Lacking the distraction of the voice, the pain now engulfs me. I begin to feel warmer than I should and wonder if a fever has taken me. I lay my head on my good arm and allow my consciousness to drift.

Dreams come, but they have no form or light, only darkness and a muttering voice that occasionally erupts in deep, elegant laughter. Hands seem to touch me everywhere. Not blows this time, but gentle, probing, exploratory touches. Every inch of my body is manipulated, petted, mouthed. I feel my body curling in on itself, not liking the insistent fingers going where even my own have not, but at least they are not causing me further pain. Again I feel the mouth on my wounded arm but instead of making things worse, the pain actually seems to lessen and the feverish feeling to subside. Warm arms encircle and cradle me as though I were an infant. My head is gently pressed to a firm breast and shoulder that radiates heat and shudders with the regular thudding of a strong heart. Its rather nice, really, I decide, snuggling into the imaginary warmth. I should remember this fantasy. It will be a great comfort to me when I am trying to find sleep on the cold stone floor. A hand with long fingers combs gently through my hair, working through the tangles, brushing it out of my eyes, tucking it neatly behind an ear. The nails are rather long and jagged and they snag at my skin and hair sometimes which gives me chills, but compared to most of the nightmares I've had since being brought to this hell hole—they were all filled with roaring flame, shrieks, the stench of burning hair and other unbearable memories—this is all quite soothing and appreciated. I find myself comforted in spite of my strong sense that this is wrong, wrong, wrong ... I know there are no arms for me any longer. I watched them die with my own eyes. No one will be rescuing me. There is no one left to really miss me now. No one left in the world of the living who will care enough to hold me like this, soothe me, or worry whether I am frightened or hurt.

I decide it hardly matters whether or not this is wrong or if it is imaginary comfort I give to myself. I should gratefully accept whatever comfort I can find and be glad of it, whatever the source, however illusory. So I don't struggle. In fact, I reach up in my dream and thread my arms about the place where shoulders and a neck should be, and I am surprised to find strong, broad shoulders and hot skin beneath my fingers. I hear a breath sharply drawn: someone else sounds surprised as well. It is all very pleasant and comforting. I burrow into the exotic-smelling warmth, wishing with all the strength I have left in me that it were true and this were real. I may have even said it out loud...I do talk in my sleep sometimes. I am so tired of sleeping on stone, breathing air fouled with the heavy stench of excrement, soured bodies and putrifying flesh. My hands creep around the torso that holds me in my dream. Such a delicious sensation: the comfort of another living body against my own.

It doesn't last of course. All too soon it all fades away to blankness and chill and filthy, slimy, cold, hard stone.

I am jerked out of my suffocating sleep by the shaking of the cage and the sharp sounds of heavy iron-shod boots scraping and scuffing against the floor. A pair of guards are trying to get my cage mate out of our shared cage to dispose of the body. But he's stiffened now, locked in a curled position far too wide to fit through the door. They are having a hell of a time getting him unbent enough to pass through. It hurts me to watch them cursing and kicking at the frail little body— though I don't know why. He is long past feeling it.

When that horror show is finally over—they had to break his bones in the end- I am handed a wooden bowl of thin gruel that looks to be oats and barley mixed with some bones, a piece of cheese rind and a floating blob of fat. It smells off—they surely pawed through some rubbish tip to find these ingredients and the smell is dreadful. There is also a small, rock-hard crust of dark, coarse bread to go with it. I can't decide which is worse: the hunger twisting my gut or the nausea I feel at the rancid smell coming off of it.

You should eat it even so, little one. Your body needs the nourishment. The now familiar voice whispers in my head again. So this is madness, I think: disembodied voices giving one suspect health advice.

Laughter again.You are not mad, little one. At least not just yet, you're not, it whispers. I shall prove it to you, shall I? Pay attention then: the boy in the grey weskit, in the cage behind you to your left: he was given a scrap of meat in his bowl. If you are quick and bold, perhaps you will be able to take it from him. Without thinking, I reach back and slap down at the hands and bowl of boy in the cage behind me. I succeed in tipping the contents of his bowl out onto the stone floor and sure enough, there is a string of gristly meat and a rather large piece of turnip or possibly potato. I snatch both and quickly shove them in my mouth and swallow, choking over the long string of meat and connective tissue but determined to get them down now, while scooting away to the front of my cage to avoid the furious, desperate arms clutching at me. They will all avoid me now, knowing how far I am willing to go to survive a little longer.

I quietly finish the bread I was given, soaking and softening it in the gruel, while turning things over in my head: that thought had to have come from outside myself. There was no way I could've known what the boy behind me had in his bowl. I look up at the dark corners of the room again and see those reflective eyes once again looking back. Ruddy eye shine and perhaps the shadow of a grin: a sickle-shaped shadow slightly lighter than the shadows around it.

Something infernal has taken notice of me. Should I be gripped with dread or absurdly encouraged? I only know it is rude not to acknowledge help when it's been extended to you and I was certainly just the recipient of some genuine help.I direct a nod of thanks in the direction of the eyes. Immediately I hear a suppressed chuckle and by the way the eyes move and briefly wink out in the blackness I believe my nod of acknowledgement has been returned.

I have stolen food from a starving child, at the instigation of a devilish shade. What am I becoming?