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Excerpt from a fictional story about the rape of a Vestal Virgin

It's too soon, but already I'm finding it difficult to breathe. There's no point to panic, I tell myself, because there is no escape. Fear left me with the sealing of my fate, the sealing of the heavy stone door that blocks out all light and sound from above. I am trapped, and left to die. And yet we call ourselves the most civilized of Peoples.
The ground is cold, the air musty and thick with the dust of centuries prior. How many others of us are dead and rotting around me? I cannot see, and they do not tell us such things at the Temple. They do not tell us much, except of our Goddess, and she is a joke. We serve her by denying ourselves the very sacraments of life that she Rules over, and besides, she has forsaken me. I gave up praying the night I was condemned to die.

I wonder, if my story is unique. But my story will die with me, for there is no one here to tell, and even if there were, there would be few willing to hear me out.
My feet burn, sore and battered in front of me. I hesitate to move, to inadvertently touch one of the others whom have died here before me. "The first to be such condemned in 120 years!" they announced, as if there were some virtue to them for that, or for this punishment they lay on me. I imagine they pretend they are freeing our People from corruption, whilst Corruption lives in the hearts of those in power. Because a woman of twenty-four years, who has spent better than two-thirds of them in the Temple of Vesta, can be such a threat to the outside world she barely remembers existing in. "A woman of such privilege!" they called in disgust, seeking an expression of guilt from me, but I was too exhausted to even acknowledge it. And why should I have, when the guilt lies neither at my feet nor would they listen if I tried to explain? A woman of privilege, but like most women of Rome, I existed to be an adornment in silence, and not to speak aloud. To serve, and my servitude is to be rewarded with death. If I could bring myself to pray, I would ask only that my demise be rapid.
Yet as I sit here, cold and in pain, my thin dress ragged around my legs from the barbaric parading that's left me weak and humiliated, I know that will not be the case. I will freeze and starve, days or weeks in this dark tomb, while life goes on as usual above me. Few will even think of me after today.
I wonder if my parents were in the crowd.

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