the dungeon has...

The sun was beating down, harder than ever in the midday glare. It flamed, filling the sky, forcing us to squint against it. Sweat poured from us, our pale skins were unused to such conditions. We watched the scene as it unfolded before us.

Dust clogged our throats. It swirled in giant circles over the barren land. Around us there were few signs of life; bare, infertile soil, corpses of plants sticking up where there was once life. A gathering of small huts encircled us, but they were falling apart from neglect.

It shamed us to see the plight of these people, to know that there was little that we could do for them. They were starving, ribs protruding from their chests, and we watched.

Some children nearby were scrabbling in the dirt, from the forlorn hope of finding even the tiniest scrap of food. It was obviously in vain, but perhaps this was all that these children had ever known.

Drought had plundered the land, tearing from it the vestiges of any former fertility. Soil had turned to dust. Dust which stung out eyes, tore at our throats, and which had created the downfall of these too long suffering people. It had removed any vestiges of previous dignity.

The sun, as if trying to tear through the heavens, turned the wilderness into an inflamed pit. The people sitting beneath us did not seem to notice, or even care. Movement occasionally proved their spirit, only a small step separated them from the dead.

Above us vultures, or other carrion birds, wheeled. They too hungered. They could feel the deaths to come, and were prepared to wait. There was little meat on their bones.

How must it be to know that it is only time keeping you from destruction, unless it rains, and soon? I could not know, I could never know. I had not been brought up in this place or any like it. Watching the scene I was numbed, unable to cope with the reality. Such a thing could not be. It contrasted with all I had ever known. I wished to tell these people, “Take all I have, it’s yours. I do not need it half as much as you.” But I could not.

A young girl, skeletal in shape lay on the brink, close to oblivion. Disease covered her body, flies ate her face and eyes. Sickened, I wanted to close my eyes, but perverse fascination was forcing me too watch. She looked about seven or eight, but the people here told me she was sixteen. Her legs were bone, she seemed incapable of standing, no longer human. Just a pile of skin and rags.

We stood and watched as she left this earth. The crowd gathered at this pitiful scene froze. The tiny figure lay entirely still, small and pathetic. After a pause, a man walked up to her and closed her bleeding eyes. He could do no more. When he turned back we could see tears on his face, the only water in this godforsaken place. In our hearts we prayed. Prayed that this young girl could now be at peace. Years of suffering come to this. What point is there, what point at all?

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