***

The smell of blood was thick in the air - and heady. Thick, because it dripped down the swelling cuts that lined my hands and feet - the slashes across the ankles and wrists of other boys and girls I couldn't see. It was thick with the screams that still echoed in my head. Their screams and mine merging into one terrifying monster that begged to be set free or put out of its misery.

Heady, because the metallic scent, despite the chains that restrained me, made my tongue moisten and my throat constrict with lust.

I was thirsty, hungry. Want called to me silently from the darkness, begging me to ease my suffering. Relief was so out of reach, yet all around me thriving in the bodies of those who suffered with me.

Fruitlessly, I tugged on the chains, felt the strength of the bolts that held me to the wall and the strain in my joints from resisting.

How long had it been? How long had I been trapped in this dungeon on the brink of starvation? Blind and deaf to the world. . .

How long did they plan on keeping me here?

I sagged against my bonds, letting my weight drop towards the floor and the shackles constrict around my wrists. The pain that shot through my shoulders as my arms were forced towards the ceiling made me bite down hard on the gag that sealed my mouth.

I shook my head furiously in disappointment - desperation. Blood. It was the only liquid I was in contact with for days and even it was denied of me, my very own.

I wished for anything that could get rid of the dessert forming in my mouth, the pool of acid churning away at my stomach, the madness that lurked in recesses of my being.

Under the stress, my knees gave way. I buckled, my body now supported entirely by chains.

My shoulders must have been dislocated by now, yet the pain just lingered at the back of my mind.

I was too consumed by the hunger, the thirst, to focus on anything else. Was this what they wanted? Had I succeeded in becoming the sort of monster they prided themselves in being?

Impossible.

I wasn't like them. I couldn't be like them. The pain just wasn't enough of a distraction. I didn't want blood. I didn't need blood.

I didn't need to kill to sate my lust.

I shut my eyes, even though there was no difference from the darkness of the dungeon to that of my dismal thoughts.

For the first time in days, a scream rumbled deep in my chest as another thought - a foreign one - crept into my mind.

I will be rescued.

And for the first time in days, I believed that I was human.

***