The Horror

Proserpina

I will never know how I made it through the hours of waiting for the axe to fall. I ate the stale bread and the lumpy cereal, barely aware of the taste. Staring around me, I figured out that it was mid-morning when the door opened.

Another woman entered a little while later, this time a woman who was in a long skirt and had her head covered with a gaily coloured scarf. She spoke in a dialect that I did not understand. Her black eyes, narrow and slightly slanted, were rimmed with kajal, the traditional black eye make-up, worn by women in some parts of the world.

She flashed a look of disdain at me and indicated that I should bathe. In her hands, she had a bar of some coarse soap, a towel and shampoo. I rose to my feet, dread in every pore of my body.

I stepped inside the tiny bathroom and washed myself as best as I could, lathering my hair with the shampoo. To my horror, she stood in the doorway, watching me, totally unconcerned at my efforts to hide my nudity from her cold