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When you spend every waking breath of your life inhaling noxious fumes that probably should have killed you years ago, it's hard not to think about the world in degrees of evil. Toxic smoke leads to toxic thoughts, I guess. It doesn't help when the world you live in is one big self-contained cesspool of criminals and murderers. But if you think there's a distinction between us and the people who ran the place, you'd be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Nobody told Nola or me how long we'd been there. We were about thirteen, as best anyone could (or would) tell. Our earliest waking memories were of a Lepid woman who never called us her children, but we figured out pretty quickly was our mother. Leastways, we called her "Mom" and she didn't correct us. We were six when they tossed her into the Maw--the Lumps had overtaken her and she wouldn't stop screaming from the pain. The guards just wanted to shut her up.

If the Pit was a creature, the Maw would be its mouth. For the broken-bodied denizens of the Pit, our days were filled with hours of toil, throwing a pick into the craggy walls of the Maw on rickety scaffolding. We worked in two-hour shifts, because any longer than that and the noxious fumes that constantly bubbled up from the Maw killed us outright. Two hours in, one hour breathing, four hours breaking boulders in the rock pile south of the Maw. Eat whatever sad excuse for food the Scrofa give us. Repeat. Ten hours of rest. How generous.

The tusk-faced Scrofa may have run the operations on the ground, but they didn't run the Pit. I'd seen the Warden six times in my life; he almost never came out of the Spike, the ugly slate tower that loomed over everything on the east end of the Pit. Every time I saw him, the Scrofa shoved us into a rough line, and the Warden would descend in his garish yellow pantaloons and puffed shoulder pads, his thinning muzzle fur oiled to a point that curled at the sides, and his green eyes dull with some recreational drug or other.

The Warden was a Lupus because of fucking course he was, shockingly corpulent for a Wolf but also abnormally tall. He looked like a hideous yellow giant, trailed at all times by half a dozen Scrofa wearing splint mail and carrying halberds of vastly better quality than the guards on the ground. Their porcine snouts seemed to turn up at absolutely everyone, even the other Scrofa. I often thought about what it would be like to punch them in the mouth. The thought always gave me a warm feeling.

Every time the Warden came down to inspect us, he would find one prisoner and take them with him to the Spike, never to be seen again. Species didn't seem to matter to him, nor gender--he took a Lupus girl the first time, a Saurian boy the second, three other Lepids after that, and finally a little Vulpin girl. The only thing that seemed to matter was age: he was willing to take them as old as fifteen, but he preferred them young.

Rumors abound as to what the Warden did with them. You can probably guess.

Nola asked me once what I would do if the Warden took me. "He'd probably make you kiss him," she whispered with unapprehended horror. I think we were eight at the time, and that was the most shocking thing she could think of, despite the fact that we'd already witnessed prisoners raped by other prisoners twice in our lives. I guess her young brain was trying to hold onto innocence however it could.

I blushed furiously at her words. I had more of an idea of what the Warden would want from me than my sister realized, but she didn't need to know that. "If he does," I promised her, "I'll bite his lips off."

Nola giggled. "No you won't, Leon."

I argued vehemently on the point, but let's be a hundred percent clear. My sister knew me better than I knew myself. Always had, always would.

Most people who come to the Pit die here, and while it usually takes longer than you might think, spending your days working next to or inside of a toxin-spewing chasm, the Lumps always came eventually. They showed up around the mouth first, pebbling the lips with little bumps. A couple months later, lumps showed up under the armpits or on the side of the neck just behind the jaw. Soon you were coughing up blood, and then you just... died.

That's how Mom went. Or whoever that woman was that I remembered. She didn't have ears like Nola and me; ours are kind of short for Lepids, and perky. Hers were long and drooped down the sides of her head like a sad mane. She had patchy gray fur and cracked yellow incisors. I don't recall her voice, but I sure as hell recall her eyes. They were a color of gold that anyone from the outside world would probably think of as "tarnished," but in this abysmal gray shithole, they were like twin suns. By the time Nola and I were old enough to remember much, those tarnished gold eyes were a dead, sickly yellow, staring up into the perpetual gray sky above the Pit. There were Lumps all over her ears, and one big one between her nose and left eye that swelled her eyelid partially shut. But she still had those burning gold eyes. Right up until her last days, when they turned a dead, sickly yellow as cataracts began to form over them. I remember watching her eyes as two Scrofa tossed her, screaming in agony, into the roiling darkness of the Maw. They stared at the sky the whole time, as if she saw some great doom descending from the heavens, some hellish wrath from the old gods coming to wipe us all out. I remember feeling disappointed when she vanished into the Maw and her screams trailed off into the darkness without the world ending. Not so much as a rumble from the clouds overhead.

The longest I ever heard of anyone lasting was six years. By the time Nola and I turned thirteen, there was still no sign of Lumps on us. It baffled the other prisoners, but thankfully the guards took no notice. The Scrofa didn't take notice unless we broke the rules, of which there were two: no killing other prisoners, and no stopping work during work hours. The second got you a beating, the first got you thrown bodily into the Maw. Anything else, they didn't care. They actually encouraged rape among the prisoners because the children could be sold on the slave market. Savvy businessmen, those guards.

The last time the Warden came down from the Spike was six weeks ago. He came down the line of soot-stained prisoners, inspecting teeth, gums, armpits and genitals, searching for signs of Lumps. When he reached me, his cloudy eyes sharpened momentarily. He inspected my gums and armpits, then unabashedly began rubbing my flaccid cock. "Name," he said coldly.

I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. "L-Leon Hart," I muttered. Despite my best efforts, I felt blood rush south, too. I was no stranger to erections, but lately, they'd become more... er... interesting to me. Apparently to the Warden, too.

He kept stroking up and down, surprisingly gentle, as my erection stiffened, but his eyes never left mine. "Ejaculation?" I shook my head vigorously. I'd seen grownups ejaculate plenty of times; sex and masturbation were one of the few stress-relieving activities the prisoners had, really. No games to speak of, and we were usually too tired for anything else, but hey. Who doesn't make time for some fucking, right?

The Warden stared at me for several long seconds. This is it, I thought miserably. He's going to take me and I'll never see Nola again.

But after two long, excruciating minutes of him slowly massaging my dick, he seemed to lose interest in me and moved to my sister. She stood with an unnatural stillness, a holdover from our peoples' feral days before the Awakening--prey in the presence of a predator. Don't move and maybe it won't notice you.

Oh, but the Warden noticed. He prodded her gums and armpits, then moved to her genitals, spreading her labia and pushing one clawed finger into her hole. She whimpered a little, but even though that claw had to hurt, she didn't cry. Nola's always been tougher than me. I couldn't look away from that finger sliding in and out of my sister with that same unexpected gentleness. Maybe he was actually being considerate of how sharp his nails were, who knows. All I knew was that my erection wasn't going away while I watched.

He finally moved past her as well, sucking thoughtfully on the finger that had been inside her as if cleaning off an errant strand of honey. He eventually reached the little Vulpin girl, snapped his fingers after only a cursory Lump inspection, and strode off toward the Spike. Gods forgive me, but I can't remember the girl's name anymore. I forgot it almost as soon as the Scrofa carried her off, struggling and wailing, to follow the Warden. The second he was gone, Nola broke down in tears. I held her, holding my own tears back. I couldn't be weak for Nola. I had to be the strong one this time. Maybe it would be my turn to cry next time, but this time it was hers. I just held her and made soothing noises, and rubbed gently at the base of her ears. The Scrofa left us alone for a few minutes, but eventually they started shoving everyone back toward their jobs.