Time was crawling past, moving at a rate of nothing. It seemed to Mary years since the girls screaming had turned to sobbing, and eventually into small groans. However the reality was it can't really have been more than a hour or two. Now there was silence which was occasionally interrupted by a struggled breath. The girls broken body had been dumped back in with her a while ago. She just lay on the floor now, twitching occasionally. Mary watched on safe in the knowledge that the men would be gone awhile. At only eight years old Mary had seen her fair share of nastiness. All she wanted to do was help. With the last of her water from her meal and a rag cloth Mary tried in vain the clean the girls wounds, wash away the dried blood and grime. This certainly wasn't the first girl that they'd left in this condition recently and Mary knew exactly what was coming. That final breath, the sound, the sound would stay with her for the rest of her miserable life. She waited for the inevitable as she sat stroking the girls hair, hoping that somehow she understood she wasn't alone or in danger in her last moments. Finally that last rattling breath came. And now there was silence. No one else knew she had died, no one yet knew it was time to mourn. Except Mary. Mary wept, Mary mourned, Mary died a little with with this girl. She can't have been more that fourteen or fifteen years old and now she lay dead on the dirt floor. As a final act Mary tried to clean the girls face. Her family, if she had any deserved to see her without the tear streaks. She hoped the men would be gentle, respectful with the body this time. She knew they wouldn't, they didn't care.

Mary curled up in the corner and waited for the sun to rise and wondered, and not for the first time, if the next death would be her own.