There was no time in this place so Claudia didn’t know how long it had been between her first sighting of the old woman and the second.  More than hours, less than weeks.  Her only measurement for time was her own hunger and fatigue.  These being variable, mutable and questionable things she was loath to trust them far.  So she was only aware that it had been neither a long time nor an immensely short one between watching the old woman walk and looking down at her here.

            Something had ripped the old woman’s right leg off, her left foot was missing.  A long trail of half dry, half wet, blood moved across her vision.  She wanted to turn away and retch but found herself watching as Eudora knelt over the woman and gently spoke a prayer.  Her voice was low and Claudia found herself holding her breath to hear.  Her lips moved on and on and her hands slid over the body in what looked like a blessing.

            They were the movements and actions of a nun.  Claudia had seen nuns off and on.  She had seen their piety but not being too close to them she had missed the rod like harshness of their minds and tempers.  What Claudia thought of when she saw Eudora was akin to an angel brought to earth.  That was how she saw nuns, after all they were of another world separate and distinct from hers.  How else could they seem than otherworldly?

            When Eudora finished she stood and turned back to Claudia.  Her eyes shone strangely.  Were there tears hiding in the depths?  Like an angel her head hovered in the clouds.  She seemed both large and bright to Claudia.  Her feet were planted in the midst of a slick of blood.  “Say your goodbyes.”

            “I didn’t know her.”  Claudia said.  She took a step back away from death.

            Eudora shrugged.  “You will never know anyone again, little pretty one.  I mourn for all of them.”

            “Why not help them?”  Claudia accused through her own guilt.  She knew she should feel badly for the dead woman but she was only flesh.  She was horrid frightening flesh piled in front of her.  The bone protruded from her ankle, the flesh around it growing grey.  Even away from the wounds her face was slack and oddly frozen.  The pale lifeless skin clung to the skull beneath it making no pains to hide the torrid reality that lay beneath living flesh.  “She’s dead she needn’t hide it.  She no longer matters.”

            “She did not matter last time you saw her.”  Eudora said.  “Then she was heading to the gallows.  No words she spoke would have any true meaning.  Now she has met her fate and again she has meaning.”

            “Has God come for her then?” Claudia asked.  She looked to Eudora as she never had either to her mother or her priest.  She trusted in Eudora’s infallible nature.  If Eudora said it then it must be so.  Eudora would tell her if she had any right to hope.  Eudora’s beautiful head shook in a soft denial.

            “No, even God could not escape this place so he does not enter.  We are in the box that hope has not flown.”

            “That means that we have hope?” Claudia said, unsure what way to take Eudora’s jumble of words.

            Eudora laughed.  “If hope had escaped the box than all the world would have been without hope. So how here in the box can we have any?  And how can we escape from such a box.”

            Claudia knew this legend, had thought it silly.  Her priest had thought it pagan.  Still she knew it and suddenly it was all too real.

            “When we escape we shall doom the world but we will not escape.” 

            Claudia sank against the wall trying to keep her eyes from the corpse.

            “Come, we shall see where the blood leads.”  Eudora smiled.  The suggestion was sick.  Claudia followed and was glad to follow.  She wanted anything that would take her away from this fresh corpse's eyes.  Maybe it could even keep her from her guilt, which though she did not admit it, was alive and well.

  Title Reference: *Dostoevsky, Fyodor. “Crime And Punishment” Bantam Books, co 1866: 57