"X is for Xerexs devoured by mice"
One would never want to know what it feels like on the lower end of the society class, of the ones where the person is a servant for life, or just a slave to who is there owner, to do one's bidding until death creeps upon them slowly in greeting. When seeing someone like Xerexs, just wanting to live, but that doesn't mean it can come easy to hold. Never really, keeping in mind of the time theme theory where the children rest in, child labor laws didn't come until much later. Xerexs never saw those to come to save him.
Sold over and over, very much all but anything forgot who were his parents, lost thinking if he had any other siblings suffering just as he was. To now, for him it is all about surviving from his own torment. Place somewhere deep away from the bright world, in a place that at glance could be a dungeon, lost forever in the darkness. Xerexs only able to keep his sanity together, with any sound that at first could be heard as ghastly, but after a while it could be convivial.
There could be at times, where Xerexs will just grip the walls to hold them dear, as it is his own tightrope to stay standing. Rough and cold it could be at the touch, but a sign of good altogether. The noises could get louder and closer, might break him, but his will stays strong.
Again, this boy has to choose between two things in his life, which at this moment is all he has. Being a slave or die, that's all it matters now. For his choice now is being a beaten down slave, is better than not living at all. Xerexs knows that sounds grim, no changing that for the better, it is what it is, and again he reception it.
The sounds could continue to grow, louder every inch closer to him, and Xerexs does what he can to ignore it. Becoming a young adult soon, that is something to look forward to, and nothing could take it away. Though, the sounds grow more, he'll hold the walls as his safety blanket. Unknowing as his slowly decay of nutriments, his dying body is just a feast for whatever lives with him in that cell.
While the noise grows, the squeaking is nothing but a white sound buzz. All Xerxes does just hug the wall, eyes looking forward with a brave face, waiting for it to come. Just like the whips and mistreating, he doesn't scream. Remembering he doesn't want to die, but he didn't want to die by his master's hands, in a way this death is his choice.
To that choice of death for himself, Xerexs welcomes it, and for once happy.