Deprivation- The Feast and the Famine

Chapter 9- Not Eden's Snakes

Claudia's feet dangled into the pit.  Her bandaged hand rested on the edge as she peered, without interest, down. Below, dried blood caked the walls. It was probable that underneath the shallow sludge lay a corpse. Certainly, some of the red springy hair cemented to the wall belonged to someone unlucky enough to find themselves down with the snakes.

The lithe bodies of the scaled beasts slithered and hissed in the water below. Claudia wondered if they had a tunnel in and out for themselves or if they had to survive on the meager pickings supplied to them by dying girls. She wondered what they experienced when their teeth sank into your flesh, and you tried to pry them off with stiffening fingers.

Thoughts passed from her, more slippery than the wet snakes. She did not care enough to hold onto anything that passed through her mind.  She was already dead. The dead had no reason to think. 

Beside her, an imp in top form, Eudora threw bone fragments down at the snakes. When they hissed and writhed, she laughed. She paced about the pit, her footing confident and quick.  

"Hsss," Eudora said, leaning over the pit. "If only I had an apple."

For a countless while now they had traveled together, the demon and the ghost. Neither living up to their names.  Eudora showed Claudia where a pool lay, fed by a slender underground stream; impossible to escape through but good for water and occasional bathing.  She showed Claudia where once every other day food was brought down.  However, if the room was inhabited at the delivery time, none came and they went hungry, a theory Eudora had not asked her to test.  Still, it was a difficult rule to follow when you could not tell one day from the next.  

Eudora showed her charge through the traps the maze held: chandeliers, trapdoors, arrows, beasts that gnawed through bone, places where poisons leaked and infected.  What knowledge Eudora held, she shared as if between bosom friends.

The few times Claudia mustered the will to care she asked, "Why help me?"  

Eudora merely said each time, "Protect the pretty he said, show her, show her."

Across the way, Eudora licked her lips, leaving them gleaming. She knelt on the edge of the precipice and looked down. Her face was a picture of innocence and purity.  For a moment, Claudia forgot she was the devil and thought her an angel. Hadn't she been fooled in that before? Angels were not things that came to earth, and if they did they certainly had no time for Claudia. Surely, it was sinful for a woman to even think she deserved such note.

"How do the snakes survive do you think?" Eudora said, to herself, she knew Claudia would not respond. "Does he roam these halls sometimes and feed his pets.  Sometimes I think he does, and I search for him."

Eudora's face tilted, her eyes half closed.  It was a look of a girl deeply infatuated. And what wouldn't a man do for a girl like Eudora if she consented to love him?  Surely anything, everything and surely not this. "Someday I'll find him, and he'll take me out of here.  I wouldn't listen to him, you see, that's why he got rid of me.  I insisted...but now that's over with.  I've nothing to insist about now.  He'll let me out."

She paused to stand. Her hand brushed briefly over the small bag at her side. Her nails stroked it. "He'll let me out and I'll kill him.  I'll rip his eyes out and eat them.  Maybe I'll feed the rest of him to the snakes."

Eudora circled around the pit and stood next to Claudia.  She placed her hand on Claudia's head.

For an instant an image bubbled up into Claudia's stalled brain. She saw the severed hand sticking up from the floor. The ring glittered on its finger, its light and life like an accusation. Claudia let out a muffled scream. Then the vision was gone.  She was safe in death.  There was no guilt and no fear.

Eudora peered into Claudia's face.  A trail of golden hair slid across her eyes.  "You awake in there, little, rich girl?  Little, pretty. Pretty?"

Claudia stared back.  "No, I'm dead."

"Ah, I thought you might not be for a moment.  Go on then."  Eudora's face disappeared as she righted herself.  Claudia stared off into the dark of the corridor she faced.   A snake vaulted upwards in an attempt at her foot. It did not make it. Her foot continued to dangle.

Her hand hurt.  Of this, she was still aware. It called to her like a beacon to life.  But it was not a pleasant call, and she did her best to ignore it. The wound festered. Only good luck or the will of God could have protected her; she did not have one and could not hope for the other.  So it was infected.  Perhaps her hand would fall off before her body completed its descent to join her in death.

The blood on the bandage was black. Claudia made no attempt to change it, and after the first few times neither did Eudora. Apparently her new friend's sworn protection only went so far.  So Claudia's hand continued to throb like some horrible beast was attempting to exit through it.  Some bloody, demented, pus filled, creature on a fire breathing horse would burst forth and do her the favor of quickening her death. Undoubtedly it would be friends with Eudora and so leave her in peace.

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