Deprivation- The Feast and the Famine

Chapter 27- Fresh Air

Claudia touched the metal grate. Something in her stirred as she stared out at the daylight. Her fingers curled around the thin bars, but she did not try to pry the metal free. She could see very well that the opening led to a dead drop into the ocean only a few feet out.

Coming to one of these openings to the outside world was like a tiny death. Eudora rarely led them there. Somehow, feeling winds that were free to wander while being confined to an eternity of torment was worse than only tasting stale air.

“Is this a real place? I thought I could conquer the world once,” Claudia said. The wind was music like any other. It howled and moaned. Her mind played the harmony like keys on a piano, and in her soul, she felt the winds lament.

“Was real once,” Eudora said. “One day the tunnels will collapse, and the corpse of this town on a Cliffside will slip into the black death of the sea.”

“You know where we are?”

“I believed you were certain that we are in hell.”

“But you know.”

“Yes, this is purgatory. Our sins are being burned away. There will be nothing left of me for heaven. I am all sin, and I have one sin left,” Eudora said.

Claudia tasted the salty air. One of these days, she would die if not from a trap or Eudora some wretched disease that would eat her from the inside out. Possibly Eudora would take pity on her and bash her brains in.

“Would you eat my brains when they spilled out?”

“Hush, of course, I would,” Eudora said. “How long Pretty, Pretty until it is human flesh you chew? I think you are incorruptible. You are truly depraved.”

“I’m just hungry.”

“Strange thing for a dead girl to say.”

“I’d stop talking if you would kill me.”

“No, not I. There is only one I will kill.”

Claudia turned away from the grate to Eudora. There was an expression of exquisite delight on her face. The only time Claudia saw Eudora perfectly happy was when she pictured killing him.

“Who were you before this, Dora?”

“I didn’t exist until he left me here, but once, once there was a sky. It shone on the children and a fallen woman who struggled to provide for them so they would never need to fall. She drank sin so the others would stay innocent and then she met a man and dared to want something for herself.”

Claudia reached out and held Eudora’s hand where it rested on the little bag at her side.

“Let’s have a tea party,” Claudia said. Truth be told, she hated Eudora’s tea-parties. There was nothing delightful about sitting around an empty table with corpses for guests pretending you had something to eat. “You can invite whoever you like.”

“She had four brothers and two little sisters, but I wouldn’t invite them here. He got her an apartment, and she didn’t have to work. He was going to take care of her. It was what they all dreamed, all the girls. Doesn’t happen not really. Rich men don’t just come and pick you out of the filth, but he did. He came for her, and I thought it was going to be heaven. Yes, tea. I like tea-parties. There is a new girl in the snake pit. We will invite her.”

Eudora’s hand was cold when Claudia took it.

“I love you, even if he never did,” Claudia said.

“My heart is dead.”

“I love you, Dora.”

“Love requires a beating heart, and you haven’t’ got one.”

“Maybe I will.”

In silence, they picked their way down the long cold hall. They went first to the snake pit so that Eudora would have someone to talk to. Someone, she could at least pretend was sane. Why Eudora enjoyed this was not something Claudia understood, but joy was joy and just once she wanted to make Dora smile.

Claudia took Eudora’s hand as they walked to the snake pit. If she noticed how easily she avoided the traps, it didn’t remain on her mind long. Hopping here, swerving there, it was all a part of life now as automatic as breathing.

In the pit, was a fresh body, partially buried in writhing snakes. The flesh that emerged was vivid and covered with bite marks. Eudora left Claudia at the edge staring at the body while she went to fetch something to draw the body up.

Enthralled by the upturned face of the middle-aged woman. Claudia was tempted to whisper her secret. She glanced from side to side making sure Eudora was nowhere near and then she whispered to the corpse and the slithering mass of snakes, “I know a way out.”

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