If only it wasn’t for the hand.  Claudia picked at the soft arm of the chair she found herself in and stared at the hand where it protruded from the floor.  It was grey and bloodless, the flesh around the base bruised and shredded where it sat cut off between the floorboards.  How was such a thing possible?  She wondered.  How did an arm get stuck in the floor like that? The body, she reasoned, must be stuck below hanging or cut free from the force of the floorboards slamming upwards.

       Some of the nails on the hand had peeled back as though the owner had been trying to claw his way to safety before his arm got cruelly detached leaving only the hand and the splintered wrist bones on the surface.  On one finger a gold ring rested.  It was worth a great deal, Claudia supposed.  But what use had the maker of this deadly prison for riches?  The way the arm was flung out behind the leg of an ornate table with its brutalized fingertips resting on a finely woven rug proved that to her satisfaction.

            Yes, indeed, it would be a fine prison if only not for the hand.

            Claudia did not remember arriving in this room.  Could not, in fact, remember much of how she left the city.  She only had a few vague clouded pictures of rainy countryside and the rocking of a carriage.  She could taste day old bile in her mouth but did not recall how it got there.  She remembered enough to know that even if she escaped outdoors and got away from her expensive prison she would have nowhere to go.  She was out in the middle of nowhere with not even an idea of a direction in which to run.  Even if she had known how to get back the city there was nothing there for her now.  No one would protect her.  She had nothing to run to and a world full of things to run from.

            This being the case she was not inclined to move from her chair.  She had not moved since she woke but merely uncurled and looked around her.  The door to her room was closed but she had not tested its lock.  It hardly mattered whether she was locked in here or not.  Either way she could not go free. 

            Across the room on the table were a glass of water and a plate of fruit and bread.  It smelled fresh and looked appetizing enough.  The fruit like everything else was not cheap.  Likely besides the food she would find some cheeses or butter for the bread.  Laying next to the platter rested a slip of white paper.  Claudia found she was not interested in any of it.  At least not enough to brave the floor.

            Her chair was quite safe.  It had yet to send her sliding to a bloody death.  She did not trust the floor to show the same kindness.  There was proof of it as far as she was concerned.  Who knew what other traps awaited her about the room.  Death and dismemberment was all the room had proved it could offer.  She wouldn’t be so easily caught in the net as that.  She wasn’t ready to slide to a bloody death or be speared with a blade from some unseen trap. 

            She trusted the food well enough.  It would not be poisoned because that would be completely against the point of this elaborate trap.  Why bother with floors that could kill if you only intended to use poison?  On that note why bother ferreting her away from the city out into nowhere just to poison her.  That could be done easily enough from the comforts of home.  No, anyone who owned a place like this intended to use it to its full extent.  Even a rich man did not spend this much on something to see it go to waste.

            Claudia did not feel obliging.  Perhaps if it had only been poison she would have done it to get away from a bleak future.  But this demented will that brought danger and depravity to such finery put her backbone up.  She would not die just to please him.  At least not in the way he so clearly desired.

            I will just starve here, Claudia thought as she combed her fingers through her long brown hair. She tried to pull it to order over her shoulders.  There was no point in dying with her hair in tatters.  So she worked through the knots with her slender fingers.  Prying at every last one until it dissolved beneath her touch.  Sometimes one of her dark bright rings would catch on her hair and tug strands from her scalp.  She did not notice but occasionally stopped to remove the hairs from the glittering gemstones.

            As she combed she noticed that her hair was oily against her skin.  It was filthy, like any drudges hair as they cleaned the floors.  She glanced down at her nails and realized that they too were as dirty as any workers'.  Beneath her long nails was a layer of grime. 

            She stared down at that layer of grime like a stricken child.  Somehow that was worse than the nagging hunger in her stomach or the pounding headache the plagued her.  Her own disarray took all the romance out of dying stationary.  No matter what she’d not be a pretty corpse.  All she had been good for her whole life was being pretty.  Bred to be soft, docile and useless what else but beauty had been left to her.  Now she was deprived even of that.

            When Claudia touched her face she realized it was soaked with tears.  That would not help her beauty either.  She had never cried prettily.  With that thought she began to sob uncontrollably.  Her cries filled the room and escalated into a full scale wail.

            It was all gone.  Everything was gone.  She would never feel the warmth of love growing inside her.  She would never dance across a ballroom and feel the eyes of admirers on her back.  She would never sit at an opera and feel the music sweep over her and transport her.  And what use had any of it ever been to her?  Nothing useful or meaningful had ever been hers.

            Her cries quickly reverted to gentle sobbing.  Even this ceased after a few moments.  She was left pale and shivering. Her eyes had reverted back to the hand and the hideous reality of death.

            This was not pretty, not romantic.  This was the world she was thrust into.  The only world she would ever know.  Her vision swam as she struggled to fill her lungs inside her corset.  In the blackness swimming outside her vision she saw his face framed in sunlight.  She could almost feel the warm horseflesh beneath her and the wind against her hot cheeks.  That was life and how brief it had been.  This was death. That it had yet to claim her had no relevance.  This was death.

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