Clamor and Sensation
Days go by, and the horrors continue. The girl steadily grows weaker and weaker. Her bones cannot take much more of the torment, and her soul is near the breaking point. She does not even struggle when they take her from her cell. She has resigned herself to her fate.
She lies in her corner, and hears the men go by on their way to another victim.
“This batch won’t last much longer,” she hears one man say.
“Yeah,” another says, a leer to his voice. “I swear they get weaker and weaker with each new shipment.”
His companion laughs, and they pass onward, trailing terror and despair behind them.
The girl listens to them pass, and closes her eyes, her eyelids heavy, and puffy. Her dress is tatters, and her hair grows in straggly patches.
Her every sense is heightened and the cold, stone floor seems a living thing as she brushes her fingertips against it. The sound of the rats’ claws against the stone floor is a screaming symphony to her ears.
She opens her tired, swollen eyes, and stares in the direction she knows the door to be in. The darkness presses against her eyes like a hand, and she closes them wearily, losing herself to a fitful sleep that offers little comfort.
She awakes several hours later to loud shouts and stomping of feet outside her cell. She blinks gently, trying not to irritate her eyes.
The sounds of battle beat through her door like a cannon, and even after a sound has faded, it reverberates over and over in her head like a chant until she can barely stand it.
She crouches in her corner, and covers her ears with both of her hands, whispering quietly to herself to block the noises. She has lost the will to scream. It has been lost for some time.
It seems like hours before the battles cease, and it is not until hours afterward that she can bear to uncover her ears. She sits still, and listens for any sounds outside her cell. It all seems quiet.
The girl does not move from her spot, and waits. She does not know what she is waiting for, but seems to think that if she waits long enough, relief will follow.
More hours follow, and she realizes that it is long past the time she is usually given some kind of food.
Terror grips her. Something has happened, but what? Underneath the terror, a small coal of hope catches flame. Will she finally be set free, allowed to return home to her family, and her beloved?
She quickly tries to stamp out this hope. She had been given hope before, only to have it snatched away a moment later. This will be nothing new. She closes her hurting eyes, and her cell door slams open.
She opens her eyes, but they are quickly covered by a dark scrap of cloth. The girl panics. Terror anew washes over her, and her first instinct is to struggle.
“Restrain her!” A loud voice calls out, making her cringe. “Don’t let her injure herself any further!”
Her arms are grabbed, and held, and the feel of fingers against her skin is reminiscent of spiders crawling across her flesh. She screams, and is lost to darkness.
.
