There was no going back.  She found that out swiftly.  Once she left that first sloped hall she’d discovered she could not return.  And below, if anything, it was worse.  She’d spent what could have been an entire day camped by the wall/door that slammed shut behind her.  Then the necessity of food and water became very real.  She left the security of the wall behind her.  And since that she’d found nothing.

            Or to be exact she’d found a seemingly endless expanse of nicely furnished rooms.  Many in disrepair as if torn apart by someone or something long gone.  She found shattered mirrors, scorched rugs and table scored with knife marks.  She found exquisite dresses and a rotting corpse with its skull caved in and long brown ringlets falling around its grey green shoulders.

            She’d found walls that slammed together and doorways that led to nothing but deadly falls.  She’d been surprised by a candelabra made of stone knives that plummeted to the ground.  Sometimes she heard noises that seemed slightly human or disturbingly animalistic.  Sometimes she thought she saw movement from the corner of her eye and was afraid to find what moved in the darkness just out of sight.

            What she hadn’t found was food or a way out.

            So she wandered, a pale and listless ghost of a woman.  Her hair untended around her blank eyed face.  Her hands fluttering or clutched both equally useless.  Her dress was filthy and torn at the knees from falling and from kneeling to drink at trickles of water.  One of her shoes was lost somewhere while the other slung stubbornly to her foot.

            There was no going back but without being aware Claudia was going forward.  It had been six days though Claudia did not know it.  What she knew was that her throat burned and the pain in her stomach was so constant and unremittant that she could almost forget it.

            She was following a trickle of water in a vain attempt to find a source.  She had down this before only to find the trickle coming from cracks in the ceiling or a mouse hole in the floor.  Both of which she had avoided exploring further because they were likely traps.  Her eyes trailed the feeble water source along the ground.  Her hopes surrounding it were vague and only half believed.

            She considered sitting down and simply falling asleep.  If she was lucky she would not wake up again.  Her bones would molder in the hallway and some other hapless woman would find them there and shy away in fear (but not disbelief, by the time they got this deep in the prison they would have seen far worse.)  Perhaps she could even find a bed first.  That would be a more comfortable way to die/sleep.  Only she had a sneaking suspicion she would wake up and that she would be no better off than she had been.

            She followed the trickle because there was nothing better to do and at least this had a pretense of being useful.  “See I’m trying.”  Claudia whispered and giggled.  Her voice was cracked and sound fell of it like egg shells from a rotten egg.

            God would like it that she was trying, she thought.  Only she didn’t know anymore.  God, too, had become vague and half remembered.  She’d ceased to credit him but could not stop herself from worrying that she was wrong and he would hold her disbelief against her.  That would be fitting.  She would finally escape this hell by dieing and then end up in Hell.  She giggled again.

            She was not walking as steadily as she once had.  For the third time since she’d found the trickle Claudia’s bare foot got caught on a stone- the toe refusing to move while the heel grudgingly did so.  This time she fell.

            Her knee painfully struck the ground and she reached out to the wall above her head to steady herself.  The stone moved beneath her throbbing knee and a shocking pain darted through Claudia’s hand where it pressed against the cool stone.

            She looked up.

            A wooden stake had driven itself through her hand and pinned her palm to the wall.  Claudia stared in rapt disbelief, wondering how a wooden implement had managed to stick itself into a stone wall.  She stared until it occurred to her that her hand hurt more than she’d imagined was possible.  Worse yet she realized she was trapped.

            Suddenly the shadows seemed to move.  The darkness that was mostly constant now brimmed with demons. What if something came.

Claudia bit down on her lip to keep the scream inside.  The pain burst up inside her and it took all she had in her not to scream.  But if she did something might hear her.  And if it heard her it might come.  And what chance did she have to get away like this?

            With her free hand Claudia pulled at the thin shaft that had her hand pinned to the wall.  Her hand, covered with sweat and grime, couldn’t find a proper purchase on the slick shaft. Her free hand slipped off and again she tried and failed.

            A long ragged cry escaped Claudia’s throat.  She slumped against the wall.  Her face pressed against its cool flat surface.  She could feel the rough texture of the rock rub at her skin.  She stared up at her punctured flesh.

            Light and dark swam before her eyes in a painful dance.  Her free hand pulled imploringly at the shaft.  “Oh, God, oh God,” She chanted.

            “He can’t hear you.” A voice, cool as water and hateful and a storm wind, erupted from beside her.  Claudia looked up to find a woman standing with her back against the light.  Her hair shimmered around her in a golden cloud but the rest of her was completely shrouded in darkness.  Claudia knew with a brilliant certainty that she had not felt in a week that this voice was her death knell.  “And he certainly won’t help you.”

            A pale hand flicked out and snapped the shaft in two.  Claudia conveniently lost consciousness.

Title Reference:
    *Shelly, Mary.  “Frankenstein” Penguin books USA inc. Co 1983: 136