Claudia’s feet dangled down into the pit.  Her bandaged hand rested on the edge as she peered, without interest down.  Below dried blood caked the walls.  It was probable that below the shallow sludge lay a corpse of a girl not to long gone from this world.  Certainly some of the red springy hair cemented to the wall belonged to someone unlucky enough to find themselves down in the pit with the snakes.

            Claudia’s vacant eyes moved over the lithe bodies of the scaled beasts as they slithered and hissed in the water below.  She wondered if they had a tunnel in and out for themselves of it they had to survive on the meager picking supplied to them by dying girls.  She wondered too what snakes felt like to the touch.  What they felt like when their teeth sank into your flesh and you tried to pry them off with stiffening fingers.

            Even as she wondered the thoughts past from her, more slippery than the wet snakes.  She did not care enough to hold onto anything that passed through her mind.  There was no reason for things to pass through her mind, of that she was sure.  She was already dead.  The dead had no reason to think.  Yes, she was a ghost, and she traveled with a demon.

            Beside her, an imp in true form, Eudora threw bone fragments down at the snakes. When they hissed and writhed she laughed.  She paced about the pit, her footing confident and quick.  Why would she fear death when she was in league with it?

            For a countless while now they had traveled together, the demon and the ghost (neither truly living up to their names.)  Eudora showed Claudia where a pool lay, fed by a slender underground stream; impossible to escape through but good for water and occasional bathing.  She showed her where one every other day food was brought down.  Only if the room was inhabited at the time none came and they went hungry.  A difficult injunction to make when you could not tell one day from the next.  She showed her too, slowly through the traps the house held.  Chandeliers, trapdoors, arrows, beasts that gnawed through bone, places where poisons leaked and infected.  What knowledge Eudora held she shared as if between bosom friends.

            The few times Claudia mustered the will to care she asked why.  Eudora merely said that she had promised to protect her.  Claudia would have been frightened of the impending sacrifice if she hadn’t known herself to be dead.

            Across the way Eudora licked her lips leaving them gleaming.  She knelt on the edge of the precipice and looked down.  Her face was the picture of innocence and purity.  For a moment Claudia forgot she was the devil and thought her an angel.  Then she recoiled.  She’d been fooled in that before.  Angels were not things that came to earth and if they did they certainly had no time for Claudia.  She was wicked and besides which a woman. Surely it was sinful for a woman to even think she deserved such note.

            “How do the snakes survive do you think?” Eudora said, to herself, she knew Claudia would not respond.  “Does he roam these halls sometimes and feed his pets.  Sometimes I think he does and I search for him.”

            Eudora’s face was tilted, her eyes half closed.  It was a look of a girl deeply infatuated.  And what wouldn’t’ a man do for a girl like Eudora if she consented to love him?  Surely anything, everything…and surely not this.  “Someday I’ll find him and he’ll take me out of here.  I wouldn’t listen to him, you see, that’s why he got rid of me.  I insisted…but now that’s over with.  I’ve nothing to insist about now.  He’ll let me out.”

            She paused to stand. Her hand brushed briefly over the small bag at her side.  Her nails stroked it.  “He’ll let me out and I’ll kill him.  I’ll rip his eyes out and eat them.  Maybe I’ll feed the rest of him to the snakes.”

            Eudora circled around the pit and stood next to Claudia.  She placed her hand on Claudia’s head.

            For an instant and image bubbled up into Claudia’s stalled brain.  She saw the severed hand sticking up from the floor.  The blood where it was seeping into the floorboards.  The ring glittered on it finger, its light and life like an accusation.  Claudia let out a muffled scream.  Then it was gone.  She was safe in her own death.  There was no guilt and no fear.

            Eudora peered into Claudia’s face.  A trail of golden hair slid across her eyes.  “You awake in there, little rich girl?  Little pretty. Pretty?”

            Claudia stared at the demon.  “No, I’m dead.”

            “Ah, I thought you might not be for a moment.  Go on then.”  Eudora’s face disappeared as she righted herself.  Claudia stared off into the dark of the corridor she was facing.   A snake vaulted upwards in attempt at her foot. It did not make it. Her foot continued to dangle.

            Her hand hurt.  Of this she was still aware.  It called to her like a beacon to life.  But it was not a pleasant call and she did her best to ignore it.  The wound must have been infected.  Only good luck or the will of God could have protected her; she did not have one and could not hope for the help of the other.  So it was infected.  Perhaps her hand would fall off before her body completed its decent to join her in death.

            The blood on the bandage was black.  Claudia made no attempt to change it and after the first few times neither did Eudora.  Apparently her sworn protection only went so far.  So Claudia’s hand continued to throb, like some horrible beast was attempting to exit through it.  Some bloody, demented, puss filled, creature on a fire breathing (also bloody) horse would burst forth and do her the favor of quickening her death.  Undoubtedly it would be friends with Eudora and so leave her in peace.

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