Their spirits were alive. And most men I knew before, in that place, laid their spirits to rest the first time the cat-o’-nine-tails flew into their backs. And without a spirit, you cannot feel. You react, but the longer you exist in a world without your spirit, the less you feel. And feeling, no matter how low the emotion, is a gift. But in that place we stopped feeling when our spirits were killed. Laughter was a reaction. Tears were a reaction. Those screams were a reaction. But the source of them—the mother of joy, of sadness, or terror—was a ghost like me.
