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We snap and snarl at our captors like savage, starving dogs. Perhaps it's wrong to say 'like', often that's what we are. Distended stomachs and sunken ribs, spittle slinging from lips hoping for a taste or treat.
Lips pulled back over yellowed porcelain teeth, pointed and purposeful.
Bared.
Pink, swollen gums showing the quality of life, blackened with decay. Lolling tongues lazily flopping out and dragging through the dirt as we pull against our chains, trying to get closer to a prey we don't recognize.
But blood that we can smell, trembling underneath its skin.
Muscles pumping, legs jumping towards the crimson liquid so clearly in our sight. Bodies snapped back as they reach the end of the chains around their necks, their arms. We all bear the scars. Our necks rubbed raw and pink, jagged stars of scars ring our throats. Our wrists fare no better, tearing open scabs every time we move, bringing a familiar, bitter taste of iron to our tongues as we try to do the simplest tasks.
Rising from sleep.
But we still jerk against the iron, our voices have long lost their penchant for speech. The clasps around our necks has rubbed away the feeling and the memory. Instead we growl. We spit, phlegm flying in beautiful arcs towards no one in particular. We break out necks and gag as we run our chains short, hoping for the rusted bolts securing us to the bricks gives way and we can tear into the flesh with our long, muddy fingernails.
In a past lifetime I learned the rules of domestication. Hundreds of years to turn a savage creature into trusting cattle.
It's amazing how quickly the reverse works. Turning rationality into humiliated, diseased freaks seems so simple. And we are nothing but animals now. I know because the voice on the end of the leather wrapped crop tells me so.
And even knowing this we still spit and piss and fuck and lick each others wounds. The horror glazed over the new eyes shows brightly when the sun tilts past and sheds light on the clumps of ragged hair and skin that fight against the chains all through the day.
For all our fight, we still bow our heads to our bowls, placed just out of reach. We choke ourselves, on knees only, our arms pulled taught by the chains. The collars around our necks allowing us only the smallest bit of room for the clumps of mush and fetid meat to slide down to our churning stomachs. We dig our toes in to the grooves in the floor, suspending ourselves outright, tongues lolling like ribbons from ropes on a windy day, trying to get more.
The screams and howls start shortly after, intestines cramping, twisting, exploding. The grim rays of light shine down through the solitary port above us, and trails along the cracks in the floor, showing the gray-yellow liquid of our own animal existence run towards the drain.
Now and then there's a red tint, not always of our own, and we lower our cracked lips to the warm surface of the stone and suck the life of another deep into our bodies.
The crops can't even stop us now.
We lunge still, never learning our lesson.
Our throats break and our wrists snap.
And our teeth hit the floor, cracking, shards flying out from under us. The smell flies up.
And we begin to rub our faces against the stone. Sharpening them as we have our rage. Screams of pain, anger, purpose echo out. And those blue eyes in front of us continue to stare. And that warm, pure crimson continues to trace through the veins.
Waiting for the first tooth to open them up like faucets.

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