True Love
Chapter 12
"A new team of handlers was appointed, including two women. They wasted
little time introducing themselves to Beverly. Her regimen was modified based on
her previous reactions to the various procedures she had endured and her current
physical status. There was not sufficient time available to come to any
meaningful conclusion concerning her mental state. For the better part of three
days Beverly got her fondest wish, to be shown no mercy."
"I have neither the time nor the inclination to go into detail
concerning the things that were done to this already weakened shell of a woman.
It is doubtful that she was able to sleep for more than a few minutes at a
stretch during this intensive period of torment. Not only did she revisit such
places as the "shower" and tank rooms, she spent hour after hour alternating
between frigid baths in brine solutions and mindlessly thrashing about in tubs
of heated oil, as portions of her unprotected skin sloughed from her body. She
was forced to consume soap, vinegar and fiery chili peppers that literally
burned the lining of her mouth and throat. To add to her torment these meals
were followed with huge amounts of water that was forced into her shrunken
stomach via tubing that she either swallowed or had inserted through her
nostrils. Even as her belly rounded then bulged from the torrent of water that
flowed into it, her captors made sure that she had other pain to deal with."
"They gave her feet a great deal of attention. Beverly's legs were
raised and roped tightly to the posts attached to the bench to which she was
strapped while she was being bloated. The soles of her feet were beaten with
lengths of rubber tubing loaded with lead shot. Then live steam was used to
scald the swollen flesh until the tough skin split open. She passed out
frequently as they slowly parboiled her heels, then moved to the instep and
finally the balls of her now scarlet feet. Still far from being satisfied they
began to drive hatpins beneath her toenails, as many as five metal slivers were
wedged under the nails of her big toes causing terrible pain. When they began to
heat the lengths of thin metal, she screamed and shrieked until her voice
cracked, pounding her head against the bench in hopes of knocking herself out.
The process was repeated until the very sensitive flesh beneath each toenail had
been seared."
"She endured numerous sessions on the wheel in the tank room. At first
her new handlers tried to bring her as close to drowning as was possible,
depending on the data from the sensors to monitor progress. An added element to
this torment involved having her share the tank with various large and small
swimming creatures. Beverly wore special goggles that prevented her from seeing
her companions, leaving it to her imagination to decide on their appearance and
threat capabilities. The first session went well, Beverly proved to be her own
worst enemy, reacting violently to any physical contact she had with these
things she could not see."
"Subsequent sessions proved to be even more stressful. The next time
they added leeches to the tank's population. By the time Beverly was removed
from the tank, dozens of these blood-sucking worms, as large as four inches in
length, had attached themselves to her pitifully thin body, feasting on it. When
they revived Beverly and allowed her to realize what her mind had only imagined,
she had a massive panic attack that totally incapacitated her. Then the
blood-bloated leeches were torn from her body, usually leaving behind the plates
of teeth the worms used to make their hideous connection. To compound the horror
that she was experiencing they collected the leeches and later force-fed them to
her while she was undergoing other tortures."
"When it once again came time for her "swim", as they described it among
themselves, it took three handlers using every bit of strength they could employ
to fasten the madly struggling wraith of a woman to the wheel. She was so panic
stricken that as soon as she went under the warm, murky water her lungs began to
fill with water. This behavior continued intermittently for over an hour.
Finally they left her partially submerged, but free to breath, and totally alone
in the tank room. Gradually Beverly calmed down to the point that they could
begin to cycle her slowly, leaving her totally submerged for longer and longer
periods of time. Soon she was struggling to avoid taking the brackish water into
her lungs, a normal response for a sane person. It was then that they loosed a
new horror on her."
"Beverly was so preoccupied by her efforts to avoid drowning that she
failed to notice that a pair of newcomers had joined her. It took a few minutes
for one of them to react to her struggling. Feeling threatened, the yard long
fish, popularly known as an electric eel, delivered nearly two hundred volts to
its adversary. Beverly was totally submerged at the time and this terrible jolt
of electricity paralyzed her immediately. As the first of a series of spasms
shuddered through her body, water poured down her throat and through her
nostrils, flooding her lungs. This time the handlers were prepared and in less
than two minutes she was out of the tank and undergoing CPR. Still it took many
minutes before the combination of CPR and a number of shocks from a portable
defibrillator restored her vital signs. However this time more damage than was
apparent to those handling and monitoring her had occurred. It would be another
day before they realized that her limit for fear had been breached, and it's
terrible consequences."
