Alrumia lived through the same cycle of starvation and salvation for eight long months. In the time he spent in the black cell, he forgot what sunlight felt like: his world shrunk down to a three metre square pit. Every three days food and a skin of water would be forced through a slot in the steel door. Alrumia had learned quickly to save every scrap: the tiny opening often punctured the soft fibre of the waterbag and if he didn't add it to his stew fast it would be lost, leaving him only the already watery soup to keep him from dying of thirst. It was a living Hell of hunger and claustrophobia, where the black walls were as hungry as he was and stalked him mercilessly, creeping ever closer.
He tried to appeal his sentence, of course: for hours on end he held open the food flap and bleated for mercy through it, to no avail. Food was withheld until he surrendered and once when he refused to back down scalding water was poured through the slot and over his face, covering him in blisters. He popped them and drank the foul fluid, then cried with pain as fever wracked his breaking body. The boy lost track of time: slowly he gave up on the hope of ever being free, doomed to live forever in the stony pit.
Eight months was a lifetime.
When the door to his tomb swung open, Alrumia shrieked in agony. The light blinded him and burned his bleached white skin, his claw-like hands grabbing at his face, protecting his eyes from the red glow of fire. He was covered in lesions and disease, caked with filth and so frail his ribs jutted out like the branches of a dead tree. Hissing and snarling like an animal he clawed at the ground, fighting against the thick, strong hands that hauled him out of his pit and into the light. Calloused fingers pried his teeth apart, forcing a lump of sticky brown tar into his mouth, and Alrumia sank into oblivion with a moan.
He awoke to strong, gentle, dark hands massaging the wasted muscles in his legs: the skilled, brisk touches made his skin burn uncomfortably, prickling as the tension was slowly released. It was too bright even with just one lamp in the room, and Alrumia's body was twisted and curled, lying on it's side after months without room to stretch out, his joints frozen into unnatural contortions from lacking the room to lay down flat. He opened his mouth to speak, and a small groan escaped him, distant and alien-sounding. Was it him, that sounded so weak and small? In a dreamy haze he watched nut-brown hands work over his bleached white skin with practised ease, pushing blood into locked joints, flexing them until they were swollen and hot, ignoring Alrumia's soft complaints.
The man frowned as Alrumia's knees turned inwards, refusing his talent stubbornly. He left the boy and returned with two narrow metal cages, padded and armed with nuts to tighten them. The boy would have been scared if he knew the pain that would be coming, or if he could think at all: the nugget of hashish that had been mashed into his teeth was still keeping him sedate, and he watched in mild fastination as two pale, stick-thin legs were slid into the traps. They couldn't have been his legs, they were too white-but the sudden clarity of pain still slapped him in the face when the nuts tightened and forced his bones back to where they belonged.
Eight months in a lightless cell, sustained only on goat meat and salt: he was lucky that rickets and a vitamin deficiency was as bad as it got. His spine had been spared the softening of bones that lead to an unnatural curve, his bent back only stiff with lack of movement. Many children- most, in fact- died in the pit, too young or too stupid or just too weak to understand rationing and movement. If Alrumia had known that he was sleeping in waste of dead boys his own age, he would have been too afraid to think rationally as well.
A needle pricked his skin and plunged deep into his thigh, pushing into muscle and blowing it's load of vitamins inside of him. It didn't hurt yet, though it would ache for days once he could feel it: a second syringe of antibiotics found a vein and twisted into him, burning out the infections in his lungs and skin. The massage continued, reaching between his thighs and into the difficult groin muscles, painting Alrumia with a flush of shame despite assurances that it was strictly professional. His penis grew hard as blood was released to flow again, and he felt tears on the side of his face, though no attention was paid to the infantile arousal. He was turned onto his stomach and his heart skipped a beat in fear: he was naive but not stupid and suspected- but nothing happened but for gentle pressure on his spine as it was shifted and adjusted, painfully aligned and weighed down with warm, heavy stones.
His arms and legs forced straight, back held firmly in place and invasive massage finished, he was covered in a blanket and left to wait, warmed by the stones on his back and a small gas heater in the corner. Before he left, the physician pulled open a curtain on the far wall, allowing a scrap of sunlight into the room: the first Alrumia had seen since being stolen.
It was so beautiful that fresh tears fell, staining the clean white linen he was resting on.