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Description
I have returned. Much to my disgust and anger, I have been brought back to the Hellhole I left behind years ago. For five years I lived a peaceful, happy life away from the scars, both emotional and physical, that this place has brought me.
They drag me into the center of the camp, away from all the "normal" prisoners, I would call them lucky, but luck doesn't exist in a place like this. They push my head down as we pass the main encampment, but I can still see the faces of those kept here.
Pain. Fury. Sorrow. Fear.
That is all that exists in this place.
All that exists to me is my bare cell, away from any contact with the outside world.
Pain. Fury. Sorrow. Fear.

I lay here in the darkness, with food brought only once, for what I assume, is a day. I don't even know how long I've been here. Any guess I could make would be inaccurate.
They are taking me down the blank hallway marked with doors, each with a roman numeral nailed to it. Mine is marked with a V. We've arrived in an equally blank room, with only a single, rusty chair under a lone light bulb. The guard shoves me into the dingy chair and ties a rope so tightly around my chest I can feel it burn underneath my ribcage. The constant buzz of the electric clippers bore their way into my brain as the guard viciously shaves my head down to the skin. For five years my hair was allowed to grow as much as I wanted, but now my bare scalp is once again exposed to the cold of the world around me.

I wish I was given a shirt. Today the ovens are off, a celebration for those who fear burning to death, but I believe the flame would be better than the chemicals. At least I would be warm.
When they issued prisoner garb to me, they claimed they had no shirts that could accommodate my "condition." Bull. I saw plenty of the "normal" prisoners with the same anomaly I have, they had shirts! They had shirts with long sleeves that I would welcome more than anything against the hard, cold walls of my cell.
Well, more than almost everything.

I am amazed I am still alive. The guards hate me more than any of the other prisoners, I can feel it.
I know the only reason I'm still here, going through these little mental monologues is because the general believes I know the whereabouts of my friends. I have no idea really, but they think I'm just being resilient.
If I knew where my friends were, I still wouldn't tell anyone where they were or where they were heading.

Torture was new today. Instead of the usual whippings and gas torture, I am tied to a pole, and other prisoners have to throw rocks at me, or they will be shot.
I feel sorry for them. They are still discovering the pain, the fury, the sorrow, and the fear that compose this Hellhole. They are all new faces, their eyes still containing the glimmer of hope, hope that they will be saved and spared from execution. No one will save us. The only ones capable of doing so are my friends, and I left them on my own free will, so I'm certain they are not looking for me. Even if they are looking, they will not be able to overpower all the soldiers in the camp.
Most of the prisoners are obviously throwing their stones as far away from me as possible. The guards then begin shooting prisoners whose stones are not connecting with my flesh.
The rhythmic beating of stones against my chest continues with a new fervor and is soon accompanied by the occasional crack of my ribcage. The symphony of bruises would perform all over my body for weeks to come.
As the guards pull me down and begin dragging me back to my cell, one of the prisoners from the outside, a mousey kid, says to me "I'm sorry".
The guards beat him to death with their guns.

The ropes around my wrists tighten as the guards hang me from the ceiling. They are preparing for my whipping session, where leather cords lash against my back and all I can do is hang there in silence. Yelling will only provoke them to whip harder.
The attacks begin as soon as both the guards pull out the whips. The crack of studded leather on my bare back begs for a cry of pain, but I restrain myself. The cracks become louder and more excruciating as new wounds are opened over the ancient scars from previous whippings. I think about how my back will never be cleansed of these slashes, how the pain will always be there to remind me of the evils of the world. The slashes that haunt my dreams at night and cause me pain even though they are long healed and the piercing stares normal people give me and the pain flowing through my body like the blood running down my back as the guards cackle over the cracks of the whips and the fury I have in this place and the crack crack crack crack of the whips and the drip drip drip drip of the blood hitting the ground growing louder in myearsIcanttakeitIcanttakeitICANTTAKEITANYMOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRREEEEE!!!!
The cracks go silent I hear silence nothing else just the pain and the fury and the sorrow melding in my head I can't control myself I feel my wing make contact with an object I hear a crack and my own roar of pain and fury and sorrow and fear project from my throat.
…
…
My entire body feels hot from rage and I hang limp in exhaustion. My breath comes in shallow gasps while my lungs and throat burn from fury. I see a guard cautiously approach me through the miasma clouding my eyes. When he sees I am not struggling, he cuts me down and new guards tie the thickest rope I've ever seen around my chest to bind my wings from further lashing.
The rope stays on even in my cell. Before I was only tied during transportation, to prevent any aerial escapes, but now the rope digs into my chest so much each breath sends needles through my lungs.
The worst part is my arms are tied back too, so the little freedoms I had before are gone. No longer can I eat in a somewhat dignified manner and no longer can I relieve myself without soiling my pants.
Nothing ruins an outlook of the world like sitting in a puddle of your own filth, tied up and confined to a tiny little room.
God dammit.

The ropes have still not come off. I know the guards never trusted me, but they knew I was too smart to try and escape in a building full of armed soldiers. It's so much easier to escape on the way to the ovens, less guards and more space to spread my wings. I would know, that's how I got out of this Hellhole the first time.

I want to fly. It has been so long since I had the chance to soar on the updrafts. Makes me think of the first time I took her up with me. I had never seen such joy in her eyes before. I miss those eyes. I miss those blue pools of joy that never failed to cheer me up when they met my fiery rings of red. All I can hope for is I will see her again someday.

I can't help but stare at my chest while lying on the icy ground of room V. Just under my left collarbone, there is a number from my first time in the Hellhole, "63822." I hope that is only an arbitrary number and that I was not, in fact, the sixty-third thousand, eight hundred and twenty-second person to be captured and branded with a number. That would make me fear these men even more, as this number has been on my body for more than eighteen years, since I was born.
The numbers are spread awkwardly apart across my chest, with the "22" looking like a different number as it reaches my shoulder. As I grew from a toddler to a man the letters grew and spread with my suffering.
I remember the first time she saw my number. She asked if she could touch it, because she had never seen a tattoo before. I still remember the warmth on her fingers as she ran them across my chest five years ago.
The Joy.
I miss that warmth.

Love is a funny thing. I find that lately, all I can think about is her. Even during the torture sessions, the starvation, and sitting in my own urine, I find myself thinking of the happy times we shared and how much I long for them.
Oddly enough, the things I miss most about her are the things I hate most about myself, her animal traits.
I have spent my entire life hating my wings, my eyes, my hair, my genes themselves, everything that makes me different from a normal human. But with her, I love everything that makes her different. I love the way her energetic ears perk up when I walk into a room, twitching slightly to catch all the sound waves my feet produce, I love how when we sit and watch a movie, her fox tail curls around my back, but most of all, I love they way she lays across my lap when she wants a backrub. This action is oddly human and animal at the same time, and every time I see it I can accept the fact we are both hybrids hated by humans and forced into hiding, so long as I can be with her.
All I can do is attempt to wipe away my own tears with bound arms.

Today is a cleaning day, I can tell by the gunshots coming from the courtyard. The constant rat-a-tat of the machine guns hangs over the entire camp..
There are only two purposes of cleaning days: 1. To allow the guards to unleash pent-up hostilities directly against the prisoners and 2. Clean out room for a new shipment of victims. I know I am safe, for I am a "special" prisoner and the festivities are only for the "normal" prisoners in the main camp.
The targets of the hostilities are allowed to leave once the day is done. They are escorted by a priest and soldiers who carry them out in wooden boxes.

They are taking away the man in room IV. I can hear his screams long after the guards drag him through the door at the end of the hall.

I miss the man in room IV. He was the closest thing I had to a friend. There is a small crack in the wall between room IV and room V, and sometimes we would lie on our floors and whisper to each other.
He was a tiger, he said. He was some sort of military officer who decided he was tired of hunting his own kind and shipping them to this Hellhole, so his unit betrayed him and brought him to this Hellhole.
All I ever saw of him was his eye, the left one, it was an eerie goldenrod with a slitted pupil. Of course, my eye is no better, blood red iris accented with a slitted pupil of my own. At the sight of my eye the tiger asked me what beast's genes I had. I told him I was a rare breed, a dragon, and he laughed. When I asked him why, the tiger told me a story about how the dragon and the tiger hate each other and are mortal enemies. He found it funny that his only companion in this place was a dragon.
I guess the dragon outlived the tiger though.

The guards are impressed with my good behavior; they untie me for gas torture sessions. The gas is the worst. It enters every pore of my body and chokes me from the inside out. My thoughts always become incoherent once the gas is turned on. I stand in the empty room, as there is not enough room to sit down and await my punishment. My ears pick up the creak of the gas crank, but my coughing soon cancels out any outside noise. My chest heaves with every breath…pain in my chest…ribs…hurt…
...

They haven't found a replacement for the tiger. No traitorous military officials or rare breeds of beast-men have been found lately, I suppose.

Today I am being taken to the general of the camp. He tells me I will be taken out of solitary confinement if I tell him where my friends are. He claims they are meddling in affairs too large for them to understand, but he's wrong. I understand perfectly. My friends are good and anyone who runs a Hellhole like this has to be evil. I know that if the General is specifically calling me back for questioning about my friends that meant they were raising Hell outside of the concrete and barbed wire that had become my residence.
I say I know nothing and the guards lift my arms to drag me back to my little room V.

I can't handle this Hellhole anymore. All I can do is sob for everything in this world I will never know.
I will never know the love of my parents, or who they were, and why they left me in such a Hellhole. I'll never know who made me into a dragon-human hybrid, whatever sick and twisted mind decided to do that to an innocent baby. I'll never know the sound of my friends' voices as they laugh at jokes. I'll never know what it's like to have sex or make love. I'll never know the joy of raising a family. I'll never know the people I could have met, the friends I could have made, the places I could have gone, the wonders of this world that words can't describe.
I'll never know her smile again.
All I know is everything in the world I want comes rushing into my mind as the tears flood down my cheeks and fall lightly on my chest, streaking my number of oppression.
"63822"

The guards are getting worried. They continue hearing rumors about a group of rebels who fight for the rights of beast-men so ferociously that they themselves are nowhere near human. As a guard brings my meal, I give him as intense a glare as I can, baring my fanged teeth and growling as well as my vocal cords allow.
I see fear on a guard's face for the first time.
It feels good.

There is a ruckus on the courtyard. From my windowless cell I hear yelling and gunshots. These are only warning shots though. They are very short and precise compared to the loud, constant stream used on cleaning days.
The door at the end of the hall is kicked open, creating an echo and ushering in new sounds. The guards in the hall are yelling above snarls from what must be a new prisoner. Only the new ones have this much vitality. One of the guards opens the door to room IV, while two others shove the newcomer in. At least, I think it was two. It's hard to tell by sound alone.
One of the guards complains of how he was bit and the new occupant of room IV better not be diseased. The guards leave the Forsaken Hallway to the continuous growling of my new neighbor.
The growls fade to whimpers which fade to silence.
I ask who they are, from my position near the cracked wall, in a voice that has been used too little for too long. Even I can hardly recognize my voice.
I hear a shuffling as the person in room IV looks for my voice, then they look into the hole and all I see is an eye of deep blue.
The Pain. The Fury. The Sorrow. The Fear.

Description
I have returned. Much to my disgust and anger, I have been brought back to the Hellhole I left behind years ago. For five years I lived a peaceful, happy life away from the scars, both emotional and physical, that this place has brought me.
They drag me into the center of the camp, away from all the "normal" prisoners, I would call them lucky, but luck doesn't exist in a place like this. They push my head down as we pass the main encampment, but I can still see the faces of those kept here.
Pain. Fury. Sorrow. Fear.
That is all that exists in this place.
All that exists to me is my bare cell, away from any contact with the outside world.
Pain. Fury. Sorrow. Fear.

I lay here in the darkness, with food brought only once, for what I assume, is a day. I don't even know how long I've been here. Any guess I could make would be inaccurate.
They are taking me down the blank hallway marked with doors, each with a roman numeral nailed to it. Mine is marked with a V. We've arrived in an equally blank room, with only a single, rusty chair under a lone light bulb. The guard shoves me into the dingy chair and ties a rope so tightly around my chest I can feel it burn underneath my ribcage. The constant buzz of the electric clippers bore their way into my brain as the guard viciously shaves my head down to the skin. For five years my hair was allowed to grow as much as I wanted, but now my bare scalp is once again exposed to the cold of the world around me.

I wish I was given a shirt. Today the ovens are off, a celebration for those who fear burning to death, but I believe the flame would be better than the chemicals. At least I would be warm.
When they issued prisoner garb to me, they claimed they had no shirts that could accommodate my "condition." Bull. I saw plenty of the "normal" prisoners with the same anomaly I have, they had shirts! They had shirts with long sleeves that I would welcome more than anything against the hard, cold walls of my cell.
Well, more than almost everything.

I am amazed I am still alive. The guards hate me more than any of the other prisoners, I can feel it.
I know the only reason I'm still here, going through these little mental monologues is because the general believes I know the whereabouts of my friends. I have no idea really, but they think I'm just being resilient.
If I knew where my friends were, I still wouldn't tell anyone where they were or where they were heading.

Torture was new today. Instead of the usual whippings and gas torture, I am tied to a pole, and other prisoners have to throw rocks at me, or they will be shot.
I feel sorry for them. They are still discovering the pain, the fury, the sorrow, and the fear that compose this Hellhole. They are all new faces, their eyes still containing the glimmer of hope, hope that they will be saved and spared from execution. No one will save us. The only ones capable of doing so are my friends, and I left them on my own free will, so I'm certain they are not looking for me. Even if they are looking, they will not be able to overpower all the soldiers in the camp.
Most of the prisoners are obviously throwing their stones as far away from me as possible. The guards then begin shooting prisoners whose stones are not connecting with my flesh.
The rhythmic beating of stones against my chest continues with a new fervor and is soon accompanied by the occasional crack of my ribcage. The symphony of bruises would perform all over my body for weeks to come.
As the guards pull me down and begin dragging me back to my cell, one of the prisoners from the outside, a mousey kid, says to me "I'm sorry".
The guards beat him to death with their guns.

The ropes around my wrists tighten as the guards hang me from the ceiling. They are preparing for my whipping session, where leather cords lash against my back and all I can do is hang there in silence. Yelling will only provoke them to whip harder.
The attacks begin as soon as both the guards pull out the whips. The crack of studded leather on my bare back begs for a cry of pain, but I restrain myself. The cracks become louder and more excruciating as new wounds are opened over the ancient scars from previous whippings. I think about how my back will never be cleansed of these slashes, how the pain will always be there to remind me of the evils of the world. The slashes that haunt my dreams at night and cause me pain even though they are long healed and the piercing stares normal people give me and the pain flowing through my body like the blood running down my back as the guards cackle over the cracks of the whips and the fury I have in this place and the crack crack crack crack of the whips and the drip drip drip drip of the blood hitting the ground growing louder in myearsIcanttakeitIcanttakeitICANTTAKEITANYMOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRREEEEE!!!!
The cracks go silent I hear silence nothing else just the pain and the fury and the sorrow melding in my head I can't control myself I feel my wing make contact with an object I hear a crack and my own roar of pain and fury and sorrow and fear project from my throat.
…
…
My entire body feels hot from rage and I hang limp in exhaustion. My breath comes in shallow gasps while my lungs and throat burn from fury. I see a guard cautiously approach me through the miasma clouding my eyes. When he sees I am not struggling, he cuts me down and new guards tie the thickest rope I've ever seen around my chest to bind my wings from further lashing.
The rope stays on even in my cell. Before I was only tied during transportation, to prevent any aerial escapes, but now the rope digs into my chest so much each breath sends needles through my lungs.
The worst part is my arms are tied back too, so the little freedoms I had before are gone. No longer can I eat in a somewhat dignified manner and no longer can I relieve myself without soiling my pants.
Nothing ruins an outlook of the world like sitting in a puddle of your own filth, tied up and confined to a tiny little room.
God dammit.

The ropes have still not come off. I know the guards never trusted me, but they knew I was too smart to try and escape in a building full of armed soldiers. It's so much easier to escape on the way to the ovens, less guards and more space to spread my wings. I would know, that's how I got out of this Hellhole the first time.

I want to fly. It has been so long since I had the chance to soar on the updrafts. Makes me think of the first time I took her up with me. I had never seen such joy in her eyes before. I miss those eyes. I miss those blue pools of joy that never failed to cheer me up when they met my fiery rings of red. All I can hope for is I will see her again someday.

I can't help but stare at my chest while lying on the icy ground of room V. Just under my left collarbone, there is a number from my first time in the Hellhole, "63822." I hope that is only an arbitrary number and that I was not, in fact, the sixty-third thousand, eight hundred and twenty-second person to be captured and branded with a number. That would make me fear these men even more, as this number has been on my body for more than eighteen years, since I was born.
The numbers are spread awkwardly apart across my chest, with the "22" looking like a different number as it reaches my shoulder. As I grew from a toddler to a man the letters grew and spread with my suffering.
I remember the first time she saw my number. She asked if she could touch it, because she had never seen a tattoo before. I still remember the warmth on her fingers as she ran them across my chest five years ago.
The Joy.
I miss that warmth.

Love is a funny thing. I find that lately, all I can think about is her. Even during the torture sessions, the starvation, and sitting in my own urine, I find myself thinking of the happy times we shared and how much I long for them.
Oddly enough, the things I miss most about her are the things I hate most about myself, her animal traits.
I have spent my entire life hating my wings, my eyes, my hair, my genes themselves, everything that makes me different from a normal human. But with her, I love everything that makes her different. I love the way her energetic ears perk up when I walk into a room, twitching slightly to catch all the sound waves my feet produce, I love how when we sit and watch a movie, her fox tail curls around my back, but most of all, I love they way she lays across my lap when she wants a backrub. This action is oddly human and animal at the same time, and every time I see it I can accept the fact we are both hybrids hated by humans and forced into hiding, so long as I can be with her.
All I can do is attempt to wipe away my own tears with bound arms.

Today is a cleaning day, I can tell by the gunshots coming from the courtyard. The constant rat-a-tat of the machine guns hangs over the entire camp..
There are only two purposes of cleaning days: 1. To allow the guards to unleash pent-up hostilities directly against the prisoners and 2. Clean out room for a new shipment of victims. I know I am safe, for I am a "special" prisoner and the festivities are only for the "normal" prisoners in the main camp.
The targets of the hostilities are allowed to leave once the day is done. They are escorted by a priest and soldiers who carry them out in wooden boxes.

They are taking away the man in room IV. I can hear his screams long after the guards drag him through the door at the end of the hall.

I miss the man in room IV. He was the closest thing I had to a friend. There is a small crack in the wall between room IV and room V, and sometimes we would lie on our floors and whisper to each other.
He was a tiger, he said. He was some sort of military officer who decided he was tired of hunting his own kind and shipping them to this Hellhole, so his unit betrayed him and brought him to this Hellhole.
All I ever saw of him was his eye, the left one, it was an eerie goldenrod with a slitted pupil. Of course, my eye is no better, blood red iris accented with a slitted pupil of my own. At the sight of my eye the tiger asked me what beast's genes I had. I told him I was a rare breed, a dragon, and he laughed. When I asked him why, the tiger told me a story about how the dragon and the tiger hate each other and are mortal enemies. He found it funny that his only companion in this place was a dragon.
I guess the dragon outlived the tiger though.

The guards are impressed with my good behavior; they untie me for gas torture sessions. The gas is the worst. It enters every pore of my body and chokes me from the inside out. My thoughts always become incoherent once the gas is turned on. I stand in the empty room, as there is not enough room to sit down and await my punishment. My ears pick up the creak of the gas crank, but my coughing soon cancels out any outside noise. My chest heaves with every breath…pain in my chest…ribs…hurt…
...

They haven't found a replacement for the tiger. No traitorous military officials or rare breeds of beast-men have been found lately, I suppose.

Today I am being taken to the general of the camp. He tells me I will be taken out of solitary confinement if I tell him where my friends are. He claims they are meddling in affairs too large for them to understand, but he's wrong. I understand perfectly. My friends are good and anyone who runs a Hellhole like this has to be evil. I know that if the General is specifically calling me back for questioning about my friends that meant they were raising Hell outside of the concrete and barbed wire that had become my residence.
I say I know nothing and the guards lift my arms to drag me back to my little room V.

I can't handle this Hellhole anymore. All I can do is sob for everything in this world I will never know.
I will never know the love of my parents, or who they were, and why they left me in such a Hellhole. I'll never know who made me into a dragon-human hybrid, whatever sick and twisted mind decided to do that to an innocent baby. I'll never know the sound of my friends' voices as they laugh at jokes. I'll never know what it's like to have sex or make love. I'll never know the joy of raising a family. I'll never know the people I could have met, the friends I could have made, the places I could have gone, the wonders of this world that words can't describe.
I'll never know her smile again.
All I know is everything in the world I want comes rushing into my mind as the tears flood down my cheeks and fall lightly on my chest, streaking my number of oppression.
"63822"

The guards are getting worried. They continue hearing rumors about a group of rebels who fight for the rights of beast-men so ferociously that they themselves are nowhere near human. As a guard brings my meal, I give him as intense a glare as I can, baring my fanged teeth and growling as well as my vocal cords allow.
I see fear on a guard's face for the first time.
It feels good.

There is a ruckus on the courtyard. From my windowless cell I hear yelling and gunshots. These are only warning shots though. They are very short and precise compared to the loud, constant stream used on cleaning days.
The door at the end of the hall is kicked open, creating an echo and ushering in new sounds. The guards in the hall are yelling above snarls from what must be a new prisoner. Only the new ones have this much vitality. One of the guards opens the door to room IV, while two others shove the newcomer in. At least, I think it was two. It's hard to tell by sound alone.
One of the guards complains of how he was bit and the new occupant of room IV better not be diseased. The guards leave the Forsaken Hallway to the continuous growling of my new neighbor.
The growls fade to whimpers which fade to silence.
I ask who they are, from my position near the cracked wall, in a voice that has been used too little for too long. Even I can hardly recognize my voice.
I hear a shuffling as the person in room IV looks for my voice, then they look into the hole and all I see is an eye of deep blue.
The Pain. The Fury. The Sorrow. The Fear.