The clouds were thick and grey, still weighed down with the last vestiges of the deluge that had soaked the valley overnight. The sun, just peeking over the horizon, painted the distant mountain pink before the clouds obscured it.

 

The wet earth squelched between my toes, caking itself onto other layers of dirt and grime rather than my skin, which had long since been covered. The rough jute clothes we made from old grain sacks were tattered and scratchy, barely covering my bone-thin arms. The other children and I clawed at the mud, gathering it in small piles with not a word shared between us. We were all gaunt, hungry, and days from death by starvation.

 

“Remember, no rocks or roots,” said the girl. She was smaller than many of us, younger, but we all looked to her for guidance. The tips of her fingers bled, leaving marks upon the shoulders of the other children she reassured with her touch.

 

The light in the valley barely brightened as the clouds hid the sun. Even at high noon, there was barely a change from before the sunrise. I added my mud to the pile on a large flat stone by our shack. I could barely lift my arms any longer, and my legs moved on their own: I could no longer feel them.

 

“Form them like this,” our leader said, squeezing the mud and flattening it into an easily held shape. Everyone else followed suit, creating more of the mud biscuits and placing them softly upon the stone. I couldn’t help them. I was too hungry.

 

After the mud pile had been made into discs, our leader, ever the optimist, smiled. She gingerly removed a small leather pouch from within her clothes. “This is a magic powder,” she said. “I got it from the adult that came through here yesterday. It’ll make the biscuits taste amazing!”

 

Upon hearing that, the children’s eyes sparkled, but not mine. I couldn’t muster hope any longer. They, however, watched with bated breath as small dustings of the white powder were added to the biscuits.

 

“What now?” a young child asked. “Can we eat them yet?”

 

“No, we must wait for the sunlight to bake the mud so we may eat.” The leader girl looked to the sky, as did I, and realized it. We would need to dig another grave before the end of the day.

 

We sat against the wooden shack. There was no laughter, no mischief, no words exchanged. We sat and waited for the sunlight. The clouds held together in a tight, thick sheet for three days. On the eve of the first day, a few children peeled bark from the trees nearby and bit away at it, sharing some with the others. On the eve of the second, we buried the five who had eaten the poisoned bark, unable to bear their hunger any longer. I was weak with delirium by then, otherwise I may have eaten the bark, too, and been buried. On the eve of the third, the sun shone down upon the rock and baked the mud.

 

As I ate the salt-encrusted biscuit, I could feel a fleeting moment of relief, a feeling that spread across our ever-smaller group. The biscuits gave us another few days, but we would remain gaunt and thin. We will always be thin. We would continue to lose more every few days, and there would be more unmarked graves in this tiny, dead valley that not even plants could grow in. Hunger is all I know. Eventually, hunger will take me as its next victim.

 

* * *

 

“Alright, pull him out.”

 

“Reintegration in five, four, three,” a distant voice said.

 

The world felt like it was being pulled together out of the darkness. My consciousness suddenly existing in two places at once. I could still feel the salted earth in my mouth, the caked mud and blood under my fingernails, but now it was fighting with a sterile taste in the air.

 

“What is your sin?”

 

“I— what, where?”

 

“Send him back.”

 

* * *

 

The mirror reflected a strange face; withered, thin, pale. My stomach pulled at me, consumed me and my every thought.

 

“What is your sin?”

 

“I’m hungry,” I replied.

 

“Good. What is your sin?”

 

“Hunger.”

 

“What is hunger?”

 

“Children waiting for the sunlight.”

 

“Good.”

 

The mirror fell away, and the man’s reflection went with it. I eyes unfocused and felt heavy, closing slowly into the dark. The familiar grip of hunger clung all around me, dragging me back to its depths.

 

* * *

 

“Prisoner 964371, sentence served,” the doctor recited, pulling cords and wires out from the prisoner’s bald head, which was full of sockets and connections. “Convicted of criminal child neglect leading to death sentence by starvation. Sixteen counts. Death by starvation, confirmed.”

 

As they wheeled the dead body from the small chamber, a new prisoner replaced the old.

 

“Prisoner 964372, sentence confirmed. Convicted of cruel and unusual punishment leading to death by torture. Four counts.”

 

The prisoner was roused awake before two assistants began implanting the neural networking needed for their sentencing. Their screams of agony were ignored. Between their wails, the doctor proceeded.

 

“Put him under. Beginning simulation of crime.”

 

The prisoner’s voice faded, as if his mind was running from his body, only to inhabit a new one, in a new hell. His arms and legs were bound tight, the smell of rust and blood filling his nostrils. The handcuffs dug into his wrists and gouged bloody tracks in his skin. Ahead of him was a hooded figure. Only his wicked, self-satisfied grin was apparent and visible.

 

“Well, well,” the torturer said. “Look who’s awake. Let’s start again, shall we?”