Hamsterdam
Legacy Name: Hamsterdam

***

They told him he should be proud of himself. Told him he was making a noble sacrifice. They told him his contributions were invaluable and would help hundreds alleviate their suffering in the future. Ham thought that was a load of crap. But he was poor and homeless and had no life skills to speak of, so he didn't have much choice.

Even referring to himself as a "lab rat" seemed generous. It made him sound more important. He was a drug testing subject. Pharmaceutical companies (and sometimes just bored chemists) would test various drugs and dosages on him to gauge their addictiveness. And almost all of them were addictive to some degree or another. From crack cocaine to heroin to Oxycontin to some things that never made him out of the lab (which would pain Ham greatly in his later "life", so to speak), they had him on enough drugs that he could almost never see straight.

Needless to say, he didn't survive very long.

***

He awoke, to dignity and great joy, in a landfill on a pile of medical waste. "Ugh," he groaned, "what the hell is this."

"A masterpiece, that's what it is," said a voice nearby. "Welcome back to life."

Ham craned his head back, with a good bit of aching and hollering by his neck muscles, to see an icy Montre standing over him--in color and countenance both. She poked him in the head, and he flailed and wriggled back. "Who the hell are you?"

"I wouldn't take that tone if I were you," she said. "I just saved your life... in a way."

Ham squinted at her. "What d-do you mean, 'in a way'."

The Montre raised her eyebrow at him and tipped her head. "You haven't noticed, have you?" She craned her neck back and called downhill. "Leige! He doesn't know yet!"

"How can you not tell!?" the one called Leige called back.

"Tell what?" Ham snapped. He was mighty tired of this.

"You're dead," blurted the Montre. "Well, you are undead. Now. Congratulations."

Ham blinked. "Am not," he said. He scrambled to his feet, feeling oddly stiff, admittedly. Then he got a good look at the crippled, green little things. "Oh," he said. And then the true realization set in. "Oh." He clutched at a few scant tufts of hair still left on his head and tried not to break down. He hyperventilated, though out of reflex--no pace or amount of breathing at all seemed to make a difference to him.

But the Montre interrupted his panic attack with a loud clearing of her throat. "I didn't hear a thank you."

At that, Ham lunged forward towards her, would grab her face if he could reach. "You d-d-did this!?" he cried. "And you want me t-to thank you!?" He could almost laugh at the thought. Almost.

"Of course," said the Montre. "You just received the services of one of the finest necromancers around. Show some gratitude."

"Look at me!" Ham cried. "I'm hideous!." He pulled at his ears and his poor beaten, broken tail. God, after all that talk about "martyrdom" and "the better good", those bastards had just thrown him out with the trash when they were done with him. How could they!

The Montre frowned down at him. "After all the effort I put into help you," she said, "out of the goodness of my heart." She feigned a sniffle and wiped an invisible tear away from her eye. "I'm hurt. I am."

Her companion called up in agreement, "It's a tragedy is what it is, m'lady."

Sighing, she shook away all pretenses of offense and said, "If that's how you feel, then, far be it from me to impose. However, if you eventually come to your senses and you wish to learn to live with death, you may come seek me--Naeva Ari." With that, she turned tail and departed.

Ham peeked over the piles of waste he lay upon and watched the Montre go, accompanied by a twisted and jet black Legeica. He snorted. "Come to his senses" indeed. This was all nonsense to him.

***

For some time, Ham slummed about generally feeling like shit. He gnawed on some landfill rats, sniffed out old discarded needles but none of them ever had anything good in them, and spooked out the garbage men. It was a pretty shallow existence, and the aching and the nausea never quite went away--apparently detox followed you to the grave--but at least it was freedom.

For a while.

Sometimes vagrants and opportunistic hipsters would come rooting about for treasures. So when he heard someone rummaging around in his heap, Ham paid it no mind. All he wanted was some rest after a day of devouring other rats alive.

A set of claws clamped around his tail, and he was seized out of the trash heap with a squeak.

"Normyn!" a voice cried gleefully. "I found someone!" Being swung about in her paw, Ham finally caught sight of a blind, jet black Tigrean. She took a sniff of him, then recoiled. "Ugh, dead. Useless." She cast him carelessly aside, where he landed hard on his back.

Ham could hardly even raise an objection before another paw was slammed down on his stomach, trapping him and knocking the wind from him. This one was... bloody. "Now, now, Evea, don't be so hasty." She dipped down over him, and Ham saw the smirking face of a bloodred Feli. "Hello," she chimed. "I apologize for my friend. She's a bit put out at the moment--been hunting for fresh eyes you see."

"Eyes!?" Ham coughed. He craned to catch a glimpse of the Tigrean. "STAY AWAY FROM MY EYES!"

"I don't want your eyes," Evea grumbled, slumped and sulking. "Dead. Useless."

"I SAID STAY AWAY FROM THEM!" cried Ham, just to make his point clear.

The Feli sighed and seized him up by his tail once more. "I believe I've seen you before, though. Recognize you. I've been hunting around here lately, I've seen you sniffing up needles from the trash heap. Now tell me..." She raised an eyebrow. "What could a Wyllop like you, a dead one even, need with a needle."

Oh good. His secret shame had become the business of strangers. That was just great. Embarrassed, he pressed his paws to his face and tried to look away, but that was a bit hard dangling in mid air. "I d-don't want to t-t-talk about it."

"You don't?" asked Normyn. She sighed... and from behind her back, she drew a syringe. And that baby was dripping and loaded. Ham practically salivated at the sight. "Then I guess you don't want this either." She made to cast it aside.

Ham lunged for it, paws flailing. "N-no! I want it, I want it!"

A grin crept across Normyn's face. "Alright," she said. "But if you want it, there is a little catch." She swung the needle before his eyes, and Ham watched it go like a hypnotist's subject. "I will give you the fix you crave... if you work for me, and you do what I say. Anything I say. The payment for your services, if you will. Now what do you say to that?"

What Ham wanted to say was "Absolutely not." He'd been a lab rat for as long as he could remember, used by others to their own ends. He finally had the chance to have something different. Hell, the Necromancer Montre said she wanted to help him--maybe she really did. Maybe she and her Legeica could help him finally clean up and find his feet. Ham wanted to say, "No, thank you."

What he said instead was, "Yes! Yes-yes-yes! Please!" And in that moment he realized that he had no freedom nor a lick of dignity in him. Normyn dropped him and handed him the needle, and he hugged it like a long lost friend before he partook and finally cleared the aching in his undead body. In that moment, he knew he was born to be a slave.

***

Dead is the new alive
Despair's the new survival
A pointless point of view
Give in, give in, give in, give in
You play the game
You never win