Deprivation- The Feast and the Famine

Chapter 19- The Red Beast

Eudora remained unconscious and lay in the passageway where Claudia moved her. She was draped with musty silks from unclaimed closets.  Her head and shoulders rested on a folded tablecloth, stained only in a few places with blood or mildew.  Claudia had lifted her ankle onto what might well have been a human thigh bone.  Hands as gray as week old dead flesh lay against Eudora's flaming cheeks, where Claudia placed them in hopes Eudora's palms would absorb the feverish warmth.

Claudia's fingers trailed across this cheek that tried to burn her.  Over and over again, she petted but always avoided the bandaged place over her forehead.  A hint of dried blood teased from beneath the white cloth.

Days before this when Claudia came to her senses, limited as they were, she saw to Eudora's head wound.  After rinsing it, she was relieved to see it was not a deep cut, only a long and bloody gauge.  That the wound was not deadly remained the only sort of miracle Claudia expected from this place.  The water cushioned Eudora's fall. Claudia found it strange that the water pregnant with death tried its best to save its victim.  It was unintentional, of that she was certain.

In any event, Claudia was alone for the first time since joining with the heartbreaking woman.  Now Claudia's shattered heart managed to break again.  Selfishly she loved, and now she might be deprived of both friend and death.  Eudora's face was so beautiful and pure that it alone could have opened the gates to heaven.  And then Claudia would never find her again because Claudia would never leave hell.  

Looking young, and helpless Eudora slept. How like sleeping beauty, only she would never wake to a prince's kiss.  Her prince had doomed her with his touch.  That was the only sort of fairy-tale Claudia believed in anymore. That a man, any man, had found her perfect Eudora and with vile intent cast her into hell, robbed her of any belief in happy endings. She didn't know if she ever had.

Claudia mourned for the woman Eudora must have been before she became a demon.  What had she been then?  A nun who looked up one day at the one man who could make her forget her vows?  Perhaps she had been someone's adored wife—a mother with babes at her heels.  Their faces just as angelic as hers—a troop of heaven bound innocents.

Claudia looked until she could not bear looking anymore, and then she stood, and turned her face to the taunting dark.  She found purpose there in the absence of beauty.  

Food.  She had to find food or else they would starve.  So she headed toward the feeding chamber.  Had she grown up on a farm, she might have used another word for it.  Also, she might have found her inclination sadly akin to animals who head to their troughs before the farmer even appears.  She had not, so she did not.  She only knew that food was coming, and she must have it.  Eudora must have it.

As she walked into the dim corridor, she saw repeatedly in her mind Eudora's blood spreading out in the water.  She felt her blood in her veins ready to burst out of her at the slightest provocation.  If Eudora could fall to this place, then Claudia was certainly not immune.  And out swept the bloody water in her mind's eye.  

She looked down at the dark, twisted scar on her hand.  Still, it ached.  But she saw another hand when she looked.  She saw it severed against the floorboards with its single ring brilliant and pointless.  The torn nails clung to the floor. How intimate that death caress must have been, the last twitch of cooling fingers. Her trembling hand reached out to touch it, but only her hand and her glittering rings remained.

Her eyes looked up and away.  They met the hallway and the doorway to which she headed.  She moved into the lit opening and stopped.

There was another being in the room.  The woman knelt over the tray.  Her hair was red and stringy with muck.  Claudia shrunk back, afraid of this thing that intruded on her ritual and stole what was hers.  She felt teeth rend into her flesh.  Would it hurt after she was dead?  Could a soul escape this place or would she remain confined to her flesh as the red beast consumed her?

Claudia's body demanded she run.  Her mind insisted. She did not.  There was Eudora to think of.  Eudora, who the snake had intended to kill.  Surely, she was not meant to die.  She was destined to kill, and this red creature was an intrusion.  So, Claudia crept forward.  She lived each step separately wanting only not to remain invisible.  Not to have to face this new horror.  She did not think that, in the end, she must be seen. Perhaps, the red thing would dissipate like a nightmare, when she came upon it.

But it did not.  It looked up with the face of a starving woman, hissed like a cat and bore its human teeth.

Claudia hissed in return, aware of nothing else she could do.  She curled her hands letting her nails push out like claws.  She did not know who was predator and who was prey.  Animal instinct urged her to attack, but despite certain outward seemings, Claudia was a beast bred and raised in captivity.  And just as with many household pets who find themselves in the wild, Claudia's instincts failed her confused by a lifetime of training.  Instead of pouncing and rending, she took a step back.

The red creature left its crouch and stood.  The bones of her chest stood out from beneath her threadbare robe.  Her cheeks were hollow, and her eyes sunken.  She bore little in common with anything human.  Her empty mad eyes showed nothing but hunger.  Claudia thought her a ghoul—and in a way she was right.  The humanity of this creature was long fled leaving only a body with animus to feed.  It took a step in Claudia's direction, and its tongue slid out over its cracked white and red lips.  From her mouth poured a sound that was like no sound at all.

Claudia spun about without a sound and fled.  Her bare feet knew their way around the traps now. Her mind focused on the imaginary cold breath on her neck and ignored the wisdom of her feet.  They knew their way to protection.

Eudora remained prostrate on the cold ground.  Logic would have told Claudia that this unconscious form could not protect her, but Claudia had misplaced logic.  She knelt by Eudora's body and looked back over her shoulder.  At first there was nothing. There was nothing for numerous slow heartbeats.  Then a pair of eyes and a shadowy shape emerged.

The shape lurched forward dragging its right leg which was black and shriveled, the nails long ago peeled back from the toes only a few clinging and half torn.  Ever so slowly the ghoul came forwards, slower now with her goal in sight.  Claudia slunk around the other side of Eudora because this was all the protection in the world.  To come past Eudora was to come past heaven and hell.

The same long, brutal rattle escaped the ghoul's lips.  Yellowed teeth brightened the black hole of her mouth.  She lifted a hand so boney it was like one long talon.  Nails as yellow and brittle as old parchment flashed out.  They meant to be blades.

Eudora's eyes snapped open.  Her head turned, and the blue flame of her eyes caused the beast to stagger back.  Eudora was a flaming sword, and her gaze sliced out cutting away all it touched. With a screech the ghoul made its way slowly away.

Eudora's eyes closed again, and Claudia clung to her hand.  Her fingers twisted there until the noise of the dead leg no longer dragged across her ears.

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