The damp, suffocating darkness of the basement had completely consumed whatever lingering fragments of time Roxy had left.
Three weeks had passed since the heavy iron door had first locked behind her. Twenty-one agonizing days of starvation, electrical torture, and freezing, biting isolation.
Roxy was no longer a Matriarch. She was barely even a living human being.
Her neck was too weak to support the weight of her own skull. Her head hung limply, her chin resting against her hollowed, skeletal chest. Her clothes were reduced to a tattered, filthy rag clinging to her protruding ribs. It was stiff with dried blood, sweat, and grime.
She had completely stopped crying. It was not a choice born of bravery or sudden resilience; her physical body had simply run entirely out of fluids. Her tear ducts were completely dry, burning with a scratchy, agonizing friction every time she blinked.
