Page 2

The desecration of the bodies seemed so senseless. It wasn’t until buckets were placed beneath to catch the blood and a fire was started that reality began to sink in. This was a prison labor camp. The hours would be long, the work grueling, the food bland. Meat would be rare and expensive.

The bodies were being butchered.

Jesse fought the urge to gag as an axe was worked through the sternum and a rack of ribs torn off to place over the fire. One of the men sliced off Jesse’s attacker’s genitals. He held them up to Jesse and called out in a sing-song voice, “Come down little bird! Come down now and I’ll give you something sweet to eat!”

The others laughed and Jesse’s toes curled in his socks. This was hell, this was surely hell. Nothing on earth could be so depraved or inhuman. And that wasn’t even the worst of it; the worst part was when the scent of meat cooking reached his nose and his mouth watered and his belly grumbled. It didn’t matter to the little animal inside that it was human meat that was cooking, only that it smelled delicious. He wanted to hold his nose so he didn’t have to smell it, but he couldn’t take his hands off the bars without falling. He took panting breaths through his mouth, but it didn’t help. He was so very hungry.

He turned his face so that he didn’t have to watch. It did nothing to block out the sound and smell of men eating other men. Their talk was coarse and crude and continued late into the night. They started a betting pool as to when Jesse might fall. Then, they became concerned about him falling, not for his safety, but rather the promised reward. They argued for awhile over the meaning of the word ‘unharmed’ and whether it meant by them or by the ground. Finally, they decided that it probably covered both and moved to stack some old mattresses beneath him. They jeered and yelled horrible things at him.

The night began to get colder and the bars were cutting into the backs of his thighs, but that was nothing compared to the pain in his hands. His fingers ached abysmally from keeping up the tight grip necessary to keep him from sliding off. The rust was cutting into his palms. He could let one hand rest by tightening the other, but it was a null-sum game because either way, the ache in his joints just increased. His knuckles were white and his fingers were throbbing and there was no end in sight.

It was the longest night of his life.

Chapter 2

He wanted him from the moment he saw him. There were many women inside the prison, but Toran had never seen one of them so young or so beautiful. The boy had golden hair and eyes like the sky, creamy skin and a body so tiny Toran felt he could pick him up with one hand around his waist.

At first, he thought him to be rather a bit too submissive for his taste- the way he hung his head and cowered back like a timid mouse as the men fought over him. The little blond appeared so cowardly. Toran thought for sure any resistance had already been beaten out of him by the outside world and that he would submit readily to whoever the winner was. His interest began to wane then, but he was as shocked as the rest of them when the boy killed his would-be husband with a small shard of glass concealed in his palm. The frightened mouse had just been an act, and a clever one at that.

He was even more surprised when the boy scaled the wall, managed to elude capture by perching atop the spikes then had the nerve to taunt him from above. Toran had never been more pleased to be wrong. There was nothing docile about this one and that, more than anything, was what made up Toran’s mind. The blond would be his wife.

When he gave the order for the men to bring him the boy when he fell, and he would surely fall, he had no doubt he would be obeyed. He had expected his little bird to have been delivered to his new nest by dawn and was quite displeased when he awoke that next morning and it had not been done. He assumed the worst, that the boy had fallen and been taken by the men below instead of brought to him. Painful and humiliating deaths were plotted in his mind for all those involved...until he saw his little bird still perched atop the bars as the sun rose behind him. Toran was awed when he realized- the boy had held on all through the night.

And that was when his desire turned to obsession. Here was an iron will to rival his own…a pity it was trapped in the body of a fragile china doll.

The analogy was not an overstatement. Never had Jesse felt closer to breaking apart than he did as the sun rose and the men began to come back into the yard. He was so cold that he had lost all feeling in his legs. He wished he had lost feeling in his hands. They were throbbing, the joints were red and swollen and the fingers between had turned white from too much pressure for too long. He didn’t even think he could uncurl them from the bars if he wanted to now. His fingers felt locked into position. They hurt. Everything hurt.

He knew that if he fell now, there was nothing he could do to defend himself. He would lay there on the ground, shattered like a broken china doll before being ground to heel by the men waiting for him to drop. Especially the big one. He was back and his gaze was hot on Jesse’s skin.

“Most impressive, little bird, but unless you can fly, you must come back to earth. Jump and I will catch you. It would be better for you to come down now...before the guards see you,” said the big man with a menacing matter-of factness.

At the mention of the guards, Jesse’s blood ran even colder. They would sooner shoot him dead than let a prisoner escape, that much he knew for certain. He did not want to die. Anything was preferable to that. He managed a shivering little nod and began to try and pry his fingers from the bars.

It was too late. A siren went off and a loud voice sounded over a scratchy intercom system, “Escape attempt in progress on South wall. Unit 12 into position. Neutralize and apprehend.”

Almost instantly, guards began filing into the yard. The prisoners all instantly hit their knees and put their hands behind their heads. The guards wore all black body armor. Their faces were covered with strange gas masks that made them look more machine than man. It gave them immunity to the teargas that was used during prison riots. They carried large automatic rifles- all of which were fixed on Jesse.

The young boy began to shake violently. He tried to speak, to tell them he was ready to come down now, but his throat was too dry to speak. All he could manage was a frightened croak as they took aim.

He ducked down just as the shots peppered the wall above his head, raining down dust and rocks. His hands slipped and he began to slide down the slanted bars. The rusted metal scraped the back of his legs. A bullet tore through his sleeve and it felt like fire as it grazed his bicep. None of that distracted him from the ground that was rushing up full speed to meet him.

He was conscious when he hit the mattresses that had been laid out beneath him. They slowed his fall somewhat, but the downward force of his body took him right through the mattresses and slammed him into the hard soil beneath them. The pain in his ribs was like fire. Everything went black behind his eyelids.

The guards took him one underneath each arm and dragged him a short distance.

He knew nothing else for a long time.

When his consciousness finally blinked back into existence, he was alone and he was inside. The bed he was lying on was terribly uncomfortable and almost worse than the floor because of the way it sagged. He moved to relieve the pressure on his aching lower back and was rewarded with a flood of fresh pain coming from his chest. The gasp of air exhaled by his lungs made it worse.

The sound attracted the attention of a man. Jesse watched him approach with the knowledge that he could do nothing to defend himself, but also that if the man intended to harm him, he’d likely have done so by now. He had a white beard and wore glasses, both of which seemed to accentuate the angles of his skull. It was like it was made up entirely of flat surfaces and no curves. It was a very hard, unfriendly face.

“You are awake.”

“Yes,” he croaked, although it was perfectly obvious.

“How do you feel?”

“Hurt.” It was the best he could articulate because now that he was fully awake, he was fully aware of how much pain he was in. His hands throbbed, his back and ribs ached, his arm stung and the back of his legs burned. His stomach was empty and his mouth was dry.