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Day 23 Under the Floor

She woke with a start – the sound of harsh voices barked overhead, boots marching across the floorboards. The air had that same musty smell as always – a sour, rotten smell of sweat, decaying food and something worse.

She began her morning exercises – stretching out each leg to its full extent, then bending each knee up to her chest – in and out, 50 times, then the same for her arms, touching her toes each time.

“Keep yourself moving,” her grandmother had said. “Make sure you are never weak or tired if they come for you, no matter what.”

She took the rucksack out of the gap between the beams above her head, and rummaged around in it, pulling out another greenish slice of bread and some dried fruit. She ate them slowly, methodically, letting the flavour of the fruit conceal the damp taste of mould.

She pulled a plastic bag out to use for her daily business, then when finished dropped it down to the the side where all their waste lay. “No kind of resting place for grandmother’s body,” she thought.

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