"Yes. That happens the first night we are here. She does it with her nails."
"And she comes every night?"
"Every night. She feeds us and sings to us and we applaud. When one of us dies, she unchains the body, and throws it down a hole somewhere. She talks to us about that hole sometimes and brags that she is going to fill it up before she stops."
"But who is helping her?"
"I think it is the real-estate man. Of course, the old devils upstairs help. I think that they must drug us. Some of the men say that they went to sleep in their beds and woke, chained to their posts."
My voice trembled as I bent over and whispered in his ear, "What would you do, George, if she came and sang, and you found that you were not chained? You and the other men not chained? What would you men do, George?"
"Ask them," he snarled. "Ask them, one at a time. But I know what I would do. I know!"
And he started to cry, because he could not do it the next second; cried from rage and helplessness till the tears ran from his empty sockets.
"Does she always come at the same time?"
"As far as I know. But time is nothing to us. We just wait for death."