The skin splits open and a white mass of maggots tumble out, like little orzo pastas. Except a significant number of those pastas are crawling toward you at a glacial pace, looking for a quiet place to complete the next stage of their maggoty lifecycle.

"Jesus fucking Christ." You schooch on your bum across the grimy stone floor of your cage to curl yourself into a ball. Your forehead presses to your knees until your brain aches. you start to hum in the hope you’ll drown out the sounds that are suddenly too loud around you. Your melody grows louder, and louder, until your chapped lips start to form the occasional word.

“No one here can love or understand me... Blackbird, bye, bye ...” you hum and sing until the words fade away, and the melody too.

"I renounce my wicked ways," you say after the song disintegrates among the dust motes and the hum of opalescent insect wings.

"That's a shame. I bet I would like your wicked ways." You startled at the sound of a man's deep, smooth voice, the cadence of a faint Irish accent warming every note. Your curses cut the humid air when your head smashes against an iron crossbar of your small cell as you scurry out of reach of the man who saunters into the thin thread of light from the narrow window, the glass opaque with fly shit.

"You seem to be in a predicament," he says. A lopsided grin sneaks across his face, the rest of his features sheathed in shadow. He takes a few steps into the room to stare down at the corpse, bending to get a closer look. "What's your name?"