Claudia slipped from the chair to the ground.  She stood for a moment then, unsure, she took a step.  The floor stayed firm beneath her feet.  In the end hunger wasn’t as easy to stoically ignore as she had thought.  Her legs were sore from being still so long.  Her back was stiff and had begun to complain.  She decided it was better to take her chances with the room. 

            The food looked wonderful and perhaps something useful would be written on the slip of paper.  Claudia almost convinced herself that it might give her some clue of how to break free.  It was a nice thing to believe in any event and it hurt no one for her to foster it. 

            So Claudia began out across the floor one step at a time. They were tiny frightened steps as if by not moving her feet too far apart she would trick the floor.  She stopped after four steps and removed her shoes.  She felt a driving urge to feel the floor beneath her.  Perhaps there would be something she needed to sense and having her sensitive feet against the ground might save her.  She held the brand new shoes in her hand and took two more steps.  She dropped the shoes on the floor.  Her eyes were wide as a gazelle’s and it was certain she was poised to run as they hit the ground.  It had occurred to her that she might need both hands free so she let them fall.  Then even as they tumbled it occurred to her they might set something off.  They didn’t.

            She lifted her eyes and they brushed the doorframe where an hour before she’d noticed claw marks.  They were still there and something that looks suspiciously like a nail was protruding from the woodwork halfway down one of the desperate scratches. 

            Claudia took two more steps.  She stopped.  Perhaps she would need her shoes.  Perhaps it wouldn’t be a shifted floorboard that she had to leap away from but any number of things that would slice her feet if she ran over them.  The two steps back to the shoes were daunting.  Claudia found she could not make up her mind.

            How was she supposed to decide what was more likely to kill her, being barefoot or wearing shoes?  She wasn’t raised for that sort of decision.  Few are.  She didn’t know where to begin.  Just the attempt to think about survival already had her so confused she knew she must be worse off than when she began. 

            She gave up on the shoes and tried to tell herself she wouldn’t regret it.  She took the remaining three steps to the table.  She grabbed the bread and brought it up to her mouth.  Then she paused, questioning her earlier conviction that it was not poisoned.  Perhaps nothing deadly but something painful.  She lowered the bread and tears sprung again to her eyes.  I can do anything I want, she thought, but it’s all far too likely to lead to my death.

            Claudia lowered a shaking hand to the note and she picked it up and opened it.  Welcome, it said, feel free to eat what you like and to explore the house. Enjoy your vacation, my love.  Claudia stared down at the neat print and then with a cry of rage she threw it across the room. 

            The bravery of anger gave her the strength to devour the bread, a handful of grapes, a pungent country cheese and the glass of water.  She would need strength if she was going to escape.  How she was going to do that was vague and blurry.  As was where she would go after her miraculous escape.  The only thing that was clear in her vision was the look of horror on his face when he realized she had flown his trap.

            She stalked back across the room, no longer creeping like a frightened child, retrieved her shoes and her wrap from where it lay on the chair.  Then she went across the room to the door and she set her hand upon the handle.  It was vaguely warm, warmer than the room around it.  Claudia stopped herself from turning it.  She took a step back.  Visions of flames swept before her eyes.  What if she opened that door and fell into hell?  She could feel the flames covering her, eating away at her flesh.  It would burn through her skin and then the fat and muscle underneath would slough off of her like wax off a candle.  The smell of burnt flesh brushed her nostrils.  She stared down at her hand trying to convince her mind that her skin was still pale and smooth not black and charred.

            More to make her mind still than from any desire to go through the door Claudia thrust the door open.  She found herself facing a long dark hall that looked nothing like her vision of hell.  The walls of the hallway were spotted with candelabras.  Some were lit and others were not. Directly across from her doorway was a fireplace.  From the fireplace burned a fierce fire.  Claudia stepped out of the room into this hallway and immediately started off down it away from the blazing fire and the room she’d been left in.

            The hallway seemed to go on forever.  No doorways came off of it that Claudia could see and after walking until the fire and its light had all faded away Claudia faced the rest with only flickering shadows.  As she went Claudia felt at the walls hoping to find something.  She didn’t even know what to search for.  A secret lever that would open a door to let her out?  A window blind that would roll up and reveal the outside world?  A panel that being touched would remove the floor and allow her the escape of death?

            At last she did find something, though nothing she could have expected.  Claudia found a window.  She almost missed it as it was on the opposite side of the hallway as she was.  It was just a simple plane of glass and behind it was dirt.  Claudia moved over to it and stared with dry angry eyes.

            Then she laughed.  And because there was no one there to speak to she spoke to herself.  “He buried me alive.”  She laughed again.  Her eyes were too bright in the meager candlelight.  “I’m buried alive in a mansion.”

            Claudia spun around to face the empty hallway.  Not hell, no, not that.  Hell was just one stairway down.  Claudia sat in a puddle of skirts beneath the window.  She folded her dirty hands in her lap. 

            She tried to think logical thoughts.  She did her best to think her way out of this situation but either she was not very good at thinking or this was just a problem too large.  The only thing she could latch her mind around was the fireplace.  There had been fire in it and the smoke had to go up.  That meant there was some sort of tunnel upwards.  Perhaps she could use it to get up? Of course she wouldn’t fit.  Claudia was not built like a chimney sweep.  But what else did she have to do?

            She turned around and began walking back the way she came.  She felt silly for even thinking of trying to climb up a chimney but she would feel even sillier if she did nothing. She held her skirts up indecorously high to allow her to move faster. 

            She felt the breeze on her ankles.  Her bare feet noticed no sensation but her ankles felt the shifting of the air and she tried to throw herself to the side.  It did nothing; that floor board slid from beneath her as well.  She jammed her fingertips into the crevices of the wall as she slid.  Time slowed around her, not enough for Claudia to plan or reason, but enough for her to feel her own terror.  Only blackness yawned beneath her.  Death waited cackling down below.  Claudia flung out her arms and her bloodied fingers found the edge of the floorboards. 

            She hung there by her fingertips and imagined that at any moment the floor would come crashing upwards and slice her fingers from her hand.  Then she would be left entombed beneath the hallway.  Her mind stalled.  It was no use.

            Luckily for Claudia her body was better trained.  Her legs swung against the wall and she propped as much of her weight as she could against her leg.  Then using her bare feet against the wall (they stuck much better than her shoes would have) and her arms she began to haul herself upward.  Had she been only the weak, helpless creature her parents thought they raised she would have hung there until her fingers gave out and that would be the end of her story. 

            She was not only what she had been  raised to be.  She had spent the past year climbing down trellis and off of balconies.  She’d ridden horses bareback and clambered up and over walls.  Her body was better trained for emergencies than anyone knew, least of all Claudia. 

            When she had her elbow up on the floor she used it to drag her body up to safety.  She lay there wide eyed and silent.  She waited for her mind to catch up with her body.  When it did she sat up and stared down into the black hole she had nearly fallen into.  There was nothing terrifying inside.  She could even see the floor.  It was a flat stone floor and against one wall was propped a skeleton.   It was just far enough down, Claudia thought, that if you fell in you couldn’t climb out.

            Claudia stood and brushed herself off.  She smoothed her hair and rearranged her skirts. There was no point in trying to go back that way.  Who knew when the floor would come back up?  She had to go the other way.

            She turned.  The hallway was long and dark.  Claudia lifted her fingers and set them against her corset.  Her fingers left a bright red mark on her already dirty dress.  It had been a new dress.  The best she’d ever owned.  Now it was ruined.  No amount of washing or mending could fix what it had been through.  I shall have to get a new dress, Claudia thought.  It’s too bad; I barely got to wear this one at all.

Title Reference:
*Joseph Conrad "Heart of Darkness" Dover publications, Inc 3rd Edition. 1990: 10