*(Narrator)*
Starved.
Metal against rock, that droning cacophony. Only gods knew what they needed this stone for, what they mined and gathered would probably never even see the warden. Perhaps the main solace they could find at that moment was that Autumn sun gave them clemency they so needed. Diligence and toil was demanded of all good iron, this from any perspective was baser torture designed to work wrought metal into wretched nails.
"Half past six! Half an' hour till the gets back in, get back at it!" That authority, hollow – noble born and sent to a post where the glutton could shout all day. That command, hollow – his voice cracked with the imitation of fiercer pigs in the prison than him. That fragility did not muster the men but that menace that dug in the words of the warden carried the weight.
Yells continued in the background, what gave the guards a stomach they needed to sate with this kind of satisfaction? Arms that swung, arms that shook – arms that had long strained and cramped hit faster yet. The damned carts still had room for more.
A guard walked up to the carts, his hands shaking them violently, shuffling their contents, "Empty! Empty! None of them are full! Too comfortable here are you?". Setting twilight accentuated the grooved and pored surface of his face, those windows never quite looked as black as they had been then.
Sun's zenith barely still broke the hill it crowned now, couldn't be long to seven. The prisoners worked with a fever, that Fall coolness no longer that grace it had been before with night's falling. Perhaps Fevin's grace then had been that Taylor had been relegated before to duties elsewhere; what being literate gave one. No matter, dusk was coming; the equaliser was coming.
Metal rapped on bars, the guards halting and beating back the tide of men that rushed for the carts. Not enough, not yet enough.
Lone man, you could see the contours of his toothed gums through his teeth, pained it was to see the poorly maintained sticks that jutted from his mid-section take toll of running. If he had been any younger than fifty, his pains showed none of it. Still he pushed through armored ranks, crumbling yet crawling still for the damned carts, rolling brittle rock and mortar between his claws and the earth to reach them.
His frame gave cracks in place of the usual thwack of a rod against flesh. No screams, no. They'd emptied in the earlier morning, no longer able to belly those caterwauls he should have spared for now. One, Two. The third was met with resistance, the man's body arching up and striking taut in unnatural angles, that frame jutting in a strained and uncanny manner with a mouth that frothed yellow and brown. How long did he suffer? Perhaps he'd already gone then, these fruitless convulsions begetting nothing more than the fire of dying embers.
Not enough, not yet enough.
Any fervor that bled from that daring in the masses darkened and scabbed over. It hadn't been much at all really, they'd learnt not to pick at it. In droves, they were funneled back into their styes.
``` ```
*(Fevin)*
Rough night. I had already known then that it would be a rough night. Not the dull yet tightening hurt in my arms and not even that accursed hurt in my stomach but from the noises outside.
In my old towns, we had midwives carry off newborns to get them dressed and soothed. Small town – seemed to happen at night half the time where the infant children cried and screamed for air to take in their lungs. They screamed for life.
Poor bastards in the other cells nearby yelled and cried out. I think Taylor had said something then about their yells reminding him of the caterwauls of a dying animal, though details came hard to parse today. I knew not of what a "caterwaul" was. Summarily, the guys yelling would soon be put to rest by the type of tired their bodies hadn't realised they were feeling then or by the guards that were sure to come soon.
His muted talk came from behind my resting self.
"L-lay down on the bed. Guards may think you're one of them when they come and see you sitting up by the bars."
It'd been an hour two since we'd come from the quarry outside. Yeah I was dry enough but that was only because the dust from the rock had plastered over by grime and slick. Still smelled like shit though.
"Already I have to share a bed with you, mouth. I'll thank myself for not greasing my side of the thatch later."
Maybe it had been faint moonlight from the windows then but I thought I had maybe seen Taylor's lips raise in kind of dissatisfaction. The rest of his body then though…
Our eleventh's winter solstice was our last. It was sweet. I'd seemed to remember then that my mouth had opened that night intending to say something I hadn't understood. I'd seemed to remember too a look of withdraw on his. Our eleventh winter solstice was the last he had been able to wash himself.
I still remember, even today, the very distinct look a shame on his face when I first had to be called in to help wash the shit off his ass. It was the look a dignified scholar would give, stripped down by his own biology; the same look an old man would give to his son that had to help him clean himself.
"Fei… tell me that story again."
Gods, his voice had gotten so rough and damaged, though that standard of cadence that he continued to give still made it.
"Yeh? Which one? The eh… the one about the day I got drafted?"
A turn back revealed his scrawny body. I knew already years before that he could, and would get thinner. I had seen many times before the skeletal corpses whose impulse to nourish kept them on their feet in the fields still. I knew that you could rot before your waking self could register that fact of death. I still wonder why I'd never till then imagined him getting there or, for that matter, really paid attention to how he'd looked – It… hurt so much to actually really and truly look and see how he'd aged.
Apparently, once your fat had gone, your body began to take from your muscles that made you. You ever seen dried crocodile meat before? The sinews beneath his pale and jaundiced skin made of that spitting image perhaps a year back. That day, they amounted to less, just… less. Skin and bones.
"No…", came his croak, "One of the ones when you played as a kid where the merchants sold their goods."
"Right… there was the one where that poor rickshaw vendor spilled his buns trying to avoid me. Gods I… Yeah I mean the stuff got everywhere and Fifi started lapping up the buns from the ground. Guy was proper pissed off, and well… I just ran off."
The smile that strained found my gaze.
"Yeah? Go on… I KNOW that isn't the end of that story."
"Yeah yeah, I ran back home and kind of just hoped that would blow over or something. Gods, Ba and Ma were so mad at me when that uncle showed up at our door holding up Fifi, he- no… no. I know you and I know that you like to take parts like that and run wild wi-"
Too late I guess. His laugh had started enough already to crack through his phlegm-caked throat into a lighter guffaw.
"No, no, no, it's not that you lived in a small village and thought he wouldn't recognise you or anything bu- you know what? No, go ahead. Finish your thing"
Lying bastard, he was bound to interject in a bit.
"Hahh… yeah so apparently, Fifi being left behind left quite a trail that led straight back to me. When my parents had found out, they'd make me help that man work his stall to pay off the inventory he'd lost that day. The dumb dog led the guy straight to our house after having his fi-"
"The dog sold you out?!"
Wheezing. Just wheezing, and struggling to curl up, his laugh now a tea kettle, a bit was coming up, I just know it.
"No! You know what? Deserved. You not only left that poor guy to deal with the consequences of your own actions, but also let him eat all of that food. You know dogs shouldn't eat the garlic in those things right?"
"OH, of course. Snitch got sick after, threw up half the food he ate before so… can't- can't even say someone got to benefit off the thing, and here's the thing. I still maintain… that if it weren't for that dog, that I'd been able to get away with it" I paused before raising to scratch behind my back, "Well that and the fact that the uncle was my uncle."
I'd muttered that last part quickly, feigning a look outside our cell to check if the guards were coming through the doors. The mouth had an ear too though.
I found myself smiling too, though it had been to nobody in particular, looking outside still. First time in a long time since I'd heard Taylor's original laugh since before his sickness got to his voice.
``` ```
*(Narrator)*
Dogs that know only their wretched abode roll in filth and contentedness enough. Their guts cave and mouths froth from that dire unsatedness. Still their master with their thick and conformative canes and pacifying muzzles made them docile, made them domesticated. The whites of their eyes muddy with red streaks for no sleep their leaden bodies could find with that dire unsatedness. Yes still, that beating that followed, and their built-in mechanism made them compliant in their obedience to those who were above them. That dire unsatedness is tempered well by the experienced hand, but biology calls; a dog must have its day.
The choir was erupt with their crude crescendos. There were too many that night, the guards couldn't possibly keep all of them down, only try to ignore it till the men tired.
And then, the gates to the cellblock opened like a lever to the clockwork of the feral men before working a mechanism attached to their bars. In came a guard, his apparel that marked mahogany of the hand that fed, leading in a row of guards that carried barrels of feed for the pigs.
The feed came, the guards still struggling to carry them over to the bars, yet most were already in their restraints. Sweat-rusted metal digs into the wrists of many, the heavy bar that held their heads in place dripping with the drool that lathered their gags that held their mouths in place.
In the offering of the verbose illustrations here, which most admit are beyond the scope of casual humanity, needed it is to be reminded of who these men were before the fall.
Common civility was kept at hand to the merits and triumphs of the social law that dictated a fair citizen practice their due obediences to their masters, and they practiced their modesty and integrity. Withered now, their hands still bore the callouses plenty of a time they earned them through wielding a spear and shield. Many held golden tongue to perform in house to sing tell tall of their dynasty fair. Some had children and were apt-enough fathers to men to-be.
The pigs knowing the motions of this profane mechanism put themselves in these shackles that choked – yet shackles that fed. From their gags removal came the shoveled feed into their mouths. What they couldn't eat from the implement went to the rats on the floor. One by one, they were given their fill. One by one, men who still saw themselves as soldier, scholar and senior crossed roads for unbecoming they'd promise themselves were just product of their present woes.
Many still squealed for a greater feed.
``` ```