As Nathan walked weakly out of the mine, watching the bleeding wound on the back of the hunchback who could barely stand, an orange light temporarily blinded him. When his eyes adjusted, he began to get his bearings. He looked back and saw a dark, mossy rock and a hole—that was where he had come from. Above the hole, the number 9 was carved into the wall.
"I really was thrown into the death mine, just my luck." As he remembered that this mine was indeed where useless slaves were discarded, he felt a tug on his leg from the chains. The hunchback didn't stop to admire the view and kept walking while Nathan was looking around.
With the sudden pull of the chains and a slight bump from the person behind him, he slipped on the mossy ground and fell abruptly. He hit his forehead hard against the floor, and deep pain arrived alongside dizziness and disorientation. But before he could even raise his hand to his forehead, the air hissed, and with it, a piece of his flesh tore open, bringing a pain that words could not describe.
"Aagh." A murmur of pain choked with saliva—perhaps a plea for help?
"Look at that, the little fish can't even walk straight. I think I should take you to that river and throw you headfirst onto the rocks to see if you can do anything right," said the overseer to the young boy, who struggled not to scream and further provoke this sadist with strange fetishes.
Gasping in pain, he pushed himself up from the ground using his knees. Without thinking twice, he continued dragging himself behind the hunchback. He remembered from the memories in his head that the overseer liked to pick on him, so he didn't want to give him the opportunity to cause even more pain.
Seeing that the boy didn't pay him much attention, he furrowed his brow and prepared to deliver another lash to the boy's back. Just then, he heard the sound of someone slipping. He turned and saw another man fallen, sliding on the moss, and soon that damned smile that would send shivers down any sane man's spine returned as the whip swirled and landed on another slave who gasped in pain.
Nathan, unaware of his luck, kept struggling to drag himself along, no longer thinking about observing his surroundings. The pain burning his back was so strong he could barely breathe, let alone look around.
Looking at the ground and dragging himself, he only stopped when his face was so close to the blood still on the hunchback's back that the smell invaded his nostrils, making him nauseous as he stared at that patch of open flesh amidst the rags the man wore. With a quick glance, he realized he was in front of a wooden shack, an old cabin that could barely stay standing; likely, in a storm, it would collapse and kill someone.
The line moved slowly, and the sound of something being unlocked was heard from time to time. As he got closer to the door, he saw that everyone was being unchained to enter the shack. He momentarily wondered why they went to the trouble of unchaining slaves, or why they didn't keep mining until nightfall, since it appeared to be only around dusk.
In his memory, he only recalled that no one stayed late in the mines and that they were always released at sleeping time, yet no one tried to escape. It was a basic rule everyone followed without thinking, which caused him some puzzlement. He continued dragging himself until it was his turn to have the chains on his feet released.
A young man, who also appeared to be a slave judging by his clothes, unchained everyone one by one and pulled the chains to the side. The youth was around 16 years old, thin, white, and with ugly features on his face, but despite this, he was better fed than all the slaves Nathan had seen so far.
He remembered him: Jeremiah. He was the son of an overseer who had impregnated a slave. He was between two worlds—neither free nor a mine slave. He had his chores, but they weren't exhausting or inhumane. In short, he was like a watchdog slave who alerted the other overseers to any trouble a slave might cause.
Jeremiah looked at all the other slaves with a gaze of disgust and displeasure, as if the simple fact of seeing them reminded him of his origin—something that sentenced him to be what he was, having to obey others, not suffering as much but still unable to have the freedom he so dreamed of.
Nathan knew he shouldn't look at Jeremiah's face, since he hated the other slaves, so he simply looked at the chains on his feet being unlocked and continued walking without even blinking. But without realizing it, this caused Jeremiah some surprise.
"This little fish didn't start trembling when I took off his chains; what happened?" Upon looking at the child's back, he noticed the wound from a whip and thought, "He probably can't even think because of the pain. Tsk, that took away my nightly entertainment."
Nathan continued entering the shack and, following his memories, headed to a specific corner he remembered as his sleeping spot. Unfortunately, it was near the latrines, which exhaled a putrid smell; it was where the slaves relieved themselves during the time they were there. Being the smallest and one of the weakest, he had been thrown by the other slaves into that corner with others who weren't good for much.
It was simply unlivable to exist there, smelling that scent, eating and drinking in that place. It was something that shouldn't be allowed for any human being.
Thinking about this, he missed his old life. Was he mediocre and poor? Yes! But he could go to the bathroom twice during his shift and had an afternoon snack with juice that tasted dubious. He was a shelf stocker in a large supermarket, working every day just to pay the rent for the studio apartment where he lived.
Did he have family, friends, a girlfriend? No. He didn't even get looks of disgust from women; he was invisible. He left home early at 15 because his mother, who was a prostitute, didn't want him getting in the way of serving "clients." He didn't know who his father was, much less if he had any other relatives.
He managed jobs as a shoeshine boy and sold candy until he turned 18 and got the job at the market, which, despite being terrible and exploitative, still allowed him to dream of a future where he could have something.
While he daydreamed about his past, which was now nothing more than an aimless kite in his mind, he heard the sound of someone entering the shack carrying something. It was other slaves, who apparently, judging by their clothes and weight, worked in the kitchen. They brought with them a large pot that was their dinner.
A soup resembling pig swill with dry, black bread that looked more like dirt and was only edible if soaked in that "soup" in the pot. Soon, all the slaves lined up. The strongest, who weren't many, were the first, down to the children and the elderly without strength. One thing was that there were no women; they were kept separate in other pavilions so there would be no reproduction among lowly beings like these rotten slaves.
Nathan was among the last, and as he walked, he remembered that there was hardly ever much left for him; it was an amount that barely kept him standing during the grueling day that would follow. Upon reaching his turn, a pungent smell came from the pot; he took what seemed to be a bowl and held it out to the "cooks."
They ladled out a half-portion of soup and gave him a piece of bread that wouldn't even fill a child's stomach. He headed near the bathroom and sat down to eat. He had only one thought: swallow what he could before someone came to steal what he had.
It was a common occurrence; he was small, new, and alone, so obviously someone would try to take advantage of him, and that was what happened until he developed a not-so-orthodox "technique": he went to the latrine and ate there, with that repugnant smell rising from the hole in the ground. Sitting near the wall, the unendurable environment he was in made his stomach turn, but remembering his hunger, a solitary tear ran down his face, and he began to prepare his food.
Based on his memories, he put the bread in the soup and tried to dilute and break it apart little by little to eat it more easily. After punching the bread in the bowl a few times, he started to scoop that paste with his hands and put it in his mouth. Even with the soup, the pieces of bread were still difficult to chew and gave the sensation of tearing his throat as they went down.
After the intense and arduous task of managing to eat, he took himself near the pot, placed the bowl on the table, and returned to his corner. Upon sitting down, he realized he was still hungry—less than before, but hungry. And to make matters worse, the pain in his back was increasing more and more.
"Damn, if I don't clean this shit, it will definitely get infected. I don't even want to think about how I'll end up." He looked around and searched for something he could use to clean it, be it leaves, water, or even old clothes that could remove the excess old blood.
While he was looking, the old man who previously calmed the children in the mine approached him, and with a hoarse voice, told him, "Turn your back; let me evaluate your new mark." Without giving him much time to decide, the old man crouched down, turned Nathan's back to him, and lifted his ragged shirt.
"Tsk, that unhinged man takes it out on us simply because he was demoted to Mine 9. Who told that sicko to kill slaves useful to the lord?" The old man said while pulling some leaves from a pocket sewn inside his clothes and using them to wipe the drying blood on Nathan's back.
After cleaning it with the leaves and applying something that looked like a shrub with twigs to the wound, he spoke: "Pay more attention when walking. Don't get hurt any more times, because our stock of leaves is running out." He stood up, went to the next injured slave, and began to treat him.
The old man was called White, for the tangle of white strands on his head that were once hair. He was the closest thing to a leader in that shack; he was the oldest and one of the few who had survived for a long time as a slave. He somehow knew about natural medicines and treated wounds with leaves that only he knew where to find.