Chapter 86: Crawling fear

In that dark room, she slept and lived. She ate meagerly, just to keep herself alive. She sat in her bed with its blue drapes that were scrunched and stared at the closed window. Its curtains hung like ghosts of the night.

Her bones started showing and her auburn hair became gnarled. Her nails grew like talons and the room started to smell like her sweat. She sat with her eyes blank and her ears closed. Her mother came every hour or every day, that she did not know, but he heard her tears dripped with words about her brother. She did not care, for she was broken.

Servants came to her room, day after day to feed her. She opened her mouth like a turned clock and chewed. One woman tried to move and wash her, so she scratched her face with the talons.