Deprivation- The Feast and the Famine

Chapter 5- Onward, Onward and Down

There was no going back the way she had come. The dungeon directed her ever onward. Claudia found that out swiftly.  Once she left that first sloped hall, she discovered she could not return.  And below, if anything, the situation was worse.  The necessity of food and water became very real. Claudia knew she was dead. How could it be otherwise? The halls she wandered were endless. This was her personal chamber in hell, and it meant nothing that her captor had promised her a way to escape.

She wandered a seemingly endless expanse of nicely furnished rooms. Many in disrepair as if torn apart by someone or something long gone.  Shattered mirrors, scorched rugs and a table scored with knife marks all lurked in the sea of dust and spider webs. She found exquisite dresses and a rotting corpse with its skull caved in and brown ringlets falling around its gray green shoulders.

Walls slammed together, and doorways led to nothing but deadly falls.  A candelabra made of stone knives had plummeted to the ground, drawing a scream from Claudia's dry, dead throat.  Sometimes, she heard noises that seemed slightly human or disturbingly animalistic.  Sometimes, she thought she saw movement from the corner of her eye and was afraid to find what moved in the darkness just out of sight.

What she hadn't found was food or a way out.

Claudia wandered, a pale and listless ghost of a woman. Her hair untended around her blank-eyed face.  Her hands fluttered or clutched, both equally useless. Her dress was filthy and torn at the knees from falling and from kneeling to drink at trickles of water. One of her shoes was lost somewhere while the other clung stubbornly to her foot.

There was no going back, but without being aware, Claudia went forward. Six days passed. Claudia did not notice. What she knew was that her throat burned, and the pain in her stomach was constant and unremitting.

Claudia followed a trickle of water in a vain attempt to find a source. She had done this before only to find the trickle came from cracks in the ceiling or a mouse hole in the floor.  Both of which she had avoided exploring further. They were likely traps. Her eyes trailed the feeble water source along the ground.  Her hopes surrounding it vague, and only half-believed.

She considered sitting down and falling asleep. If she was lucky, she wouldn't wake up again.  Her bones would molder in the hallway, and some other hapless woman would find them and shy away in fear. Not disbelief, by the time they got this deep in the prison they would have seen far worse. Perhaps, she could find a bed first. That would be a more comfortable way to drift off into death. Only she had a sneaking suspicion, she would wake up and be no better off.

She followed the trickle of icy water because there was nothing better to do, and at least this had the pretense of being useful.  

"See, I'm trying,"  Claudia whispered and giggled.  Her voice cracked, and sound fell of it like egg shells from a rotten egg.

God would like it that she was trying, she thought. Only she didn't know anymore. God, too, had become vague, and half-remembered. She'd ceased to credit him but could not stop herself from worrying that she was wrong, and he would hold her disbelief against her. That would be fitting. She would finally escape this hell by dying and end up in Hell.  She giggled again.

She wasn't walking as steadily as she once had. For the third time since she'd found the trickle, Claudia's bare foot got caught on a stone—the toe refusing to move. Her momentum propelled her forward. Her hands flew out to slow her fall.

Her knee struck the ground, and her hand slammed against the wall above her head to steady herself.  The stone moved beneath her throbbing knee, and a shocking pain darted through Claudia's palm where it pressed against the cool stone.

She looked up.

A wooden arrow had driven itself through her hand and pinned her to the wall.Tendrils of acidic pain shot down her arm, the sensations spreading like poisoned blood. Claudia stared in rapt disbelief, wondering how a wooden implement had managed to stick itself into a stone wall.  She stared until it occurred to her that her hand hurt more than she'd imagined was possible.

Worse yet, she was trapped.

Suddenly the shadows seemed to move. The darkness brimmed with demons. What if something came?

Claudia bit down on her lip to keep the scream inside. The pain built up inside her, and it took all she had in her not to scream. But if she did, something might hear her.  And if it heard her, it might come.  And what chance did she have to get away like this?  

With her free hand, Claudia pulled at the thin shaft pinning her to the wall. Her hand, covered with sweat and grime, couldn't find a proper purchase on the slick shaft. Her fingers slipped off, and again she tried and failed.

A ragged cry escaped Claudia's throat. She slumped against the wall. Her face pressed against the flat surface. She felt the rough texture of the rock rub at her skin. She stared up at her punctured flesh.  

Light and dark swam before her eyes in a painful dance. Her free hand pulled imploringly at the shaft.

"Oh, God, oh God," she chanted.  

"He can't hear you." A voice, cool as water and hateful and a storm wind, erupted from beside her.  

Claudia looked up to find a woman standing with her back against the light. Her hair shimmered around her in a golden cloud, but the rest of her remained shrouded in darkness.  Claudia knew with a brilliant certainty that she had not felt in a week that this voice was her death knell. 

"And he certainly won't help you," the woman continued.

A pale hand flicked out and snapped the shaft in two. Claudia conveniently lost consciousness.

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