Their clothes, so caked with dirt it was impossible to tell their original color, hung in tatters from bodies that were equally as filthy. Oddly enough, the majority of the men didn't seem to be undernourished. I couldn't be sure in the dim light. I walked to the center of the room, and that's when I saw the two other men lying on their backs on the straw-covered stone floor, in one corner of the room. I moved closer and looked down at them. Semiconscious, they wore only pants cut off at the thighs. Their bodies were discolored with blue, black and purple bruises and numerous cuts and sores, some of which were fairly recent; others were scabbed over. The eyes of one man were swollen shut and the left side of his face so distended that his own mother wouldn't have recognized him. The room itself smelled like the deepest part of a cesspool and was a haven for vermin crawling over the walls and ceiling and through the straw. The only light came from four small windows, two on each side of the room, set high in the walls, windows that were only foot-square openings in the stone.
