[ WP ] You spend years as a war prisioner in a small cell . Suddenly you realize you are , in fact , a dog .

The meat was dry and hard, but it was meat. He tore at it, savouring the dark smell of it, the rich flavour, the warm flow of its juice down his throat. Nothing had ever tasted so good. He knew he should make the feast last, to fill the void between now and next time, but hunger made it impossible. He ripped at the meat like an animal, and when he swallowed the last of it he felt for a moment content. 
 
 That was only the instant between hurt and feeling, though. Like a great weight jolting him down into a black sea, the hunger returned, bottomless and terrible. The cell grew colder, darker, and the hole in his stomach pulled itself wider. He howled hopelessly. 
 
 He thought he should have been used to the hunger now. The pain never numbed, though, and his eyes never stopped throbbing. He worked his jaw at phantom food to try and forget how hungry he was. 
 
 Down here in the dark, the only thing he was capable of feeling was longing. Longing for food, most of all, but also for the nameless figures that hovered at the fringes of his memory. The men who shouted and screamed and died, who played cards as they tried to forget the coming storm. He wondered where they were now. Like him, probably, or dead. 
 
 The glowing screen at the edge of the room fizzed and crackled. It was a torture device, of that he was sure, endlessly projecting images of men in combat. They brought back memories for him. Memories he would rather not have surfaced. Memories that were formless and terrible, that had come after the blue disc smashed his head.
