Foul water splashed over John's head and he jerked awake. He shoved himself up onto his hands, eyes wide and heart pounding.
"Wha-?!"
"Sorry, mate. Weren't sure if you were dead."
John's whipped his head around to stare at the person who'd spoken. He sat with his back against a stone wall, legs outstretched and with the black soles of his bare feet facing John. Soiled rags barely covered him. A beard grew from his face like a rat's nest, while greasy locks hung to his shoulders. It was obvious at a glance that he had never seen a bar of soap all his life.
"What?" John stared, too dumbfounded to make sense of what he saw.
"They threw you in here two days ago," the filthy stranger said. "Tried yelling, poking, slapping, you know, that sort of thing, but you didn't even twitch. So I went to the last resort." He nodded to a wooden bucket that sat nearby.
John looked at it, confused. Last resort? A bucket? It looked a little grungy, with something gray and goopy slipping down one side of it. He wrinkled his nose, suddenly aware of an awful stench.
And then he realized something else. His face was wet. So were his clothes. Slowly, he looked down. Like the stranger, he wore a plain white linen shirt and trousers. Well, they had once been white. Now they'd been horribly soiled.
His hands flew to his face. Wet. Slimy. He spun around on his knees, absently finding a convenient pile of musty straw nearby for him to retch into.
"Aw, come on, mate. At least do that in the bucket. They only bring fresh straw once a month."
John managed to jab a finger at the stranger. "You! You – you dumped your sewage on me!"
The stranger looked affronted. "I told you, last resort, no? And it worked – you're awake."
After a few minutes of dry heaving – it seemed there wasn't much in his stomach anyway – John found some mostly clean straw and tried to clean himself as best as he could. It was around this time that he finally realized he and the stranger were prisoners. Stone walls encased them in a box, with a door made of solid iron bars and a tiny window high up on the opposite wall allowing in a small measure of daylight. Straw padded the floor in the corners, though it appeared to give off the occasional squeak and rustle a little whenever John looked away.
He shuddered, and carefully moved away from the straw. Then he eyed his cellmate warily. "Who are you? Why are we here?"
The stranger tilted his head. One hand came up to stroke his beard, as if he were a great scholar pondering a deep thought. "You... don't remember?"
