The host scratches his chin.

‘Except that there is no education in your religion.’

‘Education is a subjective thing.’

‘Have you given away a child to be a Slave?’

Peter tilts his head.

‘We all have.’

The catafalque opens up as a trap door, and Aunt Márti falls like a stone into the darkness hidden deep within the church. The priest steps away so the mourners can take one last look at the corpse in the depths.

They come one by one to look down into the darkness and cry. They cry because Aunt Márti is disappearing from the world of the living once and for all. They cry because they know that they will all eventually end up like this. And inside, they all tremble at the sound that marks every funeral.

There is always someone who screams.

‘Good night, my love,’ old Peter mumbles through his tears when he looks into the pit. The body lies on the earth floor, limbs twisted from the impact. Old Peter steps away from the catafalque. Csabi takes his place and looks down. He has prepared himself for the worst, but not this. He doesn’t scream because he is too exhausted, but he feels a scream stuck in his throat nevertheless, and he’ll have to release it sooner or later.

Leila looks down at the corpse and the Slaves. She wonders if her brother is among them. He must be, if he is alive, although it’s impossible to tell the Slaves apart. They have no faces anymore, just scars.

The Sunless Slaves do their work.

Their noises fill up the church, grunting and groaning, the clacking of their teeth as they search the corpse for the softest parts. The skin and flesh are torn with a sound like the snapping of a rubber strap, ligaments cracking as the Slaves pull the limbs to get a piece for themselves.

Leila watches them and thinks that she could have become one of them. If they hadn’t chosen her brother instead, then she would have grown up in the darkness as well, with her eyelids sewn together, never hearing a human voice. She would know nothing but the cellars and death and pain. Life would be so much easier that way. With every second there’s less and less left of Aunt Márti as the Slaves bite and swallow, chew and gulp, until nothing remains down there but them and the surrounding darkness.

They are starved before funerals so they will finish up the body as soon as possible, a gesture of kindness from the church towards the family of the deceased. When the body disappears completely into the stomach of the Slaves, they close up the catafalque, and the present time of mourning begins to fade again into the permanent past of life.