “I’m surprised you didn’t die when it slashed your ass, or that you even managed to keep your arm. That rizumir’s damn near chopped up every person who’s challenged it.” He awkwardly shifted in his spot for a second and leaned closer to me to whisper. “By the way, what’s the cur doing in here? He shouldn’t be out.”
I exaggeratedly shrugged.
lol idfk bro
He looked quizzically at it before I realized I used a text acronym.
Oops, I guess.
He glanced back over at the kid and then to me. “Well, you should kick him out before the Captain comes in here. It’s not good for him to be out and about like this.”
I smiled like he was such a genius.
Great idea. How about I yell at him to leave?
Rezyn realized as I wrote that how dumb his reply was. “Yeah, yeah. I think I see your point.”
Rezyn seemed like a pretty reasonable guy. He wasn’t treating me like garbage at the very least. I looked at Adam and mouthed “who is he?” as Rezyn turned to walk over to the kid.
Adam leaned in, “Rezyn was the one who held the dagger to Tells’ throat when everything went down. I think he’s close to Simira. Does her dirty work.”
The door crashed open again and I stood at attention instinctively. It was Captain Zev, absolutely beaming until he glanced around the room and saw the kid.
“Adam! You- What is the cursed boy doing in here? Is he injured? Have him return to his quarters now!” Zev’s face turned scary and his tone matched.
I smiled at him like he was an idiot and showed him the chalkboard.
Great idea. How about I yell at him to leave?
He let out a frustrated sigh and glared at the kid. The kid looked up at Zev with wide eyes. He didn’t seem like he knew how to react, but he was extremely afraid of Zev.
Zev picked him up by the shoulder and the kid started thrashing, so Zev grabbed the back of his neck like a mother cat picking up her litter, the kid going stiff. I sensed them leave the room, and focused on him and the kid, anguish radiating from the kid as he was tossed out and verbally berated.
“Worthless cur! Return to your chambers and do not leave! You know what will happen if the Viscount spots you!”
Zev walked back into the silent room and glared at me. “Woman, this room is for sick and injured people. Not wandering cursed children.”
I tapped the chalkboard again.
He scoffed at me, then grabbed my shoulder and threw me to another cot, taking my place next to Adam, completely changing to a tone of comradery. “Congratulations, Adam! Quite the battle indeed. I was certain you would overcome the rizumir.”
Rezyn piped in. “Andris, you were shaking in your boots before the fight, don’t kid yourself.”
“Well, Rezyn. When a novice is to duel a beast with 24 victories, there is good reason to feel worry. Nevertheless, I was still confident in your abilities as a fighter.”
Adam looked like a kid who was looking up to a superhero. A completely different person talking to Zev. “Thank you, Captain.”
“Indeed, now I may truly train you as one of my zeshuo, Adam, remember that. We are warriors in arms.”
“Captain, I can’t begin to thank you enough.” Adam was beyond thrilled. It was enough to raise my mood a little.
“There is no need for thanks. You earned everything you have achieved.”
Rezyn stepped up. “And, since you won the big fight of the day, you get your pick of the visit.”
Adam’s face turned reddish beneath his pale green skin in embarrassment. “Uh, yeah, I forgot about that part. I didn’t realize that’s how they chose.”
“Winners always get the first choice, it’s why everyone trains to win in the arena. You were given the big fight because the Viscount wanted to test your mettle, and slay me here if you didn’t show it.”
It’d be so funny if I just fucking gouged his throat out and then be like “oops I thought he said did show it!” I’d have to write it, though, and the moment has already passed. Damn.
Adam scratched the back of his head, “I can’t afford that, heh.”
Rezyn put a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Who do you think the wager money goes to? The winners. And you get a cut of the ones who lost their money. On top of that, the winners get paid for winning. My friend, you’ll be drowning in coin if you keep winning in that arena.”
“Oh, wow. I didn’t know. I guess I could think about what I’ll do tonight.”
Captain Zev put on a reassuring tone. “Well, you’re in better condition now, so you will have plenty of time to think. Come with me, I’ll take you to a zeshuo who will orient you.”
“Yes sir!”
The three of them walked out, talking up a storm. Gleeful cheers and hollers filled the manor hallways. He didn’t even say bye or look back. I couldn’t blame him. He was in one of his peak moments and I was just the heal bot. I glanced around at the mess of sheets, blood, water and alcohol all over the floor and cots, just wishing to be done with it all.
The swarm of soldiers from the arena came in, taking off their first aid bandages and splints for me to fix everything. They talked about the final fight that they all stayed for, one guy almost bleeding out just to watch it. It was great, healing the assholes who beat the shit out of me every day. Funny enough, that wasn’t even Simira’s call. Her dad told them to abuse me. I could see where she got the aggressive streak from. And I couldn’t tell anyone that my brain was on the verge of leaking out my fucking ears because they’d just use that as an excuse to hit me for not healing them. Talk about a shit gig. I don’t even have any vacation days! The absurdity of it all!
After hours of being a healing machine, they finally cleared out just in time for the brothel to show up. Hopefully Adam would at least have a good time with one of the prostitutes and was finally finding some comradery here. This day, whatever it was, was always exhausting. By the end of it, I was content to eat some cold leftover food that was usually scraps of what the rest of the people didn’t eat and just lay down in my cell, munching away on rodents that tasted like literal shit all night. And to top it off, I didn’t sleep. Honestly, if I had been able to sleep, the manor probably would have been bearable.
They escorted me from work, to dinner, to my cell where I was promptly locked away until morning, I was completely alone. They would only fetch me if something really bad happened, like once when a guard fell down the stairs after drinking all night and cracked his head open. He lived, but he didn’t even thank me for repairing what would have been a fatal wound.
Slivers of moonlight drifted in through the grate, serving as my only light. The damp, musty stone cell was suffocating. The cot I was supplied with was damp and mildewy from the ceiling, which dripped water directly onto the rickety bench it was set up on. The bench was suspended from the wall by chains which creaked to no end. But setting the cot on the floor would have only made it wetter. I never took off my boots unless I was on my bed, or else I would be stepping in little puddles of water all the time. And when it rained, water poured in through the grate. It wouldn’t flood, but all of the water ran through my cell to a drainage grate in the hallway. This dungeon was basically just a passageway to the sewer system with a few cells built in. And it sure smelled like it.
I laid on my damp cot looking up at the ceiling, awkwardly pressed against the cold wall to keep the droplets of water from hitting me.
There was another prisoner in the dungeon, a cell up the hall. He talked to me at night. He never told me his name and I never saw him. He came down after I had been put away for the night. I would tap on the bars or the chains. Once for yes, twice for no, three taps to indicate that I was confused or wanted to know more.
Her voice was always low and parched, exhausted and sickly.
“I used to be so loved, you know. Before I ended up down here. I was out, living my dreams, exploring the vastness that this world has to offer. But being… away and on my own. There’s a loneliness to drifting aimlessly, endlessly. In the same way that being locked away is punishment through solitarity. To be everywhere and unloved damns us as much as being locked away. For if our souls are denied love, then what good is company who cares for us the same an endless vacuum does? Have you ever felt love before?”
I tapped the chain.
“I do wish you could relate. I never did find it myself.” He paused. “I tried. I did. But every fraction of love I took, it never satisfied. I wanted more. I want more. And wanting made me hateful of those who had it. Wealth, sex, luxurious food. All staved off the misery I felt. But every time, it took a little more until it stopped satisfying altogether. Now I want everything, but I hate it all. Do you have hatred in your heart, Vetia?”
I tapped the chain, the rustling of metal spurring on ringing in my head.
“Is it for the one who locked us away as such? Who silenced our voices? Who denies us?”
I tapped the chain again. My mind ached. A burning sensation rose in my chest at the thought of Simira. How can I not hate her?
“That woman is blind to her own righteousness. She doesn’t know she is the one creating people like you and I.” The voice paused like it licked its lips. “Have you ever taken revenge? Made somebody else suffer for wronging you?”
I hesitated, then tapped the chain twice.
“I’ve heard people call it sweet. It’s not sweet. There is no flavor because it’s so… so personal. Like gorging yourself at a feast of all of your desires. It’s so much more decadent than taking love. Taking a life is intoxicating. Watching the one you hate most. Begging for you to save them. Wishing they had given you more love. You can see it in the eyes. The moment where they realize that the greatest satisfaction you can feel is no longer through their love, but through their suffering, through their death. They wouldn’t give their whole self to you, so you take it. Intoxication is not apt for this feeling. Ecstasy. Enlightenment. Something so divine that coming down from it brings you to despise everything around you. Once you have relished in it, that indulgence of your basest instincts, nothing will satiate you.”
Lust slithered into their words. Like reminiscing on vengeance brought cravings to light. It was morbidly pleasurable. Sadistic and enticing. It stirred something in me. It infected me. This manor was filled with cruel people who hated me, and I dreamed of slashing their throats open, drinking their blood, tearing them limb from limb. The guards who beat me to hell. The servants who spit in my food or poured it into my lap. Lady Simira who cut my tongue out, punched and kicked me, locked me in a cage, collared me, used my jzanmah until I was delirious. All I want is to watch her beg me to spare her life as I tear it out of her.
“If only you could taste it. But you will. I smell it on you and I envy it.” It snickered through salivating lips. “But only the gifted may experience the lush embrace of true satisfaction.”
Oh my God this dude’s fuckin’ funny. So funny. Laughter rose in my chest and I laid back, silently heaving from how indescribably hilarious it was. I didn’t even know what was so funny, but I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
I got up and paced around the cell, tap dancing in the water and chuckling to no end. I had a little game. I couldn’t see, so I would step and dance around, trying to avoid all the little pitter patters from the puddles of water. I had most of the cell memorized, but the water level made it much easier and harder depending on the night.
Breaks in shadow and passing whispers always got a good startle out of me. They always did try to jumpscare me. It usually worked. Am I more jumpy? No. They're just scary. Every time I did jump and realize nothing was there, I’d just break down laughing. Or crying. Sometimes both. Props to them though, they were good at sneaking up on me. Only about six more hours of this and I’ll be back to work! What’s time even matter. I’m always awake and fully conscious, so everything feels eternal and yet so fleeting. The shadows didn’t visit me at work unless I was really really messed up. They preferred the darkness. Maybe they’re spies, though. Maybe Simira had little shadow familiars she deployed to keep eyes on me. I wagged a finger at them. Those little rascals, trying to peep on me. How lewd! At least buy me dinner first! Ugh, not a gentleman left in the world.
Ooh! A rodent. There’s a proper gentleman. I tiptoed on the dry islands perfectly, drawn to the little aura of empty wonder from the animal. Claws came out, and my hand wrapped around the rodent. Their fur tasted like literal shit, so I did a little surgery as I usually would, slicing the skin off the stomach just enough so I could bite down and suck without getting the fur in my mouth. I tossed the flap of skin out the grate and once I was done, the rodent would follow. I hadn’t seen what the birds that took away the corpses actually looked like, but they only came out at night. All I saw were the shadows because they were so fast. Once I had started consistently leaving corpses outside the grate, they were quick to pick them up. About thirty rodents a night made the head pain lighten up. Usually. Sometimes I would try to snatch a bird as it came down for the corpses, but I was never quick enough. Was I talking to somebody? Am I talking to the man in the cell again? How much time has passed since I did… or thought I did? Am I still talking to him? To anyone? Surely somebody is listening. I tapped the bars a few times, trying to shove my face through like a cat. Heh. I probably looked so stupid. I chuckled. I tapped them again. He must have gone to sleep. Even prisoners needed sleep, but not me. I pried my face back out of the bars. Am I bleeding? My forehead felt a little warm and wet. It tasted like my rotting blood. My arms itched. And my back. And my legs and face. It happens sometimes and it’s really annoying. I whipped out the claws and got to work. The itches wouldn’t go away unless I dug them out. So I got to work, scratching lines in my arms and back and legs, watching the itches skitter out and healing it back over once they slithered into the water and disappeared. I had to catch myself a lot. What I was doing was dangerous. At least, I often let my face hang open, mouth and eyes wide while I clawed them out. They liked trying to crawl into my mouth. I’d bit into my arms the first time I had to get them out, but they tasted like rotting blood. I had to be careful, especially when picking them out of my ears and off of my face. Oh no, they were dripping into my eyes. I hate that I hate it so much I can’t see Nothing It’s all dark Everything was dark I couldn’t hold my mouth shut anymore because I needed to breathe but they were just getting in there too now I have to dig them out faster out of my eyes and off my tongue everything hurt so bad but I can’t stop I have to get them out but they won't get outtheywon’tgetouttheywon’tgetouttheywon’tgetouttheywon’tcoldeverythingcoldshiveringchesttightnoairdarkchesthurtburningheavehelphelphelphelphelphelphelpheppphlhellhelpelphehh
“Get up! A guard broke his wrist falling out of bed! Oh fuck, it’s sleeping in the mud again! Get some new clothes.”
“Again?”
“It’s like this every morning, what the fuck do you expect?!”
Morning. Sunlight cascaded in through the grate and I picked myself up from the pool of slimy brown fluid on the floor. At least I didn’t have any cuts on me. Well, it was a new day. Just like all the others.