Deprivation- The Feast and the Famine

Chapter 7- Her Guardian Demon

Evil was beautiful. The devil stared down at Claudia with the face of a china doll. Claudia struggled to sit up, to get away. The pain in her hand, which had woken her, was forgotten under the gaze of this creature from the depths of Hell.

"You're alive," the blonde woman said. She reached out and stroked Claudia's face with her goopy hands.The sticky substance coating the woman's skin seemed to be Claudia's blood, but she did not particularly want it back.  

Claudia stilled. Like a frozen rabbit, she her only hope was to be forgotten.

"This place has killed hundreds.  And then there is us, the two he wants dead the most." The woman smiled.  Her teeth were not perfect.  One had a chip, and none looked properly cleaned.  This imperfection confused Claudia. Not an angel of death then.  Angels would have perfect teeth to go with their perfect faces. "He throws us all down here and we die.  But you are alive, pretty, pretty, little, rich girl."

Then when Claudia didn't respond, the blonde woman sat back against the wall behind her and began to clean her nails.   

Fear evaporated, and Claudia looked  at her hand.  Wrapped in cloth, the wound hid, but she could see her blood, ever so slowly, creeping across the fabric. An arrow. He shot me with an arrow.  

"Stung by cupid's bow, no worse harm than that," blondey said. " Careful, that can kill just as well as any other shaft."

The statement hit Claudia.  It seemed love had burned far hotter and more painfully than her hand currently did. Now it had changed. Everything was different in this place. Everything was different without hope.

Her ardor ran cold now. Sludgeing slowly through her veins like fresh off-put of a glacier.  It was devoid of passion and flame but not dead. Love hibernated ready to spring to life and burn her.  It roamed through her like a ghost not allowing her respite, but not offering her hope either.  She wanted to believe in something but could not believe in him. Her past trust and passion were far away, barely even a memory. She could hardly recall any world but this.  Was there a world out there not pervaded with death and despair?  Was there a world with a reprieve from pain? It seemed she had never known one. Her brief time of joy and security in his arms was a lie.  Even then hadn't she been wary? Hadn't she known deep down their happiness was a fever dream, nothing to hold onto?

Still, he hummed around her. Nothing but a dull, constant ache. She'd thought such a loss would stab like cupid's arrow.  She'd never suspected the slow, continual bleeding that would come after.  She'd die of it but never know the fervor of death nor love again.  Made for him and only him, her heart starved inside her.  But her brain forgot enmeshed in her current trials.  Both recoiled from a horror to immense to face.

"I'm dead already," she murmured. Her voice was soft and harsh like the cold hard rattle before death--and just as bitter.

The woman's blue eyes glittered.  Something about them was as dark as midnight in the middle of a rainstorm. They were the eyes of night hidden behind blue sky. They were cruel and soulless with a howling wind so loud Claudia could barely hear her next words. "You're the one he intended to marry aren't you?  You're the only one who knows."

"Yes, I am and no, I don't.  I know nothing. This is real, so none of that was." Why did she answer?  The dead didn't not speak. There was no reason to fear or placate this porcelain doll.

"Oh, all of it was real. When I see him, I will rip his heart out of his chest.It will be worth it just to hear his rib-cage splinter." A look of ecstasy crossed her features and her blue eyes half shut.

Claudia stared in apathy. Even the fear of death had fled from her now. She searched for it and found nothing.

"You loved him too," the other woman hissed. "None of the others did, whores and wretches hardly worth the skin they so quickly lost, but you and I loved him."

"Did I?" Claudia said. "I suppose, I must have.  My heart is bleeding to death; it's hard to recall anything. I loved, oh, I loved. I lusted. Now it doesn't matter. That was miles up, and it wasn't death."

"You are a bit crazy already," the woman said. Her smile was dazzling despite her teeth.  

How did I ever think I was lovely with her in the world?  

"Don't worry. I'll take care of you. You're hungry and thirsty. I know where to find the things you need. I've been down here a long time." Her hand strayed down to a pouch at her side and rhythmically stroked it.

Claudia lowered her eyes not able to gaze on evil any longer nor bear the strange beauty that lasted not only through poverty but imprisonment in hell. It made her sleeping heart tingle. Was it jealousy? If it was, it was too vague and distant to tell.

"He told me before he set me down here that he was going to marry. I knew it was you the moment I saw you. Your fancy dress and fetching ways.  At first..."

You were going to kill me yourself. Do his dirty work for him.

"But you are the only one who could understand. We understand each other you and I. The rest of them are nothing, and you'd do best to understand that. They are gutter trash, whores and thieves ... women of no worth to themselves or God."

"Or the devil," Claudia stared straight at the blonde devil-angel as she spoke. She half expected flames to erupt.  

"My name is Eudora."

"Claudia."

"Now," Eudora said, standing. Her body moved like one long fluid line of fire. It burned Claudia's night-starved eyes. Eudora's teeth gleamed like a wolf's from her now superior height.  "Let us find you something to eat."

Claudia reached out her uninjured hand. If I take the hand of the devil, I'm lost.  But she was lost anyhow.  God had already judged her harshly and cast her down.  No chosen child of his could have ended up in hell. No matter what the mechanisms of earth devised.  "I am one of the damned."

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