I woke with pain in my stomach. There was still nothing to eat.
The caged occupant's haunting word echoed in my mind: "Food," as he offered his handless wrist.
The memory made me cringe, but my eyes drifted to my own hand and wrist.
No. I wasn't that hungry. Not yet. I prayed to any gods listening that I'd never reach that point.
I had to eat soon and find water while I was at it.
The room I was in wasn't a room; it was a long hallway that grew narrow at both ends. The chain I had climbed came from the hole in the floor, looped through a pulley, and then around a giant spool connected with a control panel next to it. Small recesses on the walls held strange torches in metal brackets. Some of the torches emitted faint, flameless light.
The cage would have never fit through that hole. I wondered how it was loaded and unloaded… and remembered that odd stone half-bridge I had thought about jumping to. There had to be more halls or rooms below. Was that the way out?
I reached for one of the torches. The moment my skin brushed its surface, flame burst out.
Startled, I stumbled back. But it hadn't burned me. There was no heat, no smoke - just a flicker, dancing light that mimicked fire.
Tentatively, I touched it again. The flame disappeared, leaving behind only a faint glow. Was that intentional? A defect?
I wanted it.
Pulling, pushing, turning, twisting… nothing worked. Removing the torch was impossible without damaging the wall, the bracket, or the torch.
I chose the bracket and tried to bend it.
There was a distant rumbling.
The bracket bent, and I pulled the torch free.
Hunger gnawed at me, a raw, primal ache.
My vision blurred, and before I realized it, the torch was in my mouth. My teeth scraped against its surface, and I licked it, desperate for something, anything to ease the pangs. It tasted of pine, chemicals, dust, and old ash-utterly inedible.
I tapped the torch against my palm. The light brightened. Another tap, and it dimmed. The faint glow felt comforting. With a weapon and a light source, I was ready to move.
Left or right?
I turned left and started walking. Why left? I didn't know.
The tunnel stretched on, lined with dim torches spaced every few arm spans. They barely lit the way, but it was enough for me to see by.
As I walked down the tunnel, it never narrowed… or it always narrowed up ahead. It wasn't narrowing; it was curving slowly to my left. The curve was almost imperceptible, except over a considerable distance. Was this tunnel a giant circle?
I hoped not. I wanted out of this cursed place.
A grumble from my stomach made my body shudder in agreement.
I spotted a hallway branching off to the right. It was wide and tall, its arch dwarfing me. This place wasn't built for someone my size.
As I neared the hallway, a faint skittering reached my ears.
I poked my head around the corner. A rat darted into a nearby doorway.
Food?!?
My body surged forward, sprinting down the hallway and into the doorway. The door shattered under our weight, the musty air inside heavy with mildew.
Two rats were amidst the wreckage, their fur a matted black and brown mess. They were large and fat. Their red eyes stared at me, and one let out a hiss.
Before I could think, my body lunged.
My body grabbed them both and tried shoving one in my mouth.
It twisted, trying to get free.
My teeth sank into its hind leg, clamping on. Blood filled my mouth, delicious blood.
The rat clawed and bit at my face while the other tore into my arm, ripping a chunk of flesh. Pain flared, but it wasn't enough to stop my body.
We sucked on the blood, wanting more. My body hurled the other against the far wall, then used both hands to tear apart the rat we fed on.
I reeled in disgust, but I couldn't stop my body.
My hunger had taken control.
We devoured the rat, bones, and all. It wasn't enough.
The second rat lay where it had fallen, twitching weakly. Its hind legs were limp. My body pounced.
We tore into it, pausing only to spit out bits of fur and bone. The hunger dulled, but it still lingered, gnawing at the edges of my mind.
The hunger was still there, and my body searched for more rats.
The hunger wasn't... as in control.
Together, we searched - my body for food and me for anything else.
The shelves were empty. Old barrels and discarded grain sacks lay in the corners, alongside piles of rat droppings. Nothing edible.
My hunger no longer drove me. Mild satiation settled in, though it felt strange—wrong, even.
I thought briefly about stopping and resting, but I didn't like the idea of doing so on what I had decided was rat droppings. They were everywhere in the room, even the highest shelves.
I left the room and retrieved my torch from the hallway floor. When had I dropped it?
The hunger was dangerous. It wasn't just a need; it was a force, something that could wrest control from me.
I continued down the hall, finding storerooms stripped bare. The rats had been here first.
Using some frayed rope and grain sacks, I fashioned a crude backpack to carry my torch.
The hallway opened into a massive room filled with tables and countless stools. Dust coated everything. A wide rat trail led to a crack beneath a windowed counter. Cobwebs clung to the walls, thick with thumb-sized spiders. My body dismissed them; they weren't food. I brushed them aside.
I climbed through the window into an unused kitchen. Beside a stove, barrels of liquid and piles of split wood gave off a sour, rotting stench.
Turning a faucet, brackish sludge poured out.
Desperate, I drank.
The taste made me gag, and I spat it out.
Leaving the water running, I searched the kitchen. I found a wire-handled spring, two pots - one large and one small, and behind one of the stoves, a tarnished cleaver that was small, a bit too small for my hand.
As there was nothing else of value, I returned to the water. It was running clear. I filled the small pot and used it to sip the water. The water smelled and tasted clean and refreshing.
I drank my fill of it.
As I rested, questions surfaced. What was this place? Where were all the people? Why had it been abandoned?
But then I recalled the voices I heard while nearing the top of the chain. And the occupants of the cages had not died of dehydration and hunger.
The memory of the creature holding out its stump and saying, "Food" haunted me. How long had it gone without to have been so desperate? How close had I come to being that desperate and to becoming him?
With a shudder, I decided to move on.
The door from the kitchen led into another hallway with more doors.
Behind these doors were bedrooms, though each had several narrow bunk beds and some empty shelves. Though there were cobwebs, there were no spiders.
A couple of the rooms contained benches with large holes through them and the floor beneath. The webs here were the thickest yet, but there were still no spiders.
The place must have housed dozens or even hundreds of people.
Near the end of my search, I found a pair of abandoned blankets made of rough course hair and added them to my pack.
Everything about this place felt off; the layout was all wrong.
Why didn't the storerooms open directly into the kitchen? If the place had to be defended, the storerooms would have been the first thing to be lost, and they would have been the most important thing to defend.
Okay, the people were also important, but people without food were prisoners in the making. I should know!
It was like this place had been made for one purpose and then remade to accommodate another. Even so, why not switch the storerooms with the same number of bedrooms? That should have been easy to do. So why hadn't they?
I returned to the toilets to look at the holes. They didn't smell; they hadn't been used in a long time. I could hear something… the trickling of water? I somehow knew these holes could lead to sewers or secret treasures. Even if I didn't have other ways to go, I wouldn't have fit down such a tiny hole.
Back to the dining hall.
Another distance rumbling could be heard, but the floors and walls didn't shake.
I had other things to worry about… a living whisper drew my eyes to a living carpet of spiders crawling towards me.
Realization sank in. Hundreds of glassy black eyes glinted in the light as the furry carpet of legs surrounded me. They had me trapped.
I had to fight my way through or die trying.
My heart quickened, the pounding filling my ears.
My body let out a roar, letting me know I wasn't alone.