Death's Servant
My eyes are clouded with the pain that comes from every part of my body and sobs escape my lips when the screams wouldn't come anymore. I just want to die. And so, I tell him this.
"Kill me" I beg, "Just kill me"
He caresses my cheek with the back of his hand as he pulls the last wire from my arm.
"I have a better idea."
The hallway is dimly lit with light bulbs that hang from the ceiling every ten steps. I walk down it with the two bags of scraps tucked under each arm. My steps are labored under the weight of them but the calls from the creatures that still care to look up at my approach, give me the strength to continue onward. I stop at the end of the hallway and set the bags down so I can unlock the cell door with the rusty brass key. The door swings open and I wonder for the millionth time why it's occupant doesn't go racing past me and out the open cellar door to possible freedom. But he won't. The once proud griffin, who I named Teren, has been broken of any hope of freedom. He, like all the other creatures of my master's experiments, is now just waiting for the torture to end. For the poking and prodding, the cutting and slicing, to stop. For their essence to no longer be needed. Because once this happens, he kills them. He finally puts them out of their constant pain and misery. It was the fate I looked forward to. But for me, it never came, would never come. He wants me alive for just this purpose; to take care of his experiments. Since I was one of them, they trust me.
It has been a month now since he told me that he no longer needed me for experiments. A month since he bought me new clothes and gave me an actual room to sleep in. A month, since I became Death's Servant.
I go over to Teren and stroke his mane. The cell he lives in is too small, and too dank for him, but then so are all the cells. I pour some of the scraps on the floor of the cell. None of the creatures will eat out of bowls. They are beyond even caring about what might be on the floor. They don't even care that half of their food is generally consumed by rats before they even take one bite. I kick at the fowl pests and let my cat ears and tail come forth letting out a hiss trying to scare them away. Some of the younger rats run but the other's don't fear me. To them I'm sure I'm just the cat girl that feeds them. To all of the cells occupants though, I am a tiny ray of comfort in their painful world. I look at Teren with his sunken eyes. I run my hands over the scars left in his skin from past experiments and then I loop my fingers through the scraggly tufts of hair in his mane and cry into it. I cry for him, for every creature in here and the ones that are gone. I cry especially for Ari. The werewolf girl that used to live in special cell next to mine. I looked out my window this morning, past the bars, and saw my master carrying wrapped white bundle. As he shifted it a corner slipped and a hand slipped out from under it to dangle limp and useless by his side. I bit my lip to bite back the scream because I knew that Ari, my last tie to a human like creature, was dead. I turned away unable to watch him throw her on the bonfire.
I start to scream into Teren's mane and he finds it in his heart to grumble some sympathy and nuzzle my head with his. I look down at the empty ground. The rats have eaten everything, but I don't think Teren cares. I stand and go shakily to the front of the cell, through the door letting it swing shut behind me. I still lock it even though I know that it doesn't matter either way, but my master will punish me if he thinks that I am slacking in my responsibilities. If he had threatened to kill me I wouldn't care, in fact I would probably gladly disobey him, but what he has threatened is so terrifying that I don't dare to defy him. He threatens to start my experiments again.