The Dictator's Claw

Chapter 4 --- Cherry Popping

“One more time, cunt, what did you tell that reporter?” Isamu growled, his low voice sifting through the interrogation cell from the speakers, toward the handcuffed girl: a suffocating, torpid wind.

The big man's cock was fully sheathed in the velvety mouth of a young, dark-haired servant girl. Her tongue rotated lithely around the shaft, lapping lightly at the head of his penis, teasing him, almost daring him to come. Isamu braced himself against the plush velvet cushions of the ornate armchair that the General favored when supervising interrogations from his large, climate-controlled office. The power he felt, when using the General's shadowy lair, surpassed anything that he had come to know when working in other parts of the palace. To bask in coddled luxury, while those he tormented writhed in the most squalid conditions, gave him indescribable pleasure. It was almost as if the evil, diseased soul of his superior entered him during these times, overtaking him and obliterating everything he had experienced in his life up to this point. He often imagined himself wearing the General's elaborate uniform, sucking hungrily on his cigarette holder, watching victims dance fruitlessly at his whim, futilely beseeching mercy which would never be felt or granted.

“I know nothing! I never spoke to…” the girl in the cell shrieked, eyes bugging out of her head wildly. She shook her arms violently, but the tightly wrenched manacles above her head offered no relief.

Isamu reached over and, with his gloved hand, casually raised the setting on the dial in the golden console, to the right of his chair. The temperature meter at the top of the panel, which constantly monitored the heat in the onscreen torture cell, smoothly climbed another ten degrees. 180° F. Just lovely, he thought. He adjusted the focus on the monitor with yet another dial, zooming in on his victim's tear-drenched face. He had to admit that this one, with her flowing blonde tresses, firm tits, and hourglass waist, was a rarity for these parts. But since the lock-down on the borders, there had been a few odds and ends that weren't normally found in Tarakimo.

He smiled smugly as he observed the sweat beads popping to life on the girl's contorted brow. “I'm going to wring it out of you, bitch. I hope you remembered your extra-dry anti-perspirant…” he laughed sarcastically, watching the girl's cringing face as she observed the change in the five-foot tall thermometer mounted to the cell's side wall. A strangled, crazy cry escaped the captive girl's full, pouting lips while his manhood expanded even further into the petite servant girl's jaws, virtually choking her. She backed off of him, struggling to regain her breathing.

Isamu's anger flared, and he smacked the kneeling girl in the face with one of Tara 's shorter riding crops. The unexpected distraction instantly caused him to go soft, and he glanced with irritation at his watch. Almost two in the afternoon. The general would be finishing up with the two in his bedroom very shortly. The idea of the old man finding him here, utilizing his personal effects, would normally have just excited him further. Isamu liked a touch of danger. Today, though, the thought unnerved him. His boss had been, by turns, the happiest and the most crazed he had witnessed in five years, ever since Palmer's capture. He did not want to be on the wrong side of the tyrant's emotional spectrum right now.

The tortured girl's sweat began to hit the metal plate on which she was standing in streams, in the narrow enclosure where she was bound. Instantly, voltage crackled through her, sending her lovely body into convulsions, her blonde hair jerking spasmodically over her creamy white shoulders.

Isamu bent forward and gripped the servant girl by the back of the head, forcing her to continue stroking his cock. He increased the temperature in the cell by another twenty degrees. He wanted this to end with a bang.

He shut his eyes for a second, indulging in the sweet contralto screams pulsing from the audiophile-grade speakers that surrounded his comfy chair from all angles of the office. The tightness around his penis grew immeasurably as the image of the girl began to plead with him: “Please, please…General…I'll do anything you want! Just….. st-o-o-oooop!” Isamu smiled widely at her use of his phony title, leaned back, and shot his load into the girl at his feet. He let out a satanic, bellowing laugh as ropey, white jets bubbled from her mouth, drenching her shaking, chestnut-brown body.

Listening with delight at the small sizzling sounds in his speakers, as the plate began to fry the onscreen girl's delicate, small feet, he thought nastily that a fair-haired beauty such as this could go a long way toward pleasuring him in the future. He almost felt regret.

Almost.

*************************************************************

Colin Gallagher sat, sipping lukewarm, stale coffee in the lounge area of the Liberty Times . Checking the large clock on the wall, he thought grimly that he would be here for another four hours, at least, while the fact checkers verified his latest story. NBC, the only channel available on the ancient television bolted to the corner of the break room wall, streamed an endless parade of talking heads that was only tolerable due to the lowered sound.

He turned and looked over his shoulder as Sven Stevenson shuffled in, heading toward the sink.

“Hey, make a fresh pot as long as you're up there, OK?” he called to him.

“Like you'd know the difference….” Stevenson retorted, smiling slightly.

“Aw, fuck you….” Colin batted back. After Sven put on a fresh pot, the large, shaggy-maned blonde man ambled over to join his colleague on the old, lime-green sofa.

“Whatcha watching?” Sven asked, robotically removing a cigarette from a pack in his front pants pocket and taking out a Bic lighter.

“Just more of the same,” Colin returned, “these mainstream news networks are still barely refusing to acknowledge Palmer's even missing,” he said disgustedly. “How's your arm?”

Sven glared at the wretched cast that had weighted down his arm for close to three weeks now. “Son-of-a-bitch comes off Saturday,” he fumed. “Hey, you wanna shoot nine holes this weekend?” he added, brightening considerably.

Colin gave the big Swede a bemused look. It had remained a mystery to him how Sven Stevenson even kept his job at the Times . Most of his work was sloppy, if not late. He had already been suspended twice in the past year, once for a scuffle with a cop. If he hadn't hooked up with Diana Palmer (another inexplicable puzzle), whose uncle owned a large share of a number of news networks, including the one which owned the Times , Colin was sure he'd have been fired long ago.

“Don't you have a deadline on Monday, man?” he asked, attempting to sound casual.

Sven shot him a look. “All my shit's done, turned in,” he said, almost boastfully.

“Lucky you,” Colin stated flatly. “I'm gonna be in all weekend writing that follow-on piece to Carey's interview.”

Sven shifted uncomfortably in his chair and lit his cigarette. “You ask me, you just go looking for more work for yourself, my man,” he said soberly, giving Colin's knee a friendly punch.

“Yeah, that's me. The muckraker,” he rejoined, invoking the nickname that Gerald Mbuttu, their publisher, had bestowed on him long ago.

“Personally, I'm a little leery of that guy's story, myself,” Sven said, taking a drag from his cigarette.

“You can't be serious, Sven.” Colin set his coffee cup down on the battered faux-wood table in front of them and examined the large man's face for signs of humor, which would have been twisted, even coming from him.

“ What? ” Sven protested. “Oh, come on, Colin! The guy was strapped to a chair with a billion nails sticking out of it for what….two hours? And he comes away with nary a scratch on his little grey head? Fuckin' ridiculous, if you ask me!”

“So, you're saying he just made the whole thing up. Why the hell would he do that? You saw this sick torture equipment with your own eyes!”

“Uh, maybe to revive his flagging career so he can go on drawing his funny little cartoons? To get publicity? How the fuck would I know? Besides, I never saw any ‘torture chair.'”

Colin had seen Sven like this before. He had made the mistake of going drinking with the man only once, but had witnessed a very belligerent, very mean drunk. Only Sven couldn't be drinking in the middle of the day, could he? He leaned a little closer to the photographer, searching for a whiff of something alcoholic. He wasn't trying to get the man fired, but he was hoping it could explain his glibness.

“Sy Carey is one of the most respected, most honored reporters we have among us today,” Colin stated, as if reading from a press bio. He hated to take this high-handed approach, but felt it was justified. “You know, Sven, I've been wanting to ask you some questions about what happened over there. Seems you went through some serious shit, and now….”

Sven leaped up from the couch and jammed his cigarette butt into an ashtray. “This is fuckin' bullshit! I get this crap day-in, day-out from everyone from the New York fuckin' Times to the San Francisco Chronicle . I don't need to hear it from you! No one cares more about Diana than I do, man, no one!

Colin jumped to his feet and grabbed the big man's arm. “Hey! Look, I'm not saying shit, OK? You were scared, we all realize that. Fortunately, the true version of your story got out before Tara 's thugs could bully you into changing it. No one believes that Athens cover story! I'm just…concerned about you, alright? Are you being threatened?”

“No, no,” Sven said, brushing away the arm and sitting down again. “Well…yeah, kind of,” he admitted. He tilted his head back on the couch, looking like he was ready to collapse with exhaustion.

“Let me get you some coffee,” Colin said, in as soft a voice as he could muster. When he returned with the cup, he put it gently in his shaking hand. “Listen…nobody blames you. I wanted to ask, for my own curiosity, mostly: what was it like to be that close to Tara ? I mean, you had cigars and Brandy with the man, right?”

“Off the record,” Sven said suspiciously, “and I mean off-off the record…”

“Yes, most definitely,” Colin said, with his straightest poker face.

“It was a fuckin' trip,” Sven murmured, in almost an awestruck tone. He put his hands over his face, and for a minute it looked to Colin as if he were sobbing. But, to his horror, when the ruddy blonde man unshielded himself, he looked tickled, almost giddy . Colin's stomach began to turn uneasily.

“I gotta tell you, man, it was an experience that I'm sure will go right along side those guys who interviewed Castro and shit. Y'know what I'm sayin'?”

Colin nodded, entranced.

“That fuckin' guy is like a king around that place: a god, man. Un-fucking-believable! Anything he wants, right at his feet! Money, women, cars, boats….”

“Yeah, Sy told me. People, too.” Colin said, his voice as dead as a phone wire.

Sven snatched another look at his co-worker, and again got up. “It was a trip,” he said, yet again. “Look, I've gotta go. I've got some stuff to develop for…” he trailed off, looking pissed.

“So, what did you talk about? Who's threatening you?” Colin pressed, secretly knowing this was the last time he'd probably ever get another answer from the man.

“Just shit, no one,” Sven popped off. “Gotta run.”

Colin just stared at the man as he watched him leave the room.

*************************************************************

As the sun slowly sank in the Western sky outside Sy's bedroom window, beaming oblique shafts of light toward his eyes in dusty streams, the aging reporter knew that he had to get his ass out of bed, at some point. For the past weeks, and since the phone call from Palmer, especially, all he had wanted to do was curl up in his big bed, throw the tattered duvet over his frail body, and think of nothing. He had even taken sleeping pills in the middle of the day today, even though he had slept for over ten hours the night before.

You're a goddamn wreck Carey, admit it, he told himself.

His wife's sudden death, two years before, had thrown him into a comatose reverie of work and sleep, and lately it was getting hard to do little, if any, of the former. He was committing to an increasing number of deadlines and missing an alarming amount of them; the quality of his work becoming a fraction of what it once was. Diana Palmer's kidnapping had been the nail in his coffin. A part of him secretly despised the girl for that.

But why? The last series of drawings he had submitted to the Times , to run with the post-kidnapping expose´ section, had earned him great accolades from Gerald. “This is just what we need to show the world, Sy,” the large Nigerian editor had said, patting him on the back admiringly. “People need to see Tara for what he is; they need a visual, since there are barely any photographs of the beast in existence. And they particularly need to see what Diana is no doubt being put through, at his hands.”

Maybe, Sy thought, but this latest round of drawings had also earned him the ghoulish care package that he'd opened today, as well. He knew better than anyone that Tara's goons were everywhere. A man with his wealth and power had very long arms and, even though Sy rarely left his small bungalow, except to walk on the nearby beach, he was always looking for the odd stranger who seemed particularly interested in him.

It wasn't difficult to spot Tara 's thugs. Always big bruisers, his heavies stuck out like dried shit in a swimming pool. The last one, a hulking black man dressed in an unseasonably heavy three-piece suit, had followed him intermittently through the San Diego zoo, when he had made a visit last Tuesday with his granddaughter, Kaylie. But he was simply the latest in a series. He suspected they'd been watching him for years now. The thought of being in the maniac's clutches once more caused his guts to heave. He closed his eyes tightly as the dictator's foul, laughing visage floated before him, toasting his imminent delivery to the palace with a glass of chilled Dom Perignon.

His phone rang sharply, scaring the bejesus out of him. He turned to the bedside table and lifted it onto his bed gingerly, then picked up the receiver. His mouth was frozen. He said nothing.

“H-hello? Mr. Carey?” a young, graceful voice streamed over the line.

“Yes?”

“This is Diana Palmer.”

Sy instantly sprang up, almost knocking his head on the wall behind him.

“Miss…I….” he stammered.

“Listen to me. I'm in terrible danger. I know you can help me,” the girl murmured, sounding out of breath and terrified.

This couldn't be, Sy thought. Couldn't be. But it did sound like her. Even though he'd spoken to her only briefly at a journalism convention in Paris , two years ago, her voice was familiar mostly due to her plentiful interviews and semi-celebrity status.

“I'm in Tarakimo, at the palace. I don't have much time…” she continued.

“How did you get my number?” Sy asked, unable to mask his disbelief.

“I have an old Times directory, and you're the only one I felt safe calling. I'm sorry to do this…” she said, her frightened voice drifting off. “I'm pretty sure this line is scrambled…wait…they're coming.... Please, I need you to write this inf….”

Suddenly Sy heard a scream and, for several minutes, nothing but static and heavy breathing on the line. Then, a man's gruff voice: “One word about this, and you're next, asshole.” The line went dead.

Sy ripped the phone from the wall and flung it to the floor, gulping air in tortured breaths.

*************************************************************

Diana's eyelids fluttered briefly and she regained consciousness. The last thing she remembered was a horrific torrent of pain in her mouth and screaming…it must have been her own screaming, she realized weakly.

Her head was pounding and she struggled to clear it, but her vision was blurred. She needed food and water. She'd had neither since last night, in her prison cell. What could she do to earn more? she asked herself, almost by impulse. But she knew the obvious answer and her mind flared with resistance. Starvation and dehydration had never been Tara 's primary tools of choice for torture, and she didn't expect this time would be any exception. No, he would have something far more diabolic in mind.

Her eyes finally became clear and her limbs became somewhat active, as she began to shake them. But as she did, she realized there was nothing supporting her but strands of thick, rough rope. She was suspended in mid-air, at least thirty feet off the ground, in a massive peaked stone chamber, at least sixty feet in height and twenty feet in length on each of the four structural sides. She appeared to be inside a capsule of some sort. Her arms were tied behind her back, not particularly tightly, but with plenty of rope. She could feel a multitude of complex knots grazing her back. Her arms and legs were tied with long ropes to an elaborate pulley system, and under her ass, a group of ropes that connected her arms and feet were pulled together by a few sparsely tied knots. It was like sitting in a very large swing, and then the name finally came to her. The Judas Cradle: one of the absolute worst depravities from the darkest days of the Middle Ages, resurrected painstakingly by the general's torture engineers to its uncontestably offensive glory.

“Almost a piece of sculpture, isn't it, pet?” Tara chimed, his voice bouncing off the stone walls in a sinister orchestration of timbre.

Diana looked downward disgustedly and spotted her arch-nemesis, arrayed opulently in a black formal military mess uniform, sprawled casually on a large throne chair, ripping apart a roast bird with his bare hands. He wasn't even looking at her, concentrating as he was on licking the oil from his fat digits, prissily dabbing at his mouth and mustache with a large cloth napkin. Her mouth began to pool with spit at the sight of the golden-brown delicacy her tormentor was so greedily inhaling. The rich aroma it gave off was intoxicating. She could almost taste the pungent herbs and spices it was undoubtedly doused in. After he finished sucking a slender bone completely to the marrow, he tossed it carelessly on a silver tray to his side. He swirled a ruby red fluid in a massive crystal goblet, lazily resting his large beak in the nose of the glass, inhaling, before taking a noisy gulp. He set it aside, belched loudly, and began his noxious laughter.

“Such a fine Pinot!” he crowed, patting his large paunch with contentment. “I'm sure you've heard I have quite the cellar,” he bragged. “Perhaps I'll give you a look sometime. It's immediately below the bedroom. You know…where you tortured and killed your first victim this morning? First blood is always a cause for grand celebration. Consider this ritual a cherry-popping, of sorts!” he hooted.

“You bastard!” she shrieked at him, writhing around as much as she could on the small area of rope beneath her, until she threatened to spill over. After steadying herself, she instantly felt her mouth begin to throb, pain flooding her skull. Diana threw her head back and howled in an insane burst of misery. She was slowly going crazy, and fought madly to regain her quickly vanishing composure.

“Yes, the sedative would be wearing off about now, wouldn't it?” the fiend laughed, reaching into his coat pocket for a stout Cuban cigar to complete his decadent meal. “Too bad. It's going to make what I have planned even more unpleasant for you!” he chuckled, lighting the monstrous log from a soldier's outstretched match, puffing happily.

“Please stop…please….” Diana found herself begging, and the resulting grin on the tyrant's smug face made her skin crawl. This is all he ever hoped to hear…what he truly wants, she thought.

“So, the Judas Cradle is what finally brings brave little Diana Palmer to her knees…well, so to speak,” he chortled. “This was disappointingly swift , I must say. Not even one complete day in my grasp and you're already crumbling like a piece of used-up soap.” He leaned back in his chair, letting the expensive smoke swirl about him, and then nodded his head. “Good. You're beginning to realize you're nothing but a spoiled little bitch with an impertinent tongue, and too much of her daddy's money. But, I'll find good uses for both of those, in time, never fear....” he trailed off, his eyes glazing over behind a pair of rimless, tinted reading glasses that seemed to cast a hood, of sorts, over the top half of his face.

He ignored her, as she started to sob, and gestured to a group of nearby foot soldiers. The men opened a gigantic, wheezing wooden door and wheeled in a massive device, over twenty-five feet tall. Diana's eyes grew wide as a perfectly erect, golden phallus --- a depraved modern art exhibit if ever she'd seen one --- was rolled across the stone floor toward her, on a giant platform.