Author’s Note

            These narratives were constructed around the activities of an online community called Witchseekers, in 2004. It was an online role play/chain story built on members’ contributions, with significant events – especially the interrogation and execution of members “accused” of being witches – detailed in story form.

            My own role in the group was initially as Torturess, then, after staging a coup and toppling the Witchseeker General, I became the all-powerful Witchseeker General – until I too was overthrown and arrested.

            Things were just getting interesting when the group was shut down by its host.

            These narratives, disjointed and notably light on any kind of plot other than their basic formula of torture-confession-execution, are my only record of the Witchseekers story, but I wanted to share them with the BDSM community.

            Please note that there is little to no expressed sexual content in any of these works, so to many they will be more horror fiction than erotic fiction. But there are those among us who find these dark tales sexy indeed …

 

Kirsten – 19 January, 2007

           

 

 

            They drag Janet in; she is wearing only a flimsy petticoat; her hands in iron fetters behind her back, a blindfold over her eyes.  Barefoot, shrieking and calling out, she stumbles on the stone steps as they hurry her down into the labyrinthine dungeon.

            They release their grip on her arms only once she is in the torture chamber.  Although she can’t see anything of her surroundings, she is in terror enough to drop at once to her knees and cower, arms behind her, at our feet.  Her bare, slender arms are coarse with goosebumps of cold and fear, and her nipples thrust nodes in the silk of her negligee.  She is slender, almost skinny, her figure small-breasted and boyish, but I note a panther-like strength in her pale limbs.  She will not break quickly.

            "Remove her blindfold."

            Janet reacts in horror as the cloth is taken from her eyes.  She barely registers my presence, her huge eyes taking in the ghastly shapes that loom in my torture chamber, shadows shifting in the guttering oily light of torches.

            "Recoil you might, Witch," I tell her coolly, "for some of these instruments you will soon experience for yourself."  I move to stand beside her, and twist my fingers into the thick strawberry-blonde mane that falls no lower than her bare shoulders.  She struggles to free her fettered wrists as I force her scan the awful vaulted dungeon.

"There is the rack, by which I can rend your limbs.  There, the horse on which you may writhe.  There, a cage to squeeze your limbs, there a table to which you may be shackled; and there, a chair of such depraved torment you will think you have descended to Hell itself.  See the scourges, flails, irons, tongs, pears, branks, and vices, all tools I may select for your flesh.  I will ask many questions, and in your agony, you will gladly offer me the truth."

Janet is shaking her head in desperate terror.  "Oh God, no, please!  I am innocent of any wrong!  You have arrested the wrong woman!  Please!"

"I grant that you may not know yourself as Evil," I say softly, and at this, I release her hair, kneeling beside her, clearing the strays of hair from her face.  "But Evil you are, and I will help you see it for yourself.  Only then will you repent: only then will we allow the Fire to cleanse you."

            Janet's eyes turn to fix upon my face in bewilderment, as if she has heard more than she can bear to absorb.  I stand.  "It is late.  We begin tomorrow.  Secure her."

            The guards hoist Janet to her feet and drag her across the chamber.  "No!  N-noo!" she shouts, and despite her fettered arms, she struggles to get free.  But she is taken to a space in the chamber in which dangle black iron fetters on a long chain.  Seeing them, Janet again cries out, but she is one woman against three men, and she has no strength to resist them.

            The fetters on her wrists are released, and one of the guards draws the petticoat, the only preservation of her modesty, over her head.

            "No!" she shrieks.  "Give it back!  You cannot!"  Suddenly naked, she grasps for the garment, but the guard holds it out of reach, and her arms are quickly caught.  Her arms are lifted to the shackles on their chains, and the hard metal is closed around her slender wrists.  It is well known that a Witch locked in iron cannot cast a spell, and it is this that keeps me safe.

            Quickly, she is secured.  Two of the guards then cross to a windlass, and turn it slowly.  The wooden axle groans and creaks; chain clatters and clanks through a pulley overhead, and by the fetters upon her wrists, Janet's arms are lifted.  She looks at me through the diamond-shape of her own raised arms, fearful, vulnerable in her nakedness.

            The windlass turns again, her wrists rise, and quickly her arms are pulled straight above her head.  Then the fetters bite into her hands, and her head tips back.  I watch as her body extends itself involuntarily.  Her arms stretch and the hollows of her armpits deepen; her breasts rise as her ribcage lifts; her belly hollows, her heels are raised from the stone floor, drawing out the slender muscles of her legs.

            The windlass turns again.  She gives a moan as the metal on her wrists hauls harder, so that only the ends of her toes are upon the floor.  Then another turn, and her body is raised off the floor.  Her feet swing back, her body taut and stretched, swaying on the end of the chain from her shackled wrists.

            "Oh - oh!  It hurts!" she finally calls, and I believe her.  It hurts to hang by the wrists, and even as the windlass cranks her higher, the pains shoot from her wrists, through her shoulders. She lets her head fall forward, her mouth open in pain and dismay, now looking at her own fanned toes, and the ten inches of empty air below them.

            The guards lock the windlass.  Janet is helpless.

            I like to inspect my prisoners, and I do so now, slowly.  Her slender body hangs taut, her head forward, feet drooping and pointing towards the floor.  The shackles have wedged against the heel of each hand, her fingers curled with the pressure of her body's weight.

            I circle to the front.  The corrugations of her ribcage are softened by the torchlight, but the goosebumps that cover her flesh add a fascinating texture.  Her nipples stand out, erect stalks in the chill dungeon air.  I note her pubic hair, a generous dark thatch, matched by the dark tufts in her armpits.  The light catches a streak of sweat from one underarm, running down her ribcage.

            I glimpse also the first tear as it rolls down her smooth cheek.  She hangs limp, but I know only too well the battle she fights.  For now, the only way she can manage the strain in her shoulders and elbows is to tense the muscles of her arms.  But in an hour, perhaps two, her strength will ebb, her muscles will burn with fatigue, and then, finally, will fail. Then she will discover a new pain: the slow, fiery menace of ligaments and tendons unaccustomed to taking her body's weight unassisted.

            By morning she will be in a nightmare of pain.  I would love to stay and watch, but I must leave and rest for tomorrow's work.

            I glance to my guards.  "Burn her nightdress.  We shall return in the morning."

            "No!  No, My Lady, I beg you!"  Momentarily forgetting her pain, Janet twists and writhes like a fish on a hook, her naked body swinging on the end of the chain.  But it is an utterly futile gesture, she cannot get free, and I barely give her a second glance as I lead my guards from the chamber, and we leave her to hang, alone.

 

            After breakfast, I assemble four guards, and we make our return to the chamber.

            This is another favourite moment.  When the Witch has already tasted torment, and yet knows nothing of what is to come; when the air is electric with possibilities and promise.

            Amidst the machines, the stone and dark wood of the torture chamber, hangs the pale, naked figure of Janet, suspended by her wrists above the floor.  Her bare skin shines with an oiling of sweat, the only outward sign of the agonies she has borne for nearly ten hours.

            “Bring her down,” I order.

            As her toes hit the floor, Janet’s body folds helplessly into the arms of two guards, her manacled and black-bruised wrists dropping loosely.  The fetters are undone, but her arms have no strength, and she is unresisting as the guards manacle her wrists together in front of her body, and lift her to her feet.

            “Bring her.”

            Janet is dragged from the torture chamber.  Though her arms are useless, she has enough strength in her legs to stumble along a dark, slimy corridor, then up a steep, narrow flight of steps.

            Doors open on a chamber perhaps thirty feet square.  Torches and braziers give light; directly ahead of the double oak doors is a huge table on a raised plinth, at which are seated two figures.  Oberon, the Witchseeker General, and his beautiful assistant, Tina.  Their faces are grim.  Books and papers lie upon the tabletop.

            I bow to them.  "My Lord Oberon, My Lady Tina, I present the prisoner for your inspection, Janet Halverson."

            It is Oberon who steps down from the plinth, and slowly circles the quivering Janet.  "Raise her arms," he orders.  A guard grasps the chains of Janet's wrist manacles and lifts it high, forcing Janet's arms above her head.  Oberon's scrutiny of her nude body is quick, but it is with practised eye that he notes every imperfection, every blemish upon her.  "Forward," he says.

            Pulling her arms down, the guards instead bend her at the hips.  Janet gives a grunt as she is doubled over, her buttocks and the hairy gully of her sex presented.  Oberon's inspection is intimate indeed, and I avert my eyes as he parts her lips, probes at the tight pucker of her anus.  Finally, he returns to the table, briefly washing his hands in a bowl of water.

            "Janet Halvorsen, you are here because you have been convicted of Witchcraft."

            Janet looks to me, and I nod, so she turns her eyes to the Witchseeker General.  "Sir, it is not true!  I am not a witch!"

            "Your name appeared in the Book of Shadows, which we found in the possession of the Witch Allielle.  And you know her fate."

            Janet's face dips long enough for all to see that she does know of the agony in which Allielle perished.  "I am not a witch," she whispers.

            "Save your protestations of innocence," Tina scoffs, "and for your sake, save your own flesh the agonies of the torture chamber by telling us what we need to know."

            "But - I don't know what you want," Janet wails.  To Oberon she pleads, "Sir, I beg you, do not let them hurt me!"

            "Tell us about the one they call Matmos."

            "Matmos?"  There is a flash of recognition on her face.

            "So you know him!" Tina pounces.

            Janet quickly shakes her head.  "No, My Lady.  I only know of him, and of his treachery.  I know that he preys upon young women, those for whom he lusts.  When they reject his advances, he …" Her eyes cloud with tears.  "He makes up stories about them, he has them taken away so he can do what he will with them … and then, so they cannot speak of what happened … they end up in agony, at the stake."  Her voice falters at the thought that she, too, was most likely destined for that fate.

            "Which women?" Oberon asks.

            "I know of one," Janet says.  "The one known as Daphne."

            "Daphne was a witch," Tina says.  "As are you."

            "No!"

            "As is Matmos.  Do not protect him, girl.  It will only bring you harm."

            "Why would I protect him?  He is not a witch, no more than I!"

            "LIES!"  Oberon's voice is a roar that sends Janet into a shrieking cower, and he thrusts his finger towards the door.  "Take her!" he bellows to me.  "Take her and wrest the truth from her bones!"

            The guards drag the shackled, struggling Janet down the dark, steep stairway towards the torture chamber once more.  "Please, oh, please, I beg you!  Please do not hurt me!  I am telling the truth!"

            "You may believe it to be the truth now," I say calmly, following behind.  "But such is the power of magic.  It is only pain that will drive away the fog that clouds your mind, and allow you to see the truth."

            "No-o-o-o!"

            Her scream echoes still as we reach the torture chamber.  "The horse," I order.

            Janet gapes helplessly at the ghastly structure.  Five feet high, upon sturdy oak legs, a sharp wedge-shaped construction, its peak uppermost like the pitched roof of a Swiss chalet.  Deaf to Janet's shrieks and wails for mercy, the guards prepare her.

            Her wrists are unfettered, only to be secured again behind her back.  More shackles are brought; her elbows are wrenched together and fettered so that they almost touch.  With arms so brutally forced together behind her back, her breasts are thrust out, like meringues topped by ripe pink berries.  The guards are visibly aroused.  Lingering at their task, they fix a heavy shackle about each of her ankles, each with a large iron ring hanging from it.

            "She is prepared, My Lady," I am told.

            I motion for them to wait.  Again, a moment to savour.

            Janet is held between them, her arms painfully cinched and fastened behind her, her ribcage shifting hard as she pants breath, her face pale with fear, her eyes fixed unfalteringly on the terrible instrument before her.

            Finally, I nod.  "Put her on."

            Like noblemen helping a lady onto her mount, the guards guide Janet Halverson's ascent onto the horse.  She is lifted high, and hands guide one leg over; then she is lowered upon it.  She tries, of course, to brace her descent with her bare knees; but they can find little friction, and the sharp wooden edge seems to pry open her thighs as she slides down onto its unforgiving ridge.

            "Aaaiiii!!"  Janet's soft, furry sex crunches hard onto the horse's peak.  Her face at once screws into an expression of pain, and despite her back-bound arms, she begins to scrabble her thighs against the smooth wood, desperate to lever herself off.  "Take me off!" she shrieks.

"Weights!" I order quickly.

Even as Janet tries to scrabble off the horse, the guards fetch two heavy iron weights - twenty-five pounds to each - and in a matter of moments, hook them over the rings on Janet's ankle fetters. Instantly her slender legs are drawn and taut, the peak of the horse seems to disappear up into her lovely bush, and her eyes bulge.

            "Aaaaahhhhhh!"  Janet gives a long cry. It is unbearable, and she pitches forward - but it is only for a moment, as her labia and clitoris are crunched onto the sharp edge of the horse, causing even worse pain that snatches her breath away.  In a gyration of torment, she fights to tilt her pelvis back again, desperate to find relief from the pain.

Her eyes find me even as the sweat begins to bead upon her face and breasts.  "Please!  Take me off!  Take me off!"

"Give your confession.  Give us the names.  Give us the truth."

Janet bursts into tears.  "I cannot!  Oh, My Lady, I cannot!" she shrieks.  "Aaaahh!!"  Her head tips back and she bellows in pain and misery to the vaulted ceiling.  "Oh God, it hurts!"

            The tears spill freely; she is paralysed by pain but in too much agony to remain still.  As her head rocks forward again, she sees that I have led the four guards halfway to the door, and horror joins the anguish on her face.

            "No-o-o!  Don't leave me!!"

            The door slams shut on her cries.

 

            There are countless tortures at the disposal of an inquisitor.  Some are fast and brutal - brands, whips, amputation, burning.  True, they have shock value and have their place, but they are not my preference.  I go for the slow, the subtle; the tortures that build over time to an all-consuming intensity.

I give Janet three hours to suffer the horror of the horse before returning to the torture chamber, this time with a scribe to record every word spoken, and Austin, appointed chief assistant.

Janet is, as I expected, in agony.  Her body is wet, shining from head to toe with sweat. Her arms, manacled behind her back, are racked with cramps; her hip joints are tortured by the stretching effect of the weights.  But it is nothing at all compared to the pain between her legs.

For three hours, her bodyweight plus the fifty pounds of the ankle-weights has been forcing her labia and perineum down onto an unforgiving wooden edge.  No matter how she shifts, no matter how she writhes, nothing will ease the pain.  Indeed, the agony has grown and spread like slow fire, seemingly through her very bones, to fill her hips and womb and abdomen; to creep up her spine.

She is panting hard in agony as I draw near, and her face, pale with suffering, lifts slowly.  There are dark rings under her eyes.  The sweat is dripping from her brow; it streaks her ribcage and her thighs.

"Confess," I tell her.

Her head nods in misery.  "Tell me what I must say, and I will say it!"

"Say you are a witch."

New tears fill her eyes.  "If I confess that, I will be burned alive."

"That's true."  I look to Austin.  "More weights."

"Oh no!  No!  NO!"  New life floods Janet as adrenalin surges.  She sees the guards collect the heavy iron ingots, sees evidence of their weight in the men's grunts and heaves.   She is looking at me and begging, almost gibbering like a madwoman in her fear as they hook another twenty-five pounds to each of her ankles and, on Austin’s signal, let them swing.

Her scream is terrible.  Her exhausted legs are stretched by fifty pounds at each ankle; between her thighs, the horse bears all of that weight along a single, sharp ridge, and suddenly it must feel as if she has been cleaved in two. The dark triangle of her pubic bush seems to be split by the horse’s cruel peak.

"Confess!" I shout.  "Confess, and it will end!"

"No, no, no, no no!" Janet shrieks.

A quick motion of my hand, and Austin leads his guards from the chamber.  I follow them, chased by Janet's wordless cries of pain.

            The door booms shut

            The fourth hour of torture upon the horse is a hundred times worse for Janet than the previous three.  Every minute feels like a hundred.  The pain is comparable to laying a red-hot iron between her legs, but wonderfully, one that endures far longer.

            When we return, Janet is twisting and pitching in constant agony, crying and shrieking at the ceiling, riding the horse so beautifully that one of Austin’s guards momentarily forgets himself, a hand wandering to his groin.  I decide to let it pass; I have more important matters to address.

            Even as I am half-way towards her, Janet begins her desperate pleading.  "Stop the pain, take me down!  Please, take me down! Oh, God, it hurts!"

            "Witch!  Do you see the truth now?" I call.

            "Please, mercy, please!" Janet cries in desperation.

            "Tell me about Matmos," I demand.

            "Please -"

            "Tell me!"

            Janet gives a cry, pain and defeat, and finally concedes.  "He's a witch!  I confess it!  Ohh, the pain!  Please - take me down!  Matmos is a witch, torture him instead!"

            "Believe me, I will," I promise.  "What is his standing amongst the witches?  What do you know of his activities, of his whereabouts?  How did you come to know him?"

            "Oh, have mercy, I cannot say!  I cannot!  Please, take me down!"

            "Talk, witch!  What of Matmos?  And who else have you seen?"

            "I don't remember!"

            "Look at where you are, Janet," I shout at her.  "Do you think it will end, for you?  Remembering is the only thing that will save you!"

            Janet's response is a long wail of pain, and her head droops for a moment.  Gleaming, naked, arms twisted behind her and legs stretched so that every muscle is defined and taut, she straddles the horse's cruel ridge.  Sweat streaks her ribcage, drips from her face; her hair clings to her neck and shoulders.  The apex of the horse seems to have forced its way right up into her dark pubic bush, bisecting her most tender part.  Those sweet, shining meringue breasts heave in her agony.

            "More weights," I say to Austin.

            "No-o-o …"  It is more a wail than a scream, sick with dread.  "No more!"

            "What of Matmos?  And who are the others?"

            "I don't know!"

            "Do you know of a witch called Kathy?"

            "Yes!  Oh, please, question her, she will tell you more than I!"

            "And what of Matmos?  The truth, Witch!"

            "No," she weeps.  "Please."

            "Add the weights," I say.

            The mere threat was not enough.  Now, as Janet's cries escalate into a frenzy of panic, Austin has his guards hook another weight to each ankle.  Seventy-five pounds hanging off each ankle, her hips are stretched as if on the rack, near the point of dislocation, agony spearing the joints, tearing like fire along the very bones of her legs.  But even worse is the wooden edge grinding up into her cunt.

            Janet screams like one touched by the flames.

            "Matmos is the leader!  He is the one in Black!  Oh, I beg you, take me off!  Take me off!"  Her confession dissolves into a long scream.

            "What is your association with him?"

            "He seduced me, oh please, he seduced me and had his way with me!  Allielle, too, I was her concubine, but I swear I am not a witch!  Please, stop the pain!  Stop it!"

            "It will stop when you have answered my questions," I say, and Janet screams on in desperate agony.  "Tell me about Matmos!"

            "I don't know!" Janet shrieks, over and over.  "I gave him favours, but when I learned of his treachery, I hid!  Oh ... oh God ..."

            "Speak of his treachery."

            "Evil," Janet gasps.  She is overwhelmed by the pain, now, and I know that she will soon become insensible to questioning.  "Likes ... to see .... the witches ..."

            "Fetch water," I order.

            Austin draws a pail of icy water from a well in a dark recess of the dungeon, and flings it over Janet's sagging form.  The shock brings a shriek and then a long wail of agony from her.  Her hips are audibly grinding from their sockets, her body giving up its struggle to endure.

            "Tell me about Matmos," I insist.

            Janet's voice is little more than a whisper.  "He betrays those who will not give themselves to him ... casts a spell so that they will not offer his name, even under torture ... then he acts as witchseeker and torturer himself ... to see them suffer ... to see them burn at the stake ..."

            "And you?" I ask.  "Are you one of his betrayals?"

            Her eyes, barely able to focus, find mine.  "I am not a witch."

            For now, it is enough.  The scribe, behind me, writes furiously.  There will be more: Janet will see the truth, but this is not the session.  I finally nod to Austin.  "Bring her down.  Give her water and secure her until I am ready to resume her interrogation.”

 

            Janet is chained to a stone column in the torture chamber, sitting naked on the cold floor, her wrists manacled to an iron ring above her head.  The way her hands droop from the fetters tell more than anything else; she has acquiesced, she has been broken, and she will condemn even herself when the torture resumes.

            I give her a day to recover from the horse.  Despite her agonies, no lasting damage was done, and she is quickly ready for the interrogation to continue.

            "Prepare her for the pear," I say.

            There are numerous ways a witch might be presented for this torture.  I have ordered that she be secured at one end of the torture-table, standing with her legs spread, on tiptoe, ankles tied widely apart to the table-legs.  Then, with wrists manacled behind her back, she is forced to bend forward at the waist, so that her breasts and belly kiss the table-top, her naked haunches and hairy cleft bared to the room.  A single rope, fastened loosely but securely about her neck and tied to adjacent iron rings in the table, prevents her from rising, or indeed from moving with any freedom within her bondage.

            She looks as if she is presenting herself to be fucked from behind.  The guards all look strained by the lust they feel at seeing her young, fertile body so exposed.  Clearly visible in her spreadeagled position, her labia are still swollen from her torture upon the horse, resembling arousal. The tight brown star of her anus is clear to see.

            I let her remain like that for almost an hour.  She knows that torture is inevitable, and her sobs and moans of dread echo off the unfeeling stone walls.  She cannot see behind her, though, and when the torture chamber door opens and I walk in, accompanied by Austin and his two guards, my mentor Tina, and the scribe, she flinches at the sound.

            Tina is, as always, calm; but by the flickering of torches on the walls, I notice a slight flushing to her face, tiny sparks of sweat along her hairline.  Only moments ago, she admitted that she has never witnessed the use of the pear, as other methods have always proven effective.  Nevertheless, she has agreed to provide guidance during the interrogation.

            By the nature of her restraint, the witch Janet is forced to look along the tabletop, towards the two objects that will so utterly consume the next hours of her wretched life.

            One is an hourglass, one foot tall, in a crafted mahogany frame.  It is filled with the finest white sand.  The second object is of brass, and in shape resembles an enlarged version of the fruit whose name it bears: the pear.  It is beautifully ornate, filigree-carved.  From its narrowest end, a long turnscrew protrudes.

            I move into Janet’s view, and her eyes wildly seek out my face.  Terror fills her expression; the tears have washed clean trails down her grubby cheeks.  She makes no sound as I pick up the pear, holding it so that she can see it well, and slowly, gently, I turn the handle.

            Like a flower blooming, the four segments of the pear gently part and spread; gleaming brass petals that open out until easily ten inches across.  From behind Janet, Tina cannot suppress a gasp.  I can see in her eyes that she is shocked by the reality of the pear, and of the damage it could wreak.

            She composes herself, and strides slowly to stand alongside me.  She bends down, fixes eyes full of compassion and sorrow to Janet.  "Sweet girl, please tell us what you know.  Otherwise, this will truly hurt.  I don't want that to happen, any more than you."

            "I can vouch that it hurts," I say.  I turn the pear slowly in my hands, inspecting its gleaming open blades.  "Imagine this inside you. Scraping. Tearing. Filling you with unbelievable agony. And when I start to move it around … I may need both hands, and all of my strength - but oh, it will be terrible. You will hear it, as your insides are shredded to a juicy pulp.  Just think of your body convulsing, writhing … and yet, there is not a thing you will be able to do, but scream, and beg me to stop."

            Janet begins to cry.  "No," she pleads.

            "I cannot tell you what to say," Tina says to her.  "As there is no way I can fathom the treacherous depths of your soul.  Tell me everything."

            Janet's composure, shaken from the start, crumbles.  "I don't know what you want to hear!" she shrieks, and throws herself into a desperate struggle to get free.  Her wrists jerk on the shackles, her ankles on the ropes that hold her legs spread; she fights to pull her head from the loop of rope about her neck.  But Austin has tied the knots himself, and Janet has no chance of escape.

            Tina has her hands on her hips.  "I see she still needs persuasion.  Please proceed, Kirsten.  We must wrest the truth from her."

            "As you wish," I say.  I screw the pear back to its normal position.  All the while, Janet tries her best to, quite literally, save her arse.

"Please," she begs through her tears, "don't do this.  Please, don't hurt me.  What you hear will not be the truth, merely the words you want me to speak!"

            "The truth will be torn from you, whether you believe it true or not," I insist.  Twisting within her bonds, Janet tries to see what I am doing behind her, as Austin holds out a pail of lard.  I collect a heavy wad with my fingers.

            The spread of Janet's slender legs presents the gentle valley between her buttocks nicely, the star of her arsehole, and below it, the dark hairy secret of her pussy.  Firmly, I smear the pat of lard directly over her anus.

            "No-oo!!"  Janet shrieks, and bucks again against her restraints.  "Please, please, if you have any mercy at all ...!"

            "It's because we have mercy that we give you this chance to discover your faults, and gain some redemption before you burn," I tell her.

            I run my fingers over the cool filigree of the pear’s closed metal bulb.  The tip, where the four petals meet, is shaped like a nipple.  It is this which I place first against Janet's anus, and she jolts at the cold touch in such a sensitive spot.

            "Don't," she pleads.

            "Confess that you are a witch, and I can stop it now," Tina urges, her eyes promising kindness.

            "Please, I beg you," is all Janet can say, so I push the pear in.

            It is a simple technique; holding the pear at base and handle, leaning my whole body into the task and aided by the lard, I force it in.  Her sphincter spreads to allow the full diameter of the pear, and it draws a long groan from her throat.  Its entry is painful, and her bowels automatically spasm and resist in an urge to eject the intruder.  But she can do nothing. As the pear is pushed into her rectum, she begins to shriek in pain. I drive it ever deeper into her bowels, her anus clenching and distending around the broad metal barrel, until finally it is buried all the way inside her, her sphincter tight around the pear’s neck. Little more than the handle now protrudes.

            "It hurts, it hurts!" Janet shrieks.

            "Reminds you of the demon cock, does it, Witch?" one of the guards calls, and his colleague breaks into nervous laughter.

            I see the tiny sparks of sweat appear on the downy skin between Janet's shoulder blades; the muscles in her arms shift as she struggles to break free.  The unbearable pressure in her arse makes her gasp and heave in her throes of discomfort.  Firmly, I give the screw a twist; deep inside Janet, the four segments of the pear separate a fraction, minutely distending the walls of her rectum.

            It is only a hint of what will come, but already it is equal to the worst bowel pain she has ever felt; invasive, intrusive.  Her eyes are wide in shock and disbelief, her mouth open.  I twist the handle again, and this time Janet gives a scream.

            "Oh God!!!  Aahhh!!"  The agony easily doubles with just the tiniest change in the pear's spread, sweeping up through her bowels and driving a curtain of sweat over her entire body.  It is intense, engulfing, far more debilitating than the horse; she is paralysed by it, capable of nothing but screaming.

            So I give the screw a full turn.

            This time, Janet screams as loudly as she can scream, her voice echoing off the walls, reverberating through the torture chamber.  This is pain beyond imagination, and she is so overwhelmed by it, she is incapable of rational thought.

            I open the pear wider still, and Janet's shrieks become painful to the ears.  Already there is a subtle shift to the angle of her spine, the device pressing on her lower vertebrae.  She is calling out to God, to Jesus, sheer blasphemy from the mouth of a witch; the words ride on flecks of spittle, her eyes and the veins on her neck bulging with the immense agony of the torture.

            I slowly circle the table.  Every muscle in Janet's young body is rigid with suffering as she screams.  I grasp her hair, wrench her head up off the table, sending more shock waves of pain through her body.

            "I will give you half an hour before we resume," I tell her.  "Pray the truth reveals itself before the sand in this hourglass runs through."  Before her pain-glazed eyes, I turn the hourglass over, and the slow trickle begins.  I look to my companions.  "My Lady Tina; Austin; we will leave, for now."

            For half an hour, Janet suffers.  Her screams become hoarse and slowly ebb: after a time, there are only wails and shrieks coming from the tortured witch.  Even from another room, we can hear the echoes of her misery. The conversation is of procedures, the ethics of the witch hunt; but I am distracted, somehow excited by the prospect of returning to my work.

            Finally, it is time to return.  We walk into the torture chamber as the last of the sand runs through the hourglass.  From a table laid out with implements, I gather a thick cane as we pass.

            Janet is whimpering in agony.  Her body is shining wet.  On the floor below her, a puddle of urine, forced from her bladder by the pressure of the pear.  Down the inside of one taut thigh, a thin line of blood runs from her anus.  On hearing our approach, she begins wailing in new distress.

            "Please," she begs, "please take it out, take it out!  I'll talk, oh for the love of God, I'll tell you anything, just take it out!"

            "Say you are a witch.  Confess it," Tina tells her.  "Please tell all you know, or there is greater pain to come!"

            Even in her agony, Janet hesitates, and it is my cue.  Raising the cane high above my head, I swing it down with all of my force on the small of her back.  It smashes with a CRACK!! across her flesh, a shock wave through her body and distended innards, and she gives a screech of pain, followed by utter silence, the very breath driven from her lungs by agony.

            Finally, her head nods feverishly, and when she finally catches breath, she gasps, "I confess it!  Oh, I confess it!  I am a witch!  Please, no more, hurt me no more!"

            "You confirm that you are a witch?"

            "Yes!"

            "You can provide details?"

            "Yes!  Yes!"

            "And what of Matmos?  And Kathy?"

            "Please, I have told you all I know!"

            "I don't think you have," Tina responds, and she glances at me.

            Janet begins screaming anew even as I brace one hand on her sweat-slick lower back and grasp the turnscrew of the pear.  I twist the screw, and Janet's voice pitches upwards in a roar of agony.  Odd creaking and popping sounds, muffled and deep, sound from her bowels as the cruel petals blossom outwards.

            Janet’s screams are animal, barely human, shriek after shriek.  The bulge of the pear is discernible in the otherwise-sleek line of her body.  With my hand still on the turnscrew, I push and pull, shifting and rocking the expanded device inside her, and her fingers spread in maddened pain at every excruciating movement.

            Finally, another half-turn of the screw, and Janet's hoarse screams continue.

            I turn the hourglass.  "We will leave her like this.  She will talk soon."

            When we return, the only sound is Janet's ragged gasps for air.  Her body, wet, is steaming in the chill torture chamber.  Her back shifts in spasms with each breath.  Her legs remain stretched and bound to the feet of the table, her wrists manacled at her back; the handle of the pear protrudes grotesquely from her anus.  A fresh trickle of blood streaks the inside of her thigh.

            Her face shows of a battle for her very sanity, against unending agony; it is an expression that brands itself upon me. Her brow is furrowed, her eyes barely focused, her mouth open, a rope of saliva hanging to the table beneath her chin.  Tina gently takes out her handkerchief and dabs at Janet's trembling lips.

            "Janet, dear, it is time for you to tell us all."

            I move behind her, to where the handle of the pear extends from her clenched arsehole, and gently put my hand upon the small of her back.  Even that small pressure makes her convulse and groan in agony.

            "Well?"

            "Ask anything, and I will tell," Janet manages to say, her voice shaking.

            "What of Matmos?  How have you observed him to be a witch?"

            "He bewitches women," Janet says.  "He fills them with lust and corrupts them, so that they abandon their husbands and their clothes, and offer themselves to him.  Those witches who refuse ... he betrays."

            The scribe writes. Tina listens. I hover my hand over the handle of the pear.

            "Go on," Tina urges.

            "He speaks of ‘Little Matmos,’ but his cock is anything but little.  That is the secret to his power.  With it, he has seduced women and witches, sorceresses and succubae."

            Tina and I exchange a glance.

            "What of Kathy Linyd?"

            "Like me, she fell for Matmos' charm."

            Tina mops the clustered droplets of sweat from Janet's suffering face.  "One more question, dear," she says.  "Where are they?"

            "I don't know," Janet says.

            My hand closes on the pear's handle, and I twist.  Within her, the device blossoms, and the scream explodes hoarsely from her throat, long and agonised, her body jolting with the severity of it.  When her screams subside, she pants, "a ranch, it is a ranch, I can show you on a map!"

            I look to Tina, who examines Janet's face, then nods at me.

            Finally, I begin screwing the pear closed again.  Our work with Janet is done.

 

            One week after her confession, it is time for Janet to burn.

"No-o-o! No-o-o-o!!"

Janet's terrified screeching climbs above the jeers of the crowd as the executioners pull her hands behind the stout wooden stake. She struggles, but torture and imprisonment have weakened her, and she is easily restrained.

The manacles that join her wrists behind the stake are enough to hold her in place; the stake's diameter is such that her back-twisted arms only just encircle it, her shoulder blades tightly against the wood, her buttocks pressed to it.

            "I don't want to di-i-i-ie!" she hollers out.

            With Janet secured, the executioners pick their way off to the side. The wood-pile is small, barely two feet high. The fire will not grow quickly, and the flames may not reach any higher than Janet's heaving breasts, but it will be enough.

Oberon, the Witchseeker General, calmly begins to list the charges, and the noise of the crowd fades. Each charge is followed by the words; "and to this, she has confessed."  Only the ongoing cries of Janet, oblivious to all but her own terror, compete with Oberon's authoritative tone.

            All eyes are upon the young woman. She is attractive, even in this dishevelled state; her figure slender and petite, her breasts small and high upon her ribcage. Her hips are narrow, her legs are long and lean. Between her thighs, the dark triangle of her pubic hair is dainty despite her time in the dungeon.

            Finally, Oberon speaks the words all have come to hear: "for this, the Witch, Janet Halverson, is sentenced to burn." There is a huge cheer from the crowd, drowning Janet's frantic pleas for mercy, for bargain, for reconsideration.

            From the brazier that smokes alongside the woodpile, Oberon draws a fluttering torch. The naked Janet tries to shrink back even from that small fire, her eyes wild, hair half-veiling her face, her bare breasts shining with perspiration. "No! No! Put it out, oh, put it out!" she shrieks.

            Almost with tenderness, Oberon lays the torch in the outermost scatterings of straw, well beyond Janet's feet. The crowd falls silent. Even Janet lowers her voice to a whimper, as all eyes watch the birth of the witch's fire.

            Flames jump, sputter in the tinder around the torch. A twist of blue-grey smoke. A crackling twig. Then, the flames begin to take, spreading, jumping, creeping towards their prey. Janet's panic reawakens at the sight of it, and she begins to buck against the restraint of her own arms: if she could tear them from their sockets simply to escape, she would.

            The crowd begins to jeer and shout again, as if encouraging the fire. It seems to respond, spreading rapidly beneath the tinder: there are loud pops and crackles as wood catches alight, as the flames leap up through the gaps. They are only four feet away from Janet's bare legs, and she can already feel their warmth.

            "No, no, no, no!" she is shrieking, and suddenly, with her bare feet, she is trying to kick away the bundles of wood. I glance at Steve and Austin, the executioners, but Austin signals me to leave it. If she succeeds in kicking away the fire's fuel, Janet will merely prolong her own agony.

            Despite Janet's efforts, the fire grows, building quickly to her left. A slight breeze catches a swirl of smoke, guides it up around her face, and she turns her head away, coughing, her plan to kick away the wood forgotten. A moment later, a twig pops and tiny embers ride up on the hot air current, several of them touching Janet's naked flesh. She shrieks and flinches from their searing touch.

            Her body is shining. Sweat drawn from fear, drawn from heat, as the air around her begins to shimmer. Her ribcage heaves in frightened breath. She is all but exhausted, having fought with all of her limited strength to break free. Now, all that remains are her pathetic efforts to avoid the fire by pushing herself back against the post, rising up on tiptoes and turning her face away.

            Still the fire spreads. The flames grow and leap and catch, crackling and hissing, now less than two feet away from her. Carried on the quick-rising air, several tongues of fire flick out around her knees, searing her skin, and she screams in pain, kicking and stamping her feet. There is a wild cheer from the crowd.

            I can feel the heat of the fire on my face, now, and I shuffle back. For a few moments I can imagine her abject terror. Seeing the flames rise like hungry beasts, unstoppable. I imagine that heat on my bare breasts, on my belly, on my thighs. I am mesmerised by Janet's fear.

            She is squirming, unable to stay still, unable to get free. Her feet stamp and paw endlessly at the wood that surrounds her, frantic attempts to somehow stave off the advancing flames. There is less smoke, now, as the fire burns hotter and cleaner, rising air stirring her strawberry-blonde hair, like a breath of summer wind. Sweat drips from her face, clusters in droplets on her bare breasts.

            Another gust of wind, and fire jumps at her. A flurry of flames lick at her left thigh, there is a quick puff of smoke and steam, and Janet gives a shout of pain. She sags slightly as the flames briefly subside; but just as quickly, they pick up again. The fire darts up through the twigs and sticks, and as it begins to lick and hiss about her feet, Janet turns her face to the sky and screams.

The fire rallies and surges, faster, more furious, crackling and popping beneath the sounds of Janet's shrieks. Her shining calves show reddened welts from the scorching touch of fire, and though she tries to pull away, she is trapped and helpless to it. Flame, bright and orange, wraps around her leg, flutters up one thigh, fuelled by the downy peach-fuzz. Quick wisps of black and oily smoke spin up into the air as skin blisters and creeps back from the fire's touch, and Janet shakes her head in maddened agony.

            Suddenly, I can smell her burning. The sweet smell of roasting flesh, the odour of singed hair. Pain has suddenly given her strength, and she is tugging and tearing at her manacles again, trying dementedly to pull free of the fire, but she is held in place.

            Savage, hot flames slither up the stake below her, flickering up between her thighs like the fiery tongues of demons, and her beautiful pubic bush flares and is gone. Her buttocks are briefly embraced by fire; her flesh reddens and steams, and Janet twists and bellows in her agony.

            She is still stamping her feet, and the movement drives up drifts of sparks that scorch her skin and twist into the air like fireflies.

            The fire grows. Hotter, faster; now it begins to roar in its anger, a deep rumble beneath the shrill screams of the burning witch. I can see that her feet and lower legs are alight, the oils of her skin burning like a candle. Her arms and ribcage and breasts are reddening from the heat, although the flames still jump no higher than her waist.

            A fluttering burst of flame sputters up between her thighs again, and licks her scorched pussy. Janet howls and jerks in the fetters. The fire is hungry, a savage, cruel lover, tearing her most tender parts like red-hot iron files. Her genitals are suddenly sizzling and steaming, smoke funnelling up from between her thighs, flames intimately licking into the cleft of her buttocks, burning her loins. She flings her head about, her screams manic, shrill, demented, her struggles crazed. Her feet and lower legs are truly on fire, now; it has reached the point where, even if the flames were doused, she would not survive. I can hear a new sound, the hissing and crackling of her burning flesh, the popping of bones in her feet as they burst in the heat.

It is a gruesome and terrible way to die, but it is the way a witch must perish.

            Janet twists and screeches endlessly; the fire is too small to finish her quickly.

Slow minutes pass. The fire consumes her lower body, ravaging flesh, until her legs have no life, and she is held in place only by her back-twisted arms about the stake. The shimmering heat half-disguises the awful ravages being wrought upon her face and body, but I catch glimpses of her hair turning to char, her flesh roasting, her naked breasts splitting and cracking. Her body itself has become a torch, her flesh becoming tallow and burning in slow, oily flames.

            Some in the crowd have seen enough, and leave, knowing that the witch is all but dead; with her beauty destroyed by fire, there is little to witness but her final throes and struggles. Although she still wails aloud, she seems dazed, bewildered. It is now, some say, that a dying witch finally speaks the truth; fire has torn away all the baggage of life, experience, and the weight of consequence, leaving only the naked soul of the newborn. But Janet has no words, only moans. She knows she has lost the battle to live, and now she can only wait for death.

            But death is a long time coming. Even as the drifts of smoke from her burning body turn dark, and the hissing turns to a crackling, roasting sizzle, the Witch still moves about, her head lolling from one side to the other, her shoulders pitching about.

She dies slowly, so slowly.

An hour after the fire was lit, Janet Halverson's head sinks slowly forward. She does not move after that, and the fire enfolds her entire body, the flames turning bright, the smoke rolling skyward heavy and grey.

            The Witchseekers' work is done, and the witch known as Janet Halverson is dead.

Part 2 – Kathy Linyd

 

            Kathy Linyd's hands are shaking violently as the iron fetters are locked about her wrists.  She knows enough of the Witchseekers' finesse to be afraid; but she has seen the result of confessing, the shrieks and throes of a witch dying in fire, and she does not want to share their awful fate.

            "Raise her," I command.

            It is simple preparation.  The heavy windlass turns and Kathy's arms are raised above her head by the retracting chain.  Her hands droop useless from the iron shackles.  I have not yet ordered her stripped; for now, she still stands vulnerable in the flimsy floral sundress she was wearing when arrested - grubby, now, from her cell.  She wears slip-on pumps on her feet.

            Another crank of the windlass, and her arms are pulled straight over her head, her wrist-shackles knocking together.  She is raised on tip-toes, struggling to keep her weight on her feet, fighting the growing pain in her wrists.

            I move close to her.  "How does it feel to be helpless, Kathy?" I ask softly.  "How does it feel to be chained in a dungeon?  I bet you fantasised about this as a little girl … I bet you dreamed of being the helpless damsel in distress.  How does it really feel?"

            "I am not afraid," Kathy quavers.

            I trail the tip of one finger down the underside of her arm, skin like soft satin, through the exposed hollow of her armpit.  The gathering sweat betrays her lie.  I stare into her eyes, but direct my voice to Austin, at the winch.  "Higher," I say.

            The winch turns, the chain pulls, and I see the subtle flicker of panic in Kathy's eyes as she feels the tug on her wrists; her weight is wrenched onto the iron fetters, the strain travels down through her arms, and for an instant only the pointed toes of her pumps touch the floor.  Then, the chain has wound her higher, and her feet are swinging free, not quite kissing their own shadow on the flagstones.  She gives a grunt and a moan as the pain flares in her wrists.  The muscles in her arms tighten as she flexes against the strain.

            Her shadow edges further across the floor as she is hoisted higher; now, she casts her head back in growing angst, looking up the taut landscape of her own bare arms to the shackles that bite her wrists, and to the five feet of iron chain that travels up to a ring in the vaulted ceiling.  The windlass continues to turn, more links clatter through the ring, and Kathy moans again as, by the wrists, she is lifted higher still.

            Finally, when her toes are a foot-and-a-half off the floor, I motion Austin to stop.  "Secure her like that."

            Kathy's head rocks forward, her face flushed with the pain of her suspension.  She shifts her feet, and one shoe drops, landing on the floor below her.  Bare toes twitch in the cool dungeon air.  The flip-skirt of her sundress shifts about her thighs as she briefly pedals her legs, trying to evade the discomfort.  "Please," she gasps, "let me down?"

            I smile.  "Good night, Kathy Linyd.  We will see you tomorrow."

            "What?"  It is a familiar reaction; as we walk from the chamber, her voice echoes in panic.  "No!  Please, don't leave me like this!  Don't leave me!"

            We leave her. 

 

            One thing I like about the reality of a torture chamber: the victim doesn't escape.

            If this was Hollywood, Kathy would have miraculously freed herself and taken to the hills during the night.  As it is, Matmos, briefly captured after Janet’s interrogation, has been freed, the witch Daffy taunts from some secret location: but when we return to the torture chamber in the morning, Kathy Linyd hangs exactly as we had left her.  And after eight hours suspended by her wrists, she is exhausted to the core.

            Heavily, limply, she hangs from the shackles, her head forward, copper-coloured hair forward over her pale face.  Her arms and legs shine with an oiling of sweat.  Even her dress seems to heavily drape her slender figure, drawn downwards by the inexorable torture of gravity.  Her hands are like claws above the fetters.  One foot bare, the other still shod, toes down-pointed.

            "Bring her down," I order.

            After a night of no sleep, no rest, battling the strain of hanging by her wrists until drained of every last ounce of strength, Kathy is in no position to fight as she is cranked to the floor.  She manages to stand, her feet apart, but her manacled wrists drop with the chain, and she almost topples over, until caught by a guard.  "Remove her fetters."

            It is all about timing.  We work quickly, so that she will not have the chance to think, nor react; the irons are taken from her wrists, revealing the purple-black of bruising.  I give the order to strip her; the delicate shoestring straps of her sundress are slipped from her shoulders, and the garment drops away, baring her full and firm breasts.  A moment later, Austin deftly tugs off her panties, revealing the auburn thatch of her pubic hair.  Still dazed and weak from her ordeal hanging by the wrists, Kathy makes no move to preserve her modesty.  Her eyes, heavy with weariness, remain fixed to the floor.

            Austin and his assistant guard take hold of Kathy's arms and hold her steady, as I draw close to her.  "Save yourself, Kathy," I urge her.  "Confess that you are a witch.  Tell us where we will find Daffy, and Matmos.  Tell us how we will trace them and capture them."

            Slowly, Kathy lifts her face to regard me.  She blinks slowly, moves her lips.  "I do not know these things," she says, "and I am not a witch."

            I stand aside to give her a view of the torture chamber, and indicate the many hideous instruments laid out.  "Look at the tools of my trade, Kathy.  I can crack your fingers and break your toes, I can shred and scourge and brand and roast your flesh, I can crush, tear, and distend the most sensitive parts of you.  Eventually, pain will drive from your lips the answers to everything I ask.  Save yourself this anguish and talk to me now."

            "I know nothing," Kathy repeats.

            "Very well."  To my guards: "Put her on the rack."

            Deserved or not, no instrument of torture has quite the reputation of the rack.  It is the most famous, the most feared, the most exciting.  Ours is a masterpiece - nine feet long, with a heavy roller at either end, made of heavy oak.  The ratcheting mechanisms are such that every turn incurs a stretch of barely one-fifth of an inch.

            As the guards wrest her across the torture chamber, the adrenaline of fear returns a semblance of life to Kathy's limbs.  She struggles, albeit weakly, but succeeds only in losing her other shoe, the last vestige of clothing.  Now, as naked as the newborn, she is vulnerable in the guards' hands as they bodily lift her onto the huge wooden bed.

            She is laid on her back, squealing and protesting desperately.  "No!  Please!  You can't do this to me!  I have done nothing!"

            My rack is fitted with chains, for the express purpose of stretching witches.   Iron prevents escape - both of the body, and the spirit.  A witch fastened in iron cannot transfer her spirit to a familiar or other unwitting host.  Admittedly the shackles will bite cruelly into her wrists and ankles, much more so than ropes, but it is pain she will soon not notice as the stretching begins.

            "Austin?  If you please."

            My two dungeon assistants take up their posts at the levers of the rack, and, at my signal, begin to turn.  Music.  The slow click-click of the oiled ratchets, the gentle creak of the rollers not yet stressed. The subtle knock of chains on wood. Slowly, Kathy's splayed limbs are drawn parallel, her arms above her head, her legs reaching long towards the foot of the rack.

            She is looking at Austin, at the roller beyond her fingertips, in terror.  "Please!"

            "Keep turning," I order.

            Kathy's body shifts minutely on the rack's surface, her heels drag a little on the wood, her buttocks slide a fraction of an inch, her shoulder-blades draw in the opposite direction.  Her fettered wrists rise half an inch off the rack, her heels likewise raised by the growing tension.

            I watch, seeing the stretch take in her limbs.  The signs are subtle; the defining of muscles, the tautening of tendons through her thighs and armpits, the rising of her ribcage and the hollowing of her belly.  Her breasts are lifted towards the ceiling as the tension grows. The manacles wedge firmly against her hands and feet, pulling in opposite directions, and the strain through her body grows.

            Another notch; another, another, another - click, click, click - and Kathy is stretched further.  She gasps, and I signal a halt.  Gently, I put my hand to her arm, her belly, her thigh. All is taut, muscles rigid and straining.

            "Enough," I say.

            Kathy manages to lift her head.  In the cool dungeon air, her naked body is spread and vulnerable. Her breasts and armpits, her belly, her sex, all presented and exposed.  There is nothing quite as terrifying as being so very helpless, spread for torture on the rack the way she is.  "You bitch," she hisses at me through clenched teeth.  "Release me, or I promise, you will pay for this."

            "Is that before or after you die screaming in flames?" I reply coolly.  Kathy's eyes darken with hatred.  I glance at Austin.  "Let us leave her.  We begin questioning in a few hours."

            Kathy gives a groan, her head thuds back on the wood.

 

            Torture on the rack takes patience.

            Stretching a victim too hard, too fast, will simply cause damage without making the most of the rack's subtle power.  A victim's immediate response to racking is to fight it, to resist the pull, and chances are she will damage and dislocate her own joints in the process.  So a settling-in period is essential.

            Kathy is suffering, and the racking hasn't even begun.

            Held taut between the rollers, she is locked in an involuntary battle against the tension in her limbs. Her muscles are tight. The sweat glosses her naked body, the veins stand on her neck as she fights to resist.  But as time passes, her exhaustion grows.  Already her arms are weak from a night spent hanging in chains, and the muscles quickly fail her. But still her abdomen, back, thighs and calves are tight, and it is a long, slow process as, fibre by fibre, the muscles begin to burn, cramp, and weaken.

            Two hours, and she is losing the battle.  The ache of fatigue is maddening, as if she has been lifting heavy weights.  But the rack maintains its tension, so as muscles relax, the strain is instead transferred to the very ligaments and tendons that hold her body together.

            This is where the pain begins.

            Ligaments were not made to take such punishment.  They are the linking fibres between joints, and it is not in their design to absorb stress.  Their protest is felt as a deep, savage heat deep in her limbs, spreading from her shoulders and elbows, down her spine, through her hips and knees.  Like slow fire it creeps along her bones, a growing pain that quickens her breathing, breaks a sweat across her breasts like droplets of condensation upon glass.

            Her third hour on the rack is the worst.  The pain has invaded to her core; it is her skeleton, her very bones, that seem to burn and ache, an unreal savagery of pain that she cannot block out, no matter how she tries.

            When Austin, Steve and I enter the torture chamber, Kathy's head shifts and she looks beyond the horizon of her own upstretched arm, fear plain to see on her face.  She knows now how utterly vulnerable she is.

            Austin takes his position at the head of the rack, Steve at the foot, and I stand alongside the machine, looking down at the wretched Kathy.  "Confess, witch," I say.

            "I have nothing to confess," she groans.

            I signal, and two winches turn.  The shift is minuscule, barely perceptible, but to Kathy it awakens a fiery agony.  As her exhausted body stretches, pain flares in her joints, along her limbs, and her mouth opens in a gasp of pain.  Her eyes grow wide.

            "Oh - God!  Oh God!  It hurts!" she cries.

            "Confess, confess now," I urge.  "Agree to hear our questions and it will stop."

            Through brimming tears, Kathy bites her lip and says nothing, so I signal again.  Again, the winches turn, her body stretches between the rollers, and this time Kathy gives a lung-deep yell of pain.

            "Aaaaaahhhhh!!"  She drives her head back into the wood of the rack, the tears now spilling from her eyes.  The hot agony rips along her limbs, but also grows now like a savage demon deep in the small of her back, spreading with crippling intensity up her spine.

            "This is only the beginning, Kathy Linyd," I tell her.  "The pain gets worse, and worse.  With this machine I can pull your joints apart, but it will not end there.  You will still stretch further.  Talk."

            "I ... I ..."  Kathy gasps, shakes her head through the pain.

            My signal cues the winches to click over again, and Kathy screams and shrieks in pain as she stretches.  Her ribcage lifts, the rack creaks.  Now, her screams are constant, the fire of racking filling her drawn body.  The sweat streaks her ribcage and collects in droplets over her quivering flesh as she howls in pain.  She is learning the true suffering of the racked.

            "Tell me now that you are not a witch!" I shout.

            "Ohhhh gooodddd!" Kathy wails, her face screwed up in agony.  "Mercy, please, have mercy, I cannot bear this pain!"  Her breathing is rapid and shallow, the tension barely allowing her diaphragm to shift.

            I bend over her, seize her face in my hand, guide it so that her pain-swimming eyes are staring directly at me.  Framed by her upstretched arms and her hollowed armpits, her face shows that she is close to breaking.  "It is over.  You cannot resist this.  How many more notches do you wish to feel?  Confess!"

            "No ..." Kathy manages to gasp.  Then, horror in her eyes as I signal Austin and Steve to rack her another notch.

            The winches creak, and a new magnitude of pain rips through Kathy's helpless body.  She screams anew, her spine popping and groaning with the tension that rips at her very bones.  Again she screams, draws breath, screams.  Her shrieks echo from the stone ceiling.  She is shaking her head over and over.

            I am about to signal the next notch, when Kathy Linyd shrieks, "I confess it!  Oh, I confess!  I am a witch!"

            "Say it again," I tell her.

            "I am a witch!  Oh God, the pain …!"

            "You have consorted with Satan?"

            "I fucked him, I did it many times!  I am evil!  I confess - please stop the pain!!"

            I glance at Steve and Austin.  "Ease off a few notches only."

            The winches groan.  The shift of her limbs is slight, but the unbearable agony ebbs to a deep, unending fire. Still unbearable, still terrible, but less all the same.  Kathy's head rolls and shifts in her pain, she gasps air like a fish out of water.  Her body is wet.

            "Tell us about Matmos. Where has he gone?"

            "I don't know, I don't know!" Kathy gasps.

            I straighten, and turn to Austin.  "Heat the irons," I order.

 

            Kathy strains to see beyond her own arm and the imposing bulk of the rack's roller, as Austin pumps the bellows.  Fanned by the jetting air, the coals in the brazier roar, driving the iron implements to red, to orange, to almost-white with heat.  The radiance of the fire is scorching on my face.

            I pull on a thick woollen mitten to protect my hand, and grasp one end of a long brand, its tip a flat rectangle flowing furious yellow, two inches long and one inch wide.  As I carry the brand to the rack, it crackles in the chill air, incinerating invisible dust particles brightly.

            Kathy's eyes are wild with horror as she sees it.  There may be more effective tortures, but nothing, it seems, invokes such fear as hot irons.  Certainly, it is the pain; but it is also the knowledge that, at a whim, the torturer can cause such disfigurement.

            I slowly move alongside the rack, the shimmering iron in my hand.  Kathy's eyes follow it, though she bites her lower lip, saying nothing.  She is learning, now, how utterly helpless she is; racked, she cannot even struggle.  The pain is still severe through her body, tearing her limbs, but her fear surfaces regardless.

            "Answer my question, Kathy Linyd," I say slowly.  I have reached the end of the rack, and take Kathy's bare toes in my hand.  Her foot is curled over by the sheer tension of the manacles, but I force her toes up, stretching out the pale sole of her foot.

            "No," Kathy finally whimpers.  Her toes twitch in my grip.

            I press the searing iron to the sole of Kathy's right foot.  There is a quick puff of smoke, a tiny burst of flame, then a long, squealing hiss.  It is almost a full second before the pain hits, and Kathy gives a long scream of agony.  She cannot writhe, cannot struggle, she can only twitch her toes and fling her head from side to side, shrieking in pain as her own skin burns. 

            I finally lift the iron, smoking, from her foot, leaving an evil red welt where it has kissed her skin.  Kathy's scream becomes a long wail, the searing pain barely fading even though the iron no longer burns her.  I aim the iron for another part of her sole, closer to her toes, and press it to the skin.  Again the hissing of searing flesh, again Kathy's shrill screams of agony as she is burned.  I leave it for ten long seconds, then lift it away, a charred residue of skin smoking on the iron.  Kathy moans, her taut ribcage shifting fast, her head turning.

            "No more," she begs, "no more!  Please, I already confessed, I am a witch!"

            "You know there is more to tell," I say.  "Talk."

            "I do not know what you want to hear," she weeps.

            I return to the brazier, slide the branding iron back into its bed of coals, and choose another instead.  This iron ends in a smaller cross-shaped brand, an inch to each axis, and I bring it, smoking, to Kathy's side.

            "No," she weeps, to see it.  "No, no, no …!"  Her voice rises in pitch and volume as I bring the iron close to the wet plateau of skin below her right armpit, alongside her breast.  Her ribcage heaves but she cannot struggle or move.  I let her feel the radiant heat of the iron, then press it home.

            Steam hisses and bursts around the flat of the branding iron, then smoke, and Kathy's roar of pain rends the air, her mouth wide open, her eyes screwed shut.

            I lift the iron, leaving a smoking wound.  Kathy is bawling in her pain, but I mean to show her no mercy whatsoever.  After only a few seconds, I put the iron against her skin again, this time a little closer to her breast, and she shrieks like a banshee in her agony.

            I lift the iron and hold it, smoking with the residue of her own burnt skin, in front of her rolling eyes.  "Tell us where Matmos has fled."

            It is almost half a minute before Kathy is coherent enough to shake her head.  "I don't kno-o-o-ow!" she howls.

            "You do know, and you will tell us," I inform her.  As I return to the brazier, I tell Steve, "tighten her two notches."

            Kathy is dazed by the brands, but she is ripped back to full awareness when Steve takes hold of the winch beyond her feet and heaves.  The chains grate and scrape, the axle groans, and Kathy's helpless body is once again stretched.  She screams in pain of course, frantic and high-pitched, and there are creaking sounds from her limbs as they lengthen.  The pain in her joints is comparable to the searing pain of the iron, and her shrieks are testament to her utter agony.

            I switch to a new brand.  It crackles with heat as I bring it over to her, a trail of smoke on the air.  Kathy lies shrieking and gasping from the pain of being stretched, her head turning, every sinew and muscle taut on her straining body.  She is in such pain that she doesn't react to the glowing metal as it descends towards her; but when I place it squarely in the valley of her armpit and press down, her scream evolves into a lung-deep bellow of agony.  Steam and smoke billows around the end of the brand as it impresses its mark deep into sensitive flesh.

            I peel the brand away after perhaps ten seconds, but Kathy keeps screaming.  Her voice has changed its timbre; hoarser, thinner.  She is rapidly growing exhausted from the torture.  I touch the brand down again, an inch higher, and again she flings her head about, wailing and screeching.  The acrid smell of burning skin floods my nostrils once again.

            When, at last, I withdraw the branding iron, Kathy's scream trails into a long wail, then a whimper.  Her eyelids flutter and her eyes roll back, her face grows pale.  Without returning the iron to the coals, I grasp her jaw in my hand, rocking her head side to side.

            "Don't think you can slip away that easily, Witch," I tell her.  "Look at me!  Answer my questions!  Where is Matmos?  Who else have you associated with?  Tell me now, or it will only get worse!"

            My words are enough to draw Kathy back from her faint, and her eyes fix to mine, swimming in pain and fear.  "Please, please, I don't know," she says weakly.

            I release her face and return to the brazier.  Austin still pumps the bellows, and I return the iron, drawing out the cross-shaped brand again.  Once more it glows almost white with heat.  "I hope you're enjoying this, then," I say.

            "Oh, no, no," Kathy sobs.  "Mercy, have mercy!"

            Progress.  I return to the rack, show her the smoking tip of the iron, then press it down between her shining breasts.  Life returns to Kathy's voice as she gives a horrible scream of agony.  Her flesh sizzles and spits beneath the iron's touch.  I let it burn, all the way to the bone, before tearing it up from her ravaged sternum.  Two inches lower, and the iron is pressed down again. Again, Kathy's screams and shrieks of pain as her flesh burns deep.

            When the smoking iron is lifted, I count the brands.  She is lasting well, most witches would have long ago been inventing lies just to save themselves the agony.  That's not to say that I'm running out of options; but she's tough.

            Returning to the brazier, I pull on the second woollen glove, and with both hands, grasp the handles of the pincers. The scissors-like implement is made of heavy iron, ending in claws that glow bright and yellow in the dim air. I move to Kathy's left side and brandish the pincers before her face, opening them wide like the mandibles of some gigantic insect.

            Kathy's eyes are huge in horror. "No - no - NO!!"

            I bring the pincers down and close them on Kathy's full and shining breast.  The squealing, the pop of steam, and then the screaming.  Oh, the screaming; she bellows and roars, her voice sounding barely human in its long, drawn-out caws of agony.  I turn and tug the pincers, twisting and pulling her breast while the burning goes on.  Unable to struggle, Kathy just lies on the rack and screams.

            Finally, I release her breast and withdraw the iron from her smoking, steaming flesh.  Kathy turns her head and vomits a small spurt of water over her own armpit, groaning and wailing from the magnitude of it all.  The pincers still glow orange, so I lower them again, this time closing the claws onto the cinnamon stub of her erect nipple. Screams split the air again, with the sizzling, squealing sound of burning skin.  I wrench the pincers around, twisting her nipple like the stalk of an apple, until there is nothing left but a charred nub that once was sensitive flesh.

            When I lift the iron away, the wounds on her breast are ghastly.  Kathy is shaking her head and sobbing, from pain, and from knowing that her once perfect breast has been ruined.  "Tell me what you know, and it stops.  Refuse, and I burn you again."

            Kathy's head lolls.  Mucus streams from her nose, tears from her eyes, mixing with the sweat on her drawn face.  Her lips move, but her words are garbled.  It seems she is weakening from the torture.

            But it could be a ploy.  Just to make sure, I return the pincers to the brazier and draw out a fresh branding iron.  I return to her left side, aim it squarely between breast and underarm, and press it to her skin.  She shrieks and wails and turns her head, but the scream is somehow distant, agony without awareness.  I let it burn her nevertheless, until I am satisfied that she is truly insensible, then pull it from her flesh.

            I sigh.

            "Steve, Austin, I think we should rest now."

            "She is weak," Austin notes.  "She needs to recover."

            I nod.  "Loosen her, five notches each wheel, and let her breathe a little.  Then give her water.  We resume in a few hours."

            I am glad I put Kathy on the rack.

            I had thought of using the horse, and the pear, as I had with Janet.  But the horse can be endured; and I have known women to bear through the torture of the pear, until the damage is such that death is inevitable, and thus it becomes their salvation. Irons, too, can be resisted.  It is rare, but I have witnessed it.  The pain, though intense, is relatively brief, and too many burns can create more problems.  I know already that she would be stronger than the water torture, and while the thumbscrews might have forced her confession, I doubt they would coax the truth about Matmos and Daffy from her lips.

            The rack, on the other hand, holds the key to breaking her.  It has already drawn a confession of witchcraft from her, and the racking we gave her was only mild.  The pain of the rack grows incrementally, and by its nature is more powerful than the thumbscrews, the horse, the brands or the pear.

            She lies, now, recovering from the brandings. Stretched still, taut enough so that her wearied muscles will not regain their strength, but loose enough so she can catch breath and recover her senses.

            She will break on the rack.  She must break.

           

            In the orange-lit gloom of the torture chamber, against the dark wood of the rack, Kathy Linyd's stretched body looks as if it is polished with oil.  She does not move - she can not move - but lies, pulled between the rollers, secured in a world of misery and pain.

            The brands on her body are red and raw, yet another source of pain for the witch.  To hear our return, a groan of terror escapes her lips.

            How many hours has she lain on the rack, now?  Six?  Seven, or more?  It is a long time to suffer its torment.  Now, as Austin and Steve take their places at either winch, I am certain that Kathy has no strength whatsoever in her arms and legs.  Every tiny turn of the rack is going to be felt in every joint, every ligament, in every vertebrae.  Casually, I place the hourglass, used to measure half-hour increments, on the wooden bed alongside her.

            "Wake her," I say.

            The two men pull on their levers, and the winches groan.  As the chains pull on Kathy's straining limbs, the fire of agony rips through her.  I see her eyes fly open, her mouth too, and a hoarse scream rises from her throat, echoing through the chamber.

            "You are with us, then," I note.

"Aaaaaahhh!!  Oh God, it hu-u-u-urts!" Kathy cries out. 

            "It is just a whisper of the pain you will feel soon," I promise her.

            "What do you want from me?  Please, please, I beg you," she shrieks, "please, I have confessed, I am a witch, there is no more I can say!"

            "Tell us where Matmos is hiding."

            "I don't know, I don't know!"

            "Rack her," I say.  "Five notches."

            The winches roll over again. Kathy screams in pain. A second notch. A third.  Kathy's voice takes on a new sound, a thin wail of agony as, creaking like leather, her body is stretched further and further.  Her whole body begins to lift from the rack's surface, taut as a bow-string between the rollers, and the agony is fire along her bones, spreading up her spine from the small of her back like metal barbs tearing at her very core.

            Another notch, then another. Stretched almost to breaking point, Kathy shrieks and bellows in agony.

            I wait.  Circling the rack, watching her scream and cry, noting each taut muscle, each straining rib, the shallow heaving of her breasts - one perfect, one scarred by torture.  The veins in her neck stand out in her efforts not to lose all sanity.

            Then, I signal.  Again, the winches turn.  Kathy is already screaming, but makes a sound almost like a woman in orgasm as her body stretches again. This time, I hear a distinctive sound from her left shoulder, like breaking a green twig from a tree, and I see her entire arm visibly shift and lengthen.  Kathy's howls and shrieks are proof of the agony as her shoulder shifts out of joint.

            It is a matter of seconds before I hear the same sound from her right shoulder, and it, too, dislocates. Kathy's head hangs back between her disjointed arms as she roars in agony, the pain beyond anything she has felt before.

            I lean close and grasp her hair, lift her head from the rack.  "Listen to me, Kathy!"  She manages somehow to bite down on her screams, clenching her teeth so hard they might break, the veins at her temples pulsing, the tears streaming from her eyes.  "Look at yourself!  You are breaking apart!  I'm tearing your limbs from your body! Doesn't it hurt?  Doesn't it feel like the very agonies of Hell?"

            Incapable of words, Kathy simply tries to nod.

            "I can rack you further, Kathy. Much further. You can be stretched until your elbows and knees pull apart, your hips pop from their sockets. Even then, you can be stretched further still, until your vertebrae begin to come apart.  And when you have been stretched to the very brink of death, I can reset your bones and start all over again.  And the second time will be twice as painful as the first.  Do you want that, Kathy?"

            She shakes her head.

            "Two more notches," I order.

            Kathy begins to form the word, "no," but it simply becomes an inarticulate roar of pain as the rollers click, click again and her disjointed arms are pulled further from her body.  Her elbows, hips and knees begin to groan and creak.

            "Where is Matmos?" I ask.

            Kathy mouths the words, I don't know, so I let her head drop back.  I turn the hourglass, and step back.

            The sand runs slowly through.  Kathy wails and shrieks and groans.  Her body is burning from within, as if the fire of her incineration has already been lit, and smoulders within her bones.  It is agony beyond understanding, beyond belief, focused with relentless intensity in every joint.  I know that she cannot think, cannot focus, cannot do anything but feel.

            It is twenty minutes later that her left elbow separates with a crack! and her arm fractionally lengthens as the joint dislocates.  Kathy's voice explodes in a new scream of agony, her head twisting about, even as her right elbow pulls apart also.  Her arms are now strung together by the ligaments alone, and the agony is immense.

            We must rack her carefully, now.  Stretched slowly, she will be broken according to the size and strength of her joints; her hips next, then knees, then wrists and ankles, and finally her vertebrae.  Too fast, and ligaments will separate from bone, and she will never recover. 

            But that is a long way off.

            Half an hour has passed, and I nod to Austin and Steve.  They return to the winches, take hold of the worn wooden handles.  I move close, to stand over Kathy.  Her face is pale, she groans with every shallow breath.  Her armpits are up around her temples, now, and her ribcage looks as if it is about to burst from her body.  Her belly is tight and drawn.

            "Where is Matmos?"

            There is no response, so I signal the next turn.  The rollers creak, and Kathy gives  a new scream of agony as her broken body is stretched.  Almost at once, a pop! comes from her left hip, and it snaps from its socket with a jarring vibration that sends a shudder through her entire body.

Different bodies break in different ways.  An older witch will suffer more damage than a younger one; but at five feet seven inches, and still young and healthy, Kathy will stretch and stretch, anywhere from six to nine inches.  I watch with satisfaction as Kathy's right hip dislocates neatly, and her screams are like those of a woman possessed.

I turn the hourglass.

            Kathy's screams have shortened.  It is inevitable; even breathing is an effort, and added to the terrible agony of racking comes the panic of near-suffocation.  Her body, spread and shining, is so easily hurt.  And as the hours pass and her ligaments inflame in reaction to the tearing damage caused by the rack, her pain will simply grow and grow.

            A half hour after the turn that disjointed both her hips, I command another turn of the roller. Even hearing my order, Kathy begins begging for mercy in a desperate whisper, but when the rollers shift, she finds voice again, a broken roar of pain as her creaking body extends again.  There is a series of pops again from her spine, and I know the pain must be like knives driven into her back, rivalling that of her pulled-apart joints.

            When at last she is unable to scream any more, Kathy simply moans.  I lean over her again.  "It gets worse," I promise.  "In a few hours, when all of your joints have been ripped apart, I will leave you like this.  I will sleep, and you will lie here and suffer an eternity of Hell in every moment.  The pain will grow and grow.

            "Then, by morning, when we return, I will begin stretching you further and further, pulling and pulling, until -"

            "Cottage," Kathy gasps in a tiny voice.  "They have a cottage!"

            I quickly signal Austin and Steve to take the levers again, and they do so.  "Matmos and his witches?  You speak of them?"

            "Yes!"

            "They have a cottage?"

            "Yes!"

            Finally.  "Where?"

            "In the woods … five miles in from where … the road north … crosses a stream," she gives, in desperate agonised bursts. 

            "They hide there?"

            "Yes!  Yes, yes, yes!" she weeps.

            "Who else is with him? Name them."

            "I don't know," Kathy wails.

            I give the signal, and the rollers shift.  Kathy's screaming is high and terrible, her groaning limbs forced fractionally longer.  It takes her long minutes to find words again, and when they come, they repeat over and over: "I don't know, I don't know, oh God, please, I don't know!"

            I frown.  I want to rack her further, torture her more to be certain she speaks the truth, but she is already showing signs of slipping into a state of near-dementia from the pain.  She has been under torture for an entire day, and even one as young and strong as Kathy can only endure so much.

            I straighten.  "If you are lying to me, Kathy Linyd, God help you, because I will have you racked for three days without pause, do you understand?"

            "I swear it," Kathy gasps.

            I slowly nod.  "Very well."  To Austin and Steve, I say, "I will fetch the physician so we can loosen her."

            Both give their approval.

With joints to be reset and ligaments needing time to retract, it will take an hour to release Kathy from the rack.  But once again, our efforts have ended successfully.

 

            I have been instructed to re-examine the witch Kathy Linyd.

            Her wails are terrible as she is dragged from her cell, and not just because she knows she is to be tortured.  Every joint in her body is badly inflamed, muscles strained, and it is agony to move.  Her spine is cruelly swollen, and the fire of damaged tendons and muscle fibres have left her temporarily crippled.

            When she glimpses the torment I have in store, she openly weeps.  Alongside a sturdy wooden whipping-frame, a table is laid out with the instruments to be used in her questioning: the hourglass, the pitcher of lard, and a pear, ornate and grotesque.  Even closed, it is larger than a man's clenched fist. 

            "Oh, I beg you, I beg you, do not!" Kathy shrieks as she is carried to the frame.  "What more do you want from me?"

            "We want the truth, Kathy," I say.

            "What?  But - oh, I swear it, I swear it, I have told you the truth!"

            Her protest is not enough to save her; the guards hoist her up, and her wrists, purple with bruising already from her horror upon the rack, are set widely apart in manacles high above her head.  Naked, she is left to dangle, and a great scream tears her lungs as the pain of her damaged shoulders is cruelly reawakened.

            But it gets worse.  Her ankles are drawn widely apart, so that her toes clear the floor by several inches, and she is shackled; hanging spreadeagled, her joints and muscles burning in terrible agony, her body exposed front and back.

            "Take me down!  I cannot stand it!  Take me down!" she pleads, agonised by her suspension.  But it is not my decision to make, and I stand before her, gazing up into her pain-filled eyes.

            "You lied to us, Kathy.  We went to the cottage, but there was nobody there.  The Man In Black, Matmos, or any of his witches, were nowhere to be found.  We want to know where they are!"

            "How should I know?" Kathy shrieks in terror verging on nausea.  "Oh, by God, I do not know!  Please!"

            "Then you had better search your memory, because the truth must be known."

            I walk calmly behind her, step to the table, and dip my fingers into the jar of cold lard.  Kathy's drawn body is already heaving in pained breaths as she dangles from the manacles.  From behind, I regard the taut globes of her buttocks, the peeping copper-haired secret of her sex, and I carefully slide my hand between her thighs.  She jolts to feel my hand touch her most intimate part, as I smear the lard over her lips.  "No!" she shrieks.

            I take up the pear.  It is heavy, solid; it looks immense in my small hands.  Such a cruel instrument of persuasion, and yet so beautiful in its crafting; the intricacy of design upon its folded petals.

            Kathy is sobbing.  "Please, it hurts," she begs.  "I have confessed that I am a witch.  I have told you all I know of the ones you seek.  I know nothing else!"

            I say nothing, but crouch down behind her, looking up between her legs.  Her sex is there presented, labia slightly parted by the wide spreading of her ankles; the dungeon torch-light catches the fine curls of her pubic hair.  It pains me to so ravage the delicate flower of her femininity; but I have been instructed, and I will do as I am bid.

            I place the cold metal tip of the pear against the entrance to Kathy Linyd's vagina, and push it upwards.  She screams and squeals as the metal intruder forces her wide, wider than she has ever been; it takes effort on my part, all the strength of my arms and back, and her ankles jam against their fetters with the force of it.  But aided by the lard, the pear slides inside her, deeper and deeper, plundering her.  She screams.  Further, deeper I force it; its girth displacing her cervix, making her cry out in pain and distress, until finally it comes to rest, deep inside her sex.

            I stand, gather up a towel and clean my hands, circle my spreadeagled victim.  Now, only a gleaming brass turnscrew protrudes down between her spread legs, ending in the key-like handle for turning.

            A single tear lands on Kathy's unbranded breast, slides over its gentle curve.

            "I beg you," she gasps, "take it out!  It hurts!  You are killing me!"

            I can feel the tears in my own eyes.  "The truth, Kathy.  Give me the truth and it will be over."

            "I swear to you," Kathy sobs, "I don't know!"

            I reach between her spread thighs and grasp the turnscrew in both hands.  Kathy's voice becomes a shriek.  "No - no, no!!"

            I turn the screw - once, twice, three times.  From deep within her, a muffled groan as the pear's terrible flower shifts and blossoms almost two inches wider, sending a terrible agony through her.  She screams in pain, flinging her head back between her upstretched arms, her hair swinging against her straining back.

            I stand, turn the hourglass.  To the guards: "leave me with her.  I will send for you, and for the scribe, when she has something worthwhile to say."

The guards return to their posts; and I leave Kathy to her torture.

Any woman can perhaps understand the nature of pain that must be felt from the pear, but not its magnitude.  Not even the pain of childbirth can compare.

Kathy hangs from her wrists, racked by her own damaged joints, her body shining sweat, the handle of the pear protruding from between her outstretched legs.  She shrieks and groans endlessly, unable to stay still, at the pain of the pear inside her.

            I give her half an hour to suffer, before making my return.  Her distress grows at seeing me.  "Help me, please," she begs.

            "Where is Matmos now?"

            Kathy does not want to answer.  She dreads the question, and when it comes, she does not have the courage to give a reply.  She knows what the result will be, and on cue I reach beneath her widened thighs and grasp the turnscrew.

            "Where, Kathy?  Where are they?  Think, Kathy!"

            I twist the screw.  Another slow creak from her vagina as the pear opens further; I see the shift in her lower abdomen, and Kathy's scream is shrill and long.  She shakes her tortured limbs, swinging as far as the tautened chains will allow, but she is helpless to the pear's terrible agony.

            I watch her screaming.  The agony goes on and on; she is a creature stripped of dignity, stripped of free will, whose existence is pain and nothing more.  I give her time to call 'enough' and tell what she knows; but she merely hangs there and screams.

            I turn the hourglass and leave.

            She is silent when I finally return.  For more than an hour, she has hung in the shackles, agonised, with the pear buried up inside her.  From the bulge in her abdomen, she looks pregnant.  The tears have worn streaks down her face, down her grubbied breasts; the sweat shines on her taut body.  Her head hangs forward; she is exhausted.

            But hearing my footsteps, she raises her chin, and looks at me with eyes that are dark with suffering.  "No more ..." she begs.

            "You still resist me," I say sadly.  "Why do you do it?"

            "I gave you all I knew," Kathy insists, and her voice shakes in dread.

            I am running out of time to wrest the truth from her; she is growing weak already.  I put my hands to the turnscrew, and with Kathy shrieking in terror, I twist it firmly.  A muted crack! sounds from deep inside her, the pear spreads its petals into her womb.  Her screams are terrible.  I twist again, and it opens yet further.

            "No!  No-o-o-o-o!!!!" she bellows, over and over again.  Her screams echo off stone walls, and must be chilling the bones of other prisoners in forgotten cells.  For good measure, I turn the handle of the pear again; the bulge in her belly grows by a fraction, the pain roars ever greater.

            I step back again and watch her hang, watch her scream and suffer.  It is as if the demons have already come for her soul; her tortured eyes roll as her head rocks back and forth, side to side, in endless, restless agony.

            I turn the hourglass, and leave her to her pain.

            In my room off the passageway, mere paces from the torture chamber's locked door, I make a brief report to the waiting Witchseekers, urging them to be patient; then return to my never-ending studies of human anatomy, and the finer points of hurting it.

            The half-hour passes quickly, for me.  It must feel like an eternity for Kathy.  When I return, she hangs as she did when I left.  Groaning.  Agonised.

            "Does she speak the truth, yet?"

            The voice, behind me, belongs to Tina.  I am not surprised that she has come; Kathy's false lead regarding Matmos caused great embarrassment.  Part of me suspects that this further torture is as much punishment as inquisition, and that Kathy really has told all that she knows.

            "Not yet," I say.

            Tina's eyes have a strange look as she notes Kathy's racked and sweat-streaked body, spread suspended in shackles, with the bulge of the pear in her abdomen.  "Turn the screw," she says.  "I want to see it happen."

            I go to Kathy and kneel between her opened legs, take the turnscrew in my hands.  At my touch of the device, Kathy squeals in renewed agony; and when the screw turns and the pear's segments edge wider, she seems to tear her throat with shrieking.  Tina's face shows her fascination with Kathy's agony.

            Minutes pass, and Kathy's screams slowly ease as exhaustion again overwhelms her, and the pain becomes a roar that leaves her dazed and endlessly stirring.  I stand before her, then, and demand again, "tell us everything you know, Kathy.  Where is Matmos?”

            Kathy makes no reply.  Her eyes no longer fix on anything, but slide about in her disorientation and pain.

            "Make her talk," Tina says.  "Find the truth.  Failure would reflect poorly upon you, as you well know."

            There is little doubt as to the power behind Tina's threat, and I nod hastily.

            When she has gone, I return my attention to Kathy.  Silence is dangerous, and her groans are becoming more and more faint.  I know I haven't yet torn her womb, nor caused any lasting injury, but she risks fading into shock.

            "Kathy!" I call.

            My voice brings her back; her eyes find me.  She mouths one word; please.

            I move closer, and place my foot on the taut chain that runs from her left ankle to the base of the frame.  I push downward.  The force acts as a rack, adding tension that spreads up her leg, aggravating the inflamed muscles of her back, the damaged joints and ligaments in her shoulders and arms, and she gives a wail of pain.

            "Please, please, please," she begs.

            "Do you realise what happens if you do not tell me what I need to hear?" I ask.  "You will be taken down from here, but returned instead to the rack.  Imagine how that will feel, as all your joints are stretched again.  Imagine the sound as they pull apart all over again.  Imagine the pain, Kathy."

            "Audrey," she says.

            "What?"

            "Audrey ... Rose ..."

            "Who is Audrey Rose?  A witch?"

            Kathy nods.

            "And does she know where we will find The Man In Black?"

            Again, Kathy nods.

            It is not much, but I am sure, now, that it is the last drop of information she possesses. I put my hand to the pear's screw and gently begin to end Kathy’s suffering.

            Audrey Rose is dragged into the torture chamber between two guards.  She is prettier than I had thought; tall and slender, her skin pale and unblemished, straight black hair brushing her bare shoulders.  Her hands are shackled behind her back; besides the manacles iron, she wears nothing.  Her bare feet skid on the flagstones in her fear.

            She sees me, and freezes for a moment.  Shock.  Bewilderment.  What is a woman doing in the torture chamber?  I wear a simple strappy top - perhaps a little summery for the chill of the chamber - with jeans, boots and heels.  I look as if I might have simply stepped in here on the way to the mall.

            "So you are the one they call Audrey Rose?" I say.  Her blue eyes watch my slow approach, with caution.  "My name is Kirsten.  And I am here to find the Truth from you."  My eyes indicate a momentary reference to the vaulted chamber behind me, then return to Audrey's face, which grows pale at her comprehension of my words.  Her own eyes, then, more slowly pan the torture chamber. The vile machines, the great shapes, the dangling chains and irons.

            "I will tell you the truth," she says quickly.  "I lied about my name when I was captured, because I was afraid. But now I have nothing to hide. I am Audrey Rose, I admit that; but I am not a witch."

            "Oh!"  I put a hand to my mouth. "You're not? You mean, your arrest was a mistake? But - how dreadful!  How could it happen?"

            Audrey looks, from me to the guards, in confusion touched with hope. But it is dashed in another moment as my hand drops away, and I smile at her with derision. "The lies of witches are always the same.  You will give the truth only when you are ready to."  I direct the guards: "put her on the rack and make her secure."

            "Noo-ooo!!" Audrey shrieks, as she is dragged to the dark machine.

            I yawn.

            Perhaps it is terrifying for the witch.  After all, she is a virgin to torture; she has never suffered it before.  But me, I have inflicted it many times. Her struggles are familiar, and predictable; her tugging legs, her wrists still shackled behind her, as the guards spread her ankles widely and fasten them in the manacles that run on chains to the lower roller.  Then they free her wrists, and push her backwards, and for a moment she fights, her back arching off the wood and her breasts thrusting upwards as she fights to break free.  But the guards are well-drilled, and pin her quickly and effectively, using their weight and strength to draw first one arm, and then the other, to the rounded iron manacles, fastening her wrists to the top roller.

            When it is done, she lies sobbing, spreadeagled and naked, upon the wood.  The guards, frustrated and hot, are only too ready to take the levers and wind the rollers over.

            When the rack first turns, its axles grinding and creaking, Audrey fights it.  Her slim muscles tense and tauten, her hands close into fists about the chains, and she seeks to brace herself against the leverage.  She should save herself the effort; she is drawn slowly longer by the winding chains, until the slack is taken from her young limbs, her wrists and ankles rise off the bed of wood.

            Finally, she is pulled to her body's fullest extent.  That is when the panic enters her eyes, realizing that she is drawn and taut, and yet, somehow, the machine will wrench inch after inch from her.

            "Please," she gasps.

            I signal the guards, a subtle hand-signal beyond Audrey's line of sight, and the rollers shift again; once, twice, three times.  The shackles bed against her wrists and ankles, they pull, the winches groan, and an extra inch is dragged from Audrey's body.

            She is uncomfortably tight. Not painfully, but enough for her muscles to be engaged in a struggle to absorb the tension and protect her ligaments from harm.

            I stand alongside the rack, and show her the implement I hold in my hand.  "Do you know what this is?"

            She knows.  I can see from the furrowing of her brow, the battle to contain her fear.  The pear.  This is small, only the size of my own fist.  She gives no reply, though, so I say, "it is an oral pear."

            I see Audrey's jaw tighten.  It is a touching gesture, a naive attempt to prevent the inevitable. I simply lift my chin and the guards are reaching between Audrey's upstretched arms, grasping her head and jaw.  She begins groaning and grunting through tightly-clenched teeth, but the hand pushing down on her chin quickly becomes unbearable.  She begins to wail and cry out as her mouth is forced open.  I am fast to fit the end of the pear between her teeth and push.  Audrey fights, but the pear impels its way in, her mouth forced wider, until the metal bulb is completely inside.  Once it is in, her teeth and lips close around its tapering base so that only the turnscrew protrudes.  It is a bizarre sight.

            She keeps her eyes away from me.  Her shining breasts are heaving fast with her efforts.  The pear in her mouth fills it completely, pressing her tongue down, her cheeks hollowed, face stretched around its metal circumference.

            I put my hand on the turnscrew.  Audrey whimpers, her voice oddly reverberant through the metal of the pear, and her eyes flick to me, pleading, begging.  She tries to shake her head.  I smile, and twist the screw.  Inside her mouth, the pear expands, pressing on her teeth, forcing her jaw wider.  I turn it again, then once more, watching as Audrey's jaw is cranked steadily further open.  There is a muted crack, just gas in the joint, but already it will be painful.  Her eyes are watering.

            I turn it once more, her mouth stretches open.  I watch the growing discomfort and ache spread across her face.

            "If all we would hear are lies," I tell her, "it is best we hear nothing at all.  When we return, it will be to begin your torture.  And when I let you speak, it will be to hear the truth."

            Audrey's frightened eyes watch our departure.

 

            Four hours is a good length time to leave her.

            In four hours, Audrey's muscles lose their strength, her body becoming ever-more helpless to the constant tension of the rack.  The burn of strain builds in her ligaments, so that it feels as if her very bones are growing hot.

            Four hours is long enough also for the ache of the pear in Audrey's mouth to become truly painful.  Her jaw has rarely been stretched so wide, and never for such a long time, and the ache builds into a pain deep in the joint, hurting her cheeks, making her teeth throb in slow waves.  Her lips are dry, stretched around the metal of the pear.  

And four hours is long enough for Audrey Rose to dwell on her fear, for it to build and grow, a knot in her guts that gnaws at her and makes her heart flutter within her expanded ribcage. The sweat creeps and beads in her armpits, between her buttocks, along her hairline, until she can smell the scent of it.

            We finally return. The door bangs open, and the three of us stride towards the rack, where our victim lies exactly as we left her, four hours earlier. She has been waiting for us; she has been able to do nothing else.

            My assistants take up the rollers at the head and foot of the rack. I stand, and look Audrey's drawn and exhausted body up and down. The sheen of sweat, the pale of her skin beneath the slow-burning torches. Her contorted face, the handle of the pear protruding from her wide-stretched mouth.

            "Rack her," I say.

            The first turn brings pain, fiery and savage through her joints, along her muscles.  She gives a hollow moan through the opened pear.

The rollers click slowly, a single notch every five to ten minutes; the stretching is excruciatingly slow, and excruciatingly painful. At the next notch, the first scream escapes through the pear in her mouth. From there, it just gets worse for her. Audrey screams in pain as her limbs creak and groan, and the rack stretches her slowly further.

            She is racked for an hour.  The long spaces in between each creak and groan of the turning rollers are filled with her inarticulate bellows and cries; her life has become a nightmare. By now, as the inches have been wrested from her long and willowy frame, it must feel as if her very bones have been ripped from their sockets; and with the pear distending her mouth will feel as if her jaw has been cracked open.

            I inspect her body carefully.  Her pale arms are drawn and taut, the muscles hard with strain; her suffering face is framed by her pale, shaven underarms, wet with the sweat of fear and pain.  Her breasts have been drawn almost flat, but rosy-pink nipples thrust innocently into the chill air, inviting the agonies that could be inflicted upon them.   Her ribcage stands in corrugations, streaked with sweat; her belly is hollowed by the strain, her belly-button rising and falling rapidly with shortened breath.  Her hip-bones and the pale skin of her loins are in contrast to the raven triangle of her pubic hair, which modestly veils the anatomy of her womanhood.  Her legs, long and supple, are straining and stretched towards the roller.  It is as if all the color of her body has gone into her now-crimson hands and feet, misshapen and squashed beyond the manacles.

            She groans in agony.

            She is indeed beautiful, it would be easy for her to bewitch men and women alike.  I can see that both the guards are smitten with her body, both as hard as wood for her.

            Slowly, I reach out and gently touch Audrey's distended jaw.  She squeals with the pain, her eyes huge, her grunts and wuffles desperate as I put my hand to the screw of the pear.  "Shhh," I tell her.  "I am going to remove it.  But you must not make a sound, not cry out, and when I ask you a question, you will tell me the truth.  Do you understand?"

            Yes, yes!

            It hurts as I close the pear, and the pressure on her jaw eases for the first time in many long hours.  But true to her promise, she makes no sound, even though the pain of the rack fills her eyes with tears and floods her brow with sweat.  When I withdraw the pear, it strings out a trail of her saliva, and her mouth closes only slowly, her jaw sprained from the torture.

            "The charges against you are solid, Audrey Rose," I say.  "You were seen dancing naked, around the fire. You were seen to touch yourself -" my eyes flick to her pubic thatch - "down there. You were seen talking to a cat, a dumb creature. How do you answer to these charges?  Do you deny the evidence?"

            In the moments before she answers, we both hear the slow creak of her own joints, pulled almost to breaking point.  The pain is so great that her chin trembles, her curled fingers shake beyond the manacles.

            "I am not a witch," she manages to gasp.

            The guards fix their fists around the levers of the rack, and Audrey Rose finally gives in to a shriek of pain and terror, but I signal them to wait.  Instead, I put my hand on her drum-tight belly as she wails.  "You poor girl," I say.  "It is the truth, isn't it?"

            "Yes," she squeaks.  A trickle of sweat runs from her temple.  "… Please, it hurts so very much!"

            "I do not believe you are deliberately lying," I say.

            "Then … you will … take me off …?" she gasps.

            "No.  You are not deliberately lying, because you believe the lies.  You are confused by the chaos of your sins, you have blacked out the reality and think yourself innocent.  Only pain, pure and severe, can bring back the clarity of innocence."

            Audrey Rose's eyes grow huge.  "Noooooo!!  No, no, you are wrong, please, you are wrong, I am innocent!"

            "Rack her further," I say.

            The screams are terrible as she is stretched again.  But even though she has suffered multiple turns of the rollers, her muscles are only strained, her joints sprained; a woman of her youth and suppleness can be racked cruelly and still recover.  I watch her as she lies bellowing in her agony, her eyes filled with the horror and bewilderment of such overwhelming, indescribable pain.

            "Soon your shoulders will dislocate," I tell her calmly.  "You will know when it happens; they will 'pop' and suddenly your armpits will be up above your ears, and the pain will be … beyond anything you could imagine."  I smile.  "But that is nothing compared to the pain when your elbows pull apart."

            She cannot do anything but give high-pitched mewling sounds of agony, her eyes unseeing, staring at the ceiling, already in terrible pain.  Then, as the guards take hold of their levers again and begin to stretch her, Audrey's voice returns in a horrible roar.

            "Noooooooooo!!  I confe-e-e-ess!!!!"

            Just as I expected.  I smile.  "You admit that you are a witch?"

            "Ye-e-es!"

            "And you admit that dancing naked  in a satanic ritual, and to keeping a familiar?"

            "Yes, yes, yes!"

            "We will ask you to sign a confession and ratify it when you are taken from this place.  Will you do that of your own free will?"

            "Oh God, yes, yes!"

            The tears spill from her eyes, the sweat runs on her body.  Her very bones feel as if they are packed with embers, as if she is burning from the inside, as if her spine has been hammered through with nails.  She will think her pelvis is tearing from her backbone, that her belly is ripping its moorings.  The truth cannot hide from such pain, and I nod.

            "We shall show you mercy, now."

            As the rollers release, Audrey's fingertips retreat visibly, slowly, her body gradually contracting.  She gasps and shrieks in a mixture of residual pain and almost-orgasmic relief.  Then come the tears; of course. She knows that she has finally told the truth, she feels its burden lifted from her heart, and knows that her sins can now be cleansed from her bones by the scourging fire.

            She does not know, yet, that I have more questions. Questions she will be far more reluctant to answer.

 

            I open the viewing-slot of Audrey's cell.  It is almost pitch dark, the only light comes from a small oil-filled lamp mounted on a bracket.  The walls are roughly-hewn from the bedrock, featureless but for iron rings bolted four feet off the floor.

            It is to one such ring that Audrey is shackled.  She slumps in the near-blackness, her arms held loosely over her head, her head lolling against one arm.  It is an exercise in despair; unslippable shackles inside an inescapable cell deep within an impenetrable dungeon.  She cannot even lower her arms to wipe the tears from her eyes.

            I nod to the guards.  "She is ready.  Bring her."

            Five minutes later, she is half-dragged into the orange light of the torture chamber.  She struggles to get her legs under her, but after her racking of a few days ago, her joints and muscles are stiff and painful.  Her hands are again manacled behind her back.

            "I see you are still a little sore," I note.

            Audrey's blue eyes blaze with fear and anger as she regards me through strands of her own black hair.  "You have crippled me," she accuses.

            "That?  It's nothing.  A few pulled muscles, a few torn ligaments, you'd recover, given the chance.  Unless, of course, we put you back on the rack."

            Audrey's face grows pale.  "What?  But - what have I done?  Please!  I gave you my confession!"

            "And now I want the rest."

            "The rest?"  There is dread to the point of nausea in her voice.

            "People.  Places.  You are a valuable source of information to us."

            "I don't know those things!" Audrey squeals in horror.  "Oh, God, you have to believe me - I don't know!"

            "Do you know Kathy Linyd?"

            Audrey's lips echo the name, and recognition flickers in her eyes.  "I think I saw her name, somewhere ... but ..."

            "She was a witch, put to death only this weekend gone.  During her interrogation, she named you as another witch, and one who would be able to answer our questions."

            The tears begin to spill.  "I don't know, I don't know anything," she insists.

            At my instruction, the guards place Audrey on a heavy frame of latticed iron palings, almost like a garden trellis.  She is shackled spreadeagled, her feet almost a yard-and-a-half apart, her wrists similar; the chains then tightened by small turnscrews until she is immovably stretched, reawakening the agonies of the rack.

The frame itself is suspended at waist-height by four adjustable chains; by means of these, she can be pitched and angled however I desire.  I order her feet lowered, so that the base of the frame rests upon the floor, her spread body on an angle.

She is already shining with perspiration, her chest heaving quickly with fear; having been tortured once before, she is dreading fresh pain.  I go and stand by the top of the frame, behind her head, and close my fingers in her hair, raising her head up off the frame.  "Watch," I instruct.

The two guards are already preparing.  A solid brazier is stood barely five feet from the frame on which Audrey is bound.  Into this, burning coals are tipped, raising a shower of sparks and smoke.  Then the guards place a heavy black iron cauldron on the coals.

"Do you know what is in that pot?" I ask.  "Oil. It will take an hour to heat properly, so I'll trust you to watch it for us. When I return, we'll discuss that information you're holding from me - and how I might persuade you to release it to me."

"I beg you, have mercy," Audrey gasps.  "I don't know anything!"

"You will," I assure her.

The hour it takes for the oil to heat is torture in itself.  Not simply the physical anguish of being shackled, tightly-spread and half-hanging, to the iron frame, but the psychological torment of knowing what is coming.

I quietly re-enter the torture chamber after forty minutes, and watch Audrey from a dark corner:  Her eyes are fixed to the brazier and its slowly-heating pot, her pupils dilated with fear. The heat from the coals brings a sheen across her pale skin. As I watch, she twists her head around to look up her own taut arm at the manacle fastened about her wrist; she turns her hand within the cuff's snug fit, tries to reach her fingers to the lock, as if she could somehow release it. Her feet tug and turn; the lineations of muscle in her outstretched legs deepening with her struggles.

In front of her, the oil in the cauldron pops with heat, and she freezes, eyes wide and fixed again upon it. Then, with more fevered effort than ever, she renews her struggles, the manacles clanking against the metal frame, her muscles shifting and turning, her shining breasts rapidly heaving in the dungeon gloom.

I love to make a dramatic entrance; and when I step from the shadows, Audrey is so terrified she gives a high pitched squeak of anguish, jolting in her shackles. On cue, the torture chamber door is unlocked and opened, and two guards and a scribe enter, to witness and record the session.

Audrey Rose is petrified. "Please," she whimpers desperately. "Please, I will cooperate, I'll answer any questions you ask, I will do anything you say!  You don't need to torture me!"

"Raise her feet," I order.

The guards move to the chains, and draw them up so that the frame is lifted, and Audrey lies flat on her back; but she lifts her head, watching in terror.  From the nearby table, I pick up the insulated gloves, push my hand into the first. "Where, then, is the Man In Black?  Who are his associates?  Who else can you name?"

"Nobody, I swear!  I don't know the man you speak of!  Oh God, I swear to you!"  Audrey realizes that she cannot avoid torture, and panic sweeps her.  She thrashes in her manacles. Taking my time, I pick up the scoop for pouring oil.  It is a metal ladle on a long stem, but with its pouring spout forming a funnel to prevent splashing.

I can feel savage heat radiating from the cauldron as I dip the scoop into it; there is an evil crackle, moisture on the cold metal at once vaporized.  When I lift the scoop out, there is smoke coming from its fiery contents, and I bring it over to where Audrey lies spread.  I hold it over her bare left foot.

"Oh, God, no, I beg you!" she shrieks.

"Where is the Man In Black, Audrey?  Give me names."

"I swear, I do not know these things," Audrey whispers.

I tip the ladle.  A pencil-thin stream of smoking oil pours over her toes; there is a hissing, crackling, like frying, and Audrey jolts, rigid, her back arching, her breasts thrusting high as she screams in agony.  The stream of oil flows between her curled toes, burning rivulets down the sole and sides of her foot, blue-grey smoke rising up where skin sears.  Audrey's screams are terrible, the frame shaking as she struggles.

I stop pouring, but as the last of the oil drips to the floor beneath her, Audrey still screams and shouts, her foot smoking.  "Oh, Jesus Christ almighty, oh God ..."

"Names, Audrey."  I pour a little more onto her freshly-burned toes, the crackling oil spilling down her foot, and she jolts and shrieks in agony again.  Her pale skin is now red and ruined, blistered.  As cruel as the pain, is the knowledge that her perfection will be marred forever; but as a confessed witch, she has none of the protection from scarring and maiming that the unconfessed might enjoy.

I hover the ladle over her legs; Audrey watches it in horror and fear, the tears spilling from her eyes.  The sweat clusters on her breasts and torso and in her armpits like dewdrops, her body writhing endlessly with the pain in her burned foot.  Without any warning, I dribble oil onto her right shin, following the line of the bone.  Audrey jolts and screams, her mouth wide, her head back, her buttocks lifting off the frame as smoke curls up from her leg.  Searing oil streams down the sides of her calf, burning trails over her smooth skin.

            Her scream ebbs into a long sighing wail, the tears and sweat running from her face. She has stopped trying to free her wrists and ankles, finally resigned to her helplessness, but that doesn't stop her writhing in agony.

            She lifts her head to implore me piteously, "please, I don't know what you want!"

            "Pain will sharpen your memory," I tell her.  "The Man in Black, Audrey.  Where is he?  Who else can you name as witches?"

            Audrey is gasping.  "I don't know, I don't know!  Who is the Man in Black, I have never heard of him!"

            I bring the ladle close to her left thigh, and she gives a shriek; spread so widely, she cannot move her legs, nor protect the hair-covered nest between.  Almost casually, I dribble a short stream of oil onto her inner thigh.  It crackles and smokes along her skin, and she bucks wildly, giving a terrible howl of agony.  The smell is almost like frying pork.

            When Audrey's screaming stops, I return to the cauldron.  I tip out the still-hot oil and stir the seething liquid, drawing out a scoop of fresh oil.  It is still crackling in the dungeon air, and I bring it over to Audrey, trailing smoke.

She is shaking her head, begging me.  "No, no more, no more!"

"You're holding out on me, Audrey Rose.  You are protecting those who do not deserve to be protected.  Do you think they would endure all of this, for you? Of course not.  They would betray you in a heartbeat."

"I protect no-one," Audrey groans, her head thudding back onto the iron grate.

I bring the ladle over her right arm, the taut interchange of muscle above her armpit, and regard her coolly.  "Names.  Places."

I tip the ladle, and the superheated stream of oil pours onto her arm.  It hisses, sizzles; a smoking river searing down her arm to her armpit, where it vaporizes her sweat and splashes me with hot droplets. Audrey arches and bucks and screams in agony as steam and smoke curl up from her sensitive skin, the oil flowing down her side. A large whitish cloud climbs up into the vaulted ceiling.

            It is a long time before Audrey stops screaming; when she does, she wails and sobs, the oil still pooled in the hollow of her armpit, the skin blistered and split, her flawless pale beauty now angry-red and scarred.

           "Enough," she groans.  "Please, I can take no more."

           "There is still much I can do," I tell her.  "Tell me what I need to know."

           "I don't know it, oh please, I don't know!"

           I bring the ladle, still smoking, low over her left breast.  Her head lifts to stare at it, her eyes wide.  "No," she whispers.  "No, I beg you!!"

           "Where is the Man in Black?"

           Audrey does not answer, but gives a groan of dread and nausea, her head dropping back, so I pour. The burning oil spills directly onto her rose-colored nipple, and the angry crackling of burning skin is met by Audrey's most terrible screaming yet. As the oil spills over the curve of her breast, her skin sears and burns, smoking trails scoring her flesh in terrible rivers of agony, her nipple turning brown as I continue to pour the oil over it.

           When I lift the ladle away, her breast is smoking, steaming, and Audrey's head flings from side to side as she screams in maddened agony.  Oil and sweat still bubbles and crackles down her side to the iron frame on which she is shackled.

           Her head rolls; and then her eyelids flutter, and she falls into a swoon.

           "Bring water," I call, returning the ladle to the cauldron of oil.

A pail of icy well-water is fetched, and flung over Audrey's spreadeagled body.  She awakens with a groan, water running from her goosefleshed skin.  The angry red marks on her limbs and breast show where the oil has burned her; blistered trails map its scorching retreat across her naked flesh.

           Her ribcage heaves.

           "It won't end, Audrey," I say, when she has recovered enough to know her surroundings again.  "It will never end until you give us what we need."

           "I don't know," she sobs.  Her words are slurred; the shock of her ordeal is affecting her, now.  I have almost exhausted her, and she will need days of rest before I can resume.

           "Think, Audrey.  You are a witch, you admitted it.  You must have known the Man In Black?"

           "I ... don't remember ..."

           "Why do you protect him?  He would betray you in an instant."

           Audrey begins to weep.  "I don't know what you want me to say!"

           Again, I draw the ladle from the cauldron.  Smoking oil drips from its shimmering curve.  I can feel the handle's heat, even through the thick gloves.  Seeing it, Audrey is reanimated, weakly struggling in her shackles, moaning in dread.

           "Don't bring it, I beg you, don't bring it!" she begs.

           "Talk to me, Audrey," I warn, and hold the ladle low over her right breast.  A single hot drop of oil splats onto the bony plateau between her breasts, and she wails and arches at the pain, a tiny smoking brand.

           A moment later, I am pouring a fiery cascade of burning oil over her right breast, and she gives voice to wild screeches of agony.  The oil crackles and spits where it spills over her nipple, tearing smoking streams of fire down the curving flesh, to run down her ribcage, scorching a tiny path down the groove of her belly to her navel.  Audrey screams and howls; the curling steam stings my eyes as the helplessly-spreadeagled witch rears and bucks her hips in pain, twisting in her torment, trying to fling the pain from her body.  But the manacles about her wrists and ankles hold her to the frame, hold her to the agony, the embrace of boiling oil burning deep into her breast.

           Eventually, Audrey becomes still, though her fists are clenched so tightly, the nails puncture her palms: her dark ringed eyes roll dazedly.

"I'll talk," she says weakly.  "Please, oh, God, please, I remember now.  No more!"

"I'm listening," I say patiently. 

Audrey's chest heaves.  Her spread body shines in sweat from head to toe.  I am the same: my bare arms and shoulders are oiled with perspiration from the heat.  Audrey's voice is hoarse from screaming, but she gives what she knows:  "I remember … the Man in Black came to me in my sleep."  She rolls her head, moans in pain before going on:  "…He was in the form of a bat, and flew in through my window … he ravished me in my bed.  Forgive me, I beg you … hurt me no more … I do not know where he came from …"

I slowly nod.  "I believe you, Witch.  And what of others?"

"I know nothing of others," Audrey says, in rising fear.

It does not save her: I tip a small dribble of oil in the crease of her groin, at the very edge of her black pubic hair; the crackling hiss of burning flesh is joined by her screams of agony, the hot oil trickling down between her legs, scorching but not quite burning.

"No!" she shrieks, "Stop!"

I hover the ladle over her.  "It next falls where you fear it most," I warn.

"Stop! I will give you names!"

I slowly withdraw the ladle.  "Scribe?" I call.  "Record this."

Audrey tells, the scribe writes.

When the session is done, Audrey's bruised wrists and ankles are freed.  She groans and is barely conscious as they lift her from the frame, bind her hands behind her back, and carry her back to her cell.  I thank my assistants, and towel off my sweat-damp skin.

Audrey Rose has been broken.

          

           I am the one to open her cell door, but it is Steve who orders three of the eight hooded guards to fetch Audrey Rose from where she slumps, arms chained over her head to the wall.  To see them, she gives a long cry of horror.

           "No!  No, let me stay here, please!  Leave me here!" she begs.  As they unshackle her wrists, and her arms drop from the fetters, she weeps openly.  Irons are closed again about her wrists, but only as cuffs securing them behind her back, as she is lifted.

           The wounds on her body are cruel; her burned foot, her burned legs and arm, her breasts; combined with the residual swelling from her racking, she walks only with a great deal of difficulty, a slow, hobbling limp.

           As they pass, I reach out to clear a stray of lank and oily hair from Audrey's face, tucking it behind her ear.  "It is almost over," I tell her softly.

           As the guards, bearing Audrey, follow Steve to the exit, I detour to my room and inspect the whips laid out there.  The one I choose is heavy; and woven into its tightly-braided bull hide are fine wires. Its kiss is truly terrible, and it will be the instrument of Audrey's penultimate punishment.

           In my private thoughts, I had not wanted to put Audrey to the lash. It had seemed to me pure sadism. But those wiser than I had spoken of the necessity of it; only through making the execution a spectacle can we avoid complacency among those whose everyday freedoms are so threatened by witchcraft.

So the whip shall fall upon Audrey's flesh. I clutch the hard coils close to my body, pulling my heavy cloak around me, and follow the somber procession.

           When Audrey is led outdoors, there is a roar from the crowd. Talk has been strong about the growing plague, and the people are alarmed by it. Today they want proof that the Witchseekers can do their job. Today they want to see a witch burn to death, and they want her agony to be felt by all who are, or would become, a witch.

           Audrey hobbles terribly. It is a miserable day, dark clouds and a cold breeze; those come to watch the execution are in coats and jackets.  It is a twist of irony that Audrey is naked, and that goosebumps coarsen her skin, that her scarred and swollen nipples crinkle and stand in the chill.  She will find warmth soon enough.

           The first stop on the way to the stake is the scaffold, at the top of which stands the whipping frame, a tall rectangle of wood with manacles dangling open; the chains have already been adjusted to Audrey's height.  The crowd surges around the scaffold, pressing from all four sides, and the guards have to fight to clear a path for Audrey as she is led to the broad steps that lead up.

           "You're going to suffer, witch!"

           "You want a fuck before you die?"

           "They should tear your tongue out and break your bones, you whore!"

           The shouts are neither eloquent nor constructive, a generic roar of abuse and taunting from the throngs who jostle for a view.  But it expresses the rage that has built up, and Audrey flinches repeatedly from the cries, her eyes not daring to meet the twisted faces of those who want to see her in flames.

From behind the procession, I regard the scaffold with some reluctance; the last person to suffer up there, naked and shrieking, was me.  Now is my chance to extract some kind of vengeance for my humiliation.

           Audrey has to be helped up the stairs by four of the guards.  Despite her weeping, she is too weak from torture to offer resistance as her arms are stretched up to the cuffs that dangle open and icy in the afternoon's chill.  The iron is made fast about her wrists, and it is almost with relief that she slumps into a hang, her legs limp beneath her.

           "Goddamn, she's a fox!" someone shrieks, and there is laughter.  Digital cameras are lifted above the heads of the crowd, people angling for the best shot. A flash goes off.

           I climb the steps as the guards descend, and, at the top, shed my cloak. God, I deliberated for ages over what to wear today. Not too casual, not too formal. The red cocktail dress was just too dressy. The track pants and t-shirt were too 'gym mom.'  The long black skirt and long-sleeved top made me look like a witch myself, and the polka-dot sundress was altogether too flippant.

           The dark blue silk camisole and black bootleg pants, I feel, are ideal. No restriction of movement, not too formal nor too casual, and just the right color for a whipping. It was obviously a good choice: there's a wolf-whistle from somewhere below.

… Although it might be for Audrey.  She certainly does look beautiful.  I am always perplexed by the way a witch looks so lovely on her execution-day, in much the same way that all brides are beautiful. For all the marring of her beautiful white skin, she is still slender and graceful and sexy.

           At last, there is the semblance of a hush from the crowd below us. Oberon climbs the scaffold, briefly consults his notes, then raises his voice to address those gathered.

           "Before you is the confessed witch, Audrey Rose.  Named by the witch Katherine Linyd, who was executed last week, Rose was arrested in England on July the 14th by one of our finest Witchseekers, the same man who will be entrusted with burning her today. She was locked in iron and brought back here to face interrogation. She was tortured only for the extraction of truth, and she duly gave it."

           I wish he'd hurry up.  My arms and shoulders are bare and I'm getting cold.

           "Audrey Rose is charged with dancing naked and performing lewd acts beneath a full moon; and to this, she has confessed. Audrey Rose is charged with reciting spells and satanic incantations; and to this, she has confessed. Audrey Rose is charged with keeping a familiar; and to this, she has confessed. Audrey Rose is charged with witchcraft, and of being a witch; and to this, she has confessed."

           There is a cheer at that news, in anticipation of the announcement to come.  And it duly does: "For this, the witch, Audrey Rose, is sentenced to thirty lashes of the whip, and then to be burned alive at the stake."

           The crowd gives a huge cheer, and as Oberon steps down, it is my signal.  I uncurl the whip in my hand, and its length slaps across the platform. God, stage fright! How many did they say?  Twelve hundred people?

Feet apart, I draw back my arm, then fling the whip forward with all the precision and skill my father passed on to me: the braided leather whistles through the air, and cracks! across Audrey's naked back with a sound like snapping wood; she is flung forward in the chains, the air driven from her lungs with a shriek, and instantly there is a visible score  across her shoulder blades.  The pain arrives an instant later, and Audrey gives a long wail.

The crowd loves it.  I fling the whip again, crossing the first lash, then a third time, then a fourth; quickly laying a bloody crosshatch over Audrey's pale skin as she barks and shrieks in pain.  The sweat has sprung across her body, her ribcage is heaving. 

The next lash cracks across her lower back, just above her buttocks; she lurches against the chains, and screams.  I cross it with two more stripes, until a trickle of blood runs between the cheeks of her arse. Another stroke, across her middle-back, and her shriek echoes off the chateau wall. Some in the crowd are counting the lashes, and the crack! of the ninth and tenth lashes are eagerly tallied. A spot of warm blood hits my arm.

I pause.  I am already breathing hard, putting all of my strength into the whipping.  Dangling as she is by her wrists from the open frame, Audrey is as exposed in front as she is behind; many of those present have crowded in front of her to catch the best view of her nakedness, and to see the pain on her face as each whip-stroke lands.  Now, I circle to stand in front of her, and regard her half-hanging form.  The blistered marks of torture are still clear to see, both breasts scorched and now swollen.  I casually wonder if there is much feeling left in them - then measure the distance with my eyes, and fling the whip.

The impact throws her breasts upwards and leaves an instant welt across both, drawing a terrible cry from Audrey's lips.  She feels it.  Blood appears along the wound, and a moment later another stroke lands across her breasts. Then another, then another; the fourteenth lash lands straight across the apex of her breasts, and spots of blood fleck her skin as one tortured nipple is cracked open.  Her shrieks are piteous, but the crowd roars in approval.

I lay another lash across her breasts, fascinated by the way they jiggle with the heavy whip's power; now they are messed with cris-crossing lines.  The whip's tip has sliced across one armpit.

Audrey's head tips back and she bellows in pain at the leaden sky.  I don't pause, but throw the whip again, this time snapping it across her taut belly.  Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen; the strokes are etched in welts across her flesh.  The twentieth lash stripes low across her belly, all but parting her pubic hair, and she swings from the shackles, wailing in pain.

I aim the lash lower now; slicing across her upper thighs, then across her hips, a bloody stripe angling across her loins.  Her head hangs low between her pain-racked arms as she dangles from the manacles, howling, a string of saliva hanging from her open mouth.

I circle her again, and slash out with the whip from behind her once more; it catches the backs of her thighs, wraps itself around her hip, and she lifts her legs clear off the platform in a spasm of agony, almost wrenching her already-pained shoulders out of joint.  It doesn't protect her, though, as the next swipes crack! across the top of her buttocks, leaving two angry lines.

"Twenty six!" the crowd shouts en masse, as the whip slices again across the back of Audrey Rose's shoulders; back again, across the shoulder blades, then across her lower back, where the bite of the whip is most terrible.  Audrey's head flings back in a spray of sweat and she screams up at the wooden crossbar from which she hangs.

I thrash her twice more, until the small of her back is in ribbons.  The whip finally slithers back across the scaffold wood, leaving a smear of blood.  There are spots of blood on my arms and camisole, too. Audrey hangs panting and moaning. Red-tainted sweat creeps in rivulets down her tortured body, her black hair clings to her sweaty shoulders.

It is done.

I carefully use a cloth to wipe Audrey's sweat and blood from the whip, coiling it up, as the guards ascend to the platform.  In anticipation, the crowd is surging like a tide towards the stake, fifty yards away; while Audrey is released from the manacles.  She sags between the guards, who will now have to all but carry her to her death.

 

Audrey's entire body must be in agony from the whipping, but she still finds the strength to struggle and shout as they drag her up over the woodpile to the stake.  It stands no more than nine feet tall; the wood pile is barely two feet.

As two guards pin her against the post, a third draws her arms behind it; her wrists are lashed together with thick rope. Her ankles are then bound together. She is secured, her naked, scarred body displayed to the huge crowd.

From my vantage point, I watch her as I have watched many before her.  Her head is lifted, but her eyes seem not to see the crowds; her face seems melancholy, oddly relaxed, and I wonder what she is thinking.  Perhaps her mind is back in the forest where she had lived; the damp earth beneath her feet, the summer dawn slanting through the trees.  She must know she will never know that freedom again, that these are her final minutes?

The Witchseeker I know only as Steve is clutching a flaming torch, and with a flourish, he lays it in the straw at the very edge of the woodpile. The wood and straw has been laid with skill, and the flames fan and spread out around the edges of the pile first, quickly encircling the witch at its centre. With his hands, Steve encourages more shouting from the crowd; a sea of angry fists pounding the air towards the bound witch, a chanted scream from a thousand voices:  Burn! Burn!  Burn!  Burn!

The first wisps of smoke drag Audrey from her trance, and the naked woman finally acknowledges the flames that flutter and snap all around her, only two yards distant.  A look of abject terror fills her face, she presses her head back against the stake, her lips trembling, repeating some inward mantra.  In front of a thousand onlookers, she pees herself, her fear streaming down the insides of her thighs, and bursts into tears.

Some witches thrash and struggle and plead; Audrey Rose is beyond that. She knows she is helpless.  She knows she will die.  I can see her body shaking; if it wasn't for the ropes holding her arms tightly about the stake, she would simply collapse from fear.  The sweat is running with the tears on her pretty face.

Mustering courage, she turns her gaze again to the flames. They are higher, now; reaching for her, flickering into the air, grasping and clambering upwards through the wood towards her bare legs. Sparks drift upwards on the currents of air and sting her naked flesh, and she gives a wail at their piercing touch.

Her terrified eyes now search the sea of shouting faces, imploring, afraid, so terribly alone behind the flames. The woodpile itself is like a barrier; outside it, the living; within it, the dead. It is only a matter of time.

A clump of dry leaves and straw flare brightly, and the heat scorches Audrey's skin; she gives another wail and turns her face from the fire. She squeezes her eyes shut; then, on opening them, finds herself staring directly at me.  I give no hint that I am either enjoying the spectacle, or upset by it, but it makes no difference. She calls the words, Kirsten!  Please kill me! - although I can't hear her over the noise of the crowd. I simply shake my head, and she looks away with another cry of fear and misery.

 The flames are jumping high, now, although still a yard from her. Their searing heat is singeing the downy hairs on her naked skin, causing her ever greater discomfort.  Automatically, she begins shifting in her bonds, trying to avoid the pain, but it is all around her.  Her black hair is shifting, stirring as the hot air funnels up around her.

A flame almost touches her bare thigh; Audrey yelps, writhes; I can see her trying to work her arms free, tugging her wrists in their bonds.  But she is held in place as the fire jumps again, flame wrapping around her left hip for a moment.  She screams at its touch, flinging her face away, and the crowd cheers delight.

Fire attacks from the right, now; orange flames like razors, licking at her calf, tearing the skin, flaying her with its touch, and Audrey roars again in pain. She is gibbering to the sky, begging for death, for release, for anything other than this; but the fire has tasted her, and it is hungry for more.

More fire skitters up the back of her right leg; flames leap at her left, suddenly, it is all around her, her legs are blistering, smoking, and Audrey's screams are terrible.  Bound against the stake, she can do nothing but writhe and shake her head and howl as the fire eats into her. This is the terrible price she pays for being a witch; a hideous death, without dignity, the intimacy of her final hour watched by over a thousand spectators.

Her black pubic hair crackles and flares brightly, and flames, that have funnelled up behind her legs, spurt out between them, licking up around her blistering pubic mound. As her vulva and anus are burned, she screams and screams, insane with the agony of it.  Flames cup her buttocks and flutter in the small of her back, the blood and sweat of her whipping sizzling away.  The ropes on her wrists are smoldering, now, but they will not burn through in time to free her.

Audrey's long hair begins to char and frizz, but, screaming, she keeps her face skyward, preserving its beauty, even as flames lick up her flat stomach, blistering her already-tortured breasts.  Now that her voice is driven by agony, I can hear her; she is begging to God to release her from this horror.

The fire surges and jumps upwards; now around her breasts, her ravaged nipples, licking up the stake behind her and tearing the skin from her back.  Her hands are on fire behind the wooden post.  Her legs are burning, melting.

I have seen enough.  She will die soon enough; her screams follow me as I work my way to the edge of the crowd.  Looking back, I see only the plume of smoke rising up from her burning body, hearing the chanting of the crowd, the whistles of appreciation, seeing the flashes of cameras.

Audrey Rose had to die; I only hope that by her suffering, others are deterred.

 

Kirsten Smart

25 July 2004

 

Part 4 - Bubba

 

            It is not often I have a man to work on in my torture chamber.

            I must have shown my enthusiasm.  A black backless gown with a plunging neckline and split sides, teamed with strappy sandals and a gold serpent coiled around my upper left arm - that's trying a little too hard to impress.

            As it is, of course, Bubba barely notices me.  He is brought in with hands locked in shackles behind his back, barefoot in jeans and tee-shirt, a guard on each arm and two more behind.  He tries to hide his fear as he looks around the vaulted depths of the torture chamber; but the flickering lights illuminate countless ghastly instruments, and I can see he is afraid.

            He is a handsome man, a Burt Reynolds type with dark hair and full moustache, dark eyebrows, his mixed white and Cherokee ancestry a delicious combination. It almost seems a shame to strip this man of his beauty and dignity, but it is my job.

            "You have willingly submitted to being put to the question," I say, and his dark-blue eyes lock on to me, somewhere about breast-level. Subtle. "Just because you are a willing victim, don't think we'll go easy on you.  We can put you through some horrible tortures indeed. The truth must be forced from you."

            Bubba swallows; I see the shift of his adam's apple, and his eyes finally meet mine. "Just get on with it," he says.

            "Strip him," I order.

            The guards are not gentle; they wrench his trousers and underpants down, and physically tear the tee-shirt from his body; the garments are then heaped onto a brazier, where they smoulder and then burst into flames. Bubba watches with dismay; it is a reminder that, here, he is to be denied any of the comforts and modesties of civilised life.

            "What do we think about this one, Kirsten?" It is Tina, my superior; she doesn't want to miss this, and she steps forward from the shadows, smiling with anticipation. 

            Bubba towers over us both, approaching six-four, long-limbed and lean.  Standing naked, it's hard to miss the light tan of his skin, the fuzz of hair across his broad chest.  Tina notes, "he seems cute."

            "Now, Tina, it would be unprofessional to let pleasure interfere with business," I remind her.  She glances at me.

            "So why did you dress up? Going to a party?" She, sensibly, has dressed for the chill of the dungeons in moleskin trousers and a thick woollen sweater.  I bite my lip.

"I just thought I'd … dress to …" I can't think of an excuse, and Tina laughs.

            "Well, we'd better get on with it," she says.

            I nod. "Prepare him."

            The guards wrestle Bubba over to an open space between the torture chamber's gothic brick pillars.

I was obliged to refit the suspension chain with larger manacles; those normally used are too narrow for this warlock's wrists. He is locked in the iron, wrists before his body, and I check personally that the shackles are secure before ordering the windlass turned. Bubba's muscular arms are drawn upwards by the fetters, baring the dark pockets of hair beneath his arms, inflating his chest, drawing up the arch of his ribcage, until his body stands stretched on tip-toes.

            I look up into his eyes. They show trepidation, uncertainty. Already, he regrets turning himself over for examination -  and it has not even started! There is a tension between us; I know that, freed, he could kill me with his bare hands, and I would be helpless against his strength. But here, I hold all the power. He fears me, but I can see that he desires me with equal intensity. He would most likely rape me before he killed me – and would perhaps even fuck my corpse to shame me in death as well.

            "Raise him," I order my guards.

            The crank turns, and Bubba gives a groan as, by the manacled wrists, he is hoisted off the floor. He is raised until his toes search the air four inches from the slimy flagstones. The winch is locked. The pain is evident on his face, the iron manacles biting hard into the bones of his wrists.

            "I won't confess," he gasps. "I am repentant."

            "I haven't tortured you yet," I say in reply. "Savour this, Warlock, because it is sheer comfort compared to what awaits you."

            From the warmth and comfort of my room by the torture chamber, I watch Bubba on a surveillance monitor. Unaware that he is under constant scrutiny, the dangling prisoner spends his first hour of suspension as they all do; desperate to get down. After all, it hurts badly. He swings his long legs, and reaches out with his feet, trying to discover some platform or object on which he might support his weight; but he is inches from the floor, and three yards from the nearest stone pillar. There is nothing.

            Then he looks up at the manacles, the chain from which he slowly swings: it reaches four feet to its pulley, a height he could not hope to scale, even if there were any means to free himself at the top.

            After an hour, his naked skin is glossed with a sheen of sweat.  He still struggles, but now it is against the pain.  His feet stir endlessly, his head shifts forward and back, his hips twist. It hurts in his wrists; but now he is beginning to feel a burning pain in his arms as well. He can only hold that pain off by tensing his muscles and absorbing as much of his weight as he can ... but he knows, as I know, that it can only be temporary.

            Over the second hour, his strength drains. I can see it.

            Sure, he's a powerful man; but for all his strength, his size works against him. I have seen women hold out for three hours or more, but after two, Bubba has exhausted his arms and now, finally, hangs limply.

            The tendons and ligaments in his arms and shoulders are on fire.  It is like being on the rack.  His full weight is held by fibres that aren't made for that kind of load, and they are reacting by painful protest.  Now, it is only Bubba's feet that stir and turn, his face contorted with pain.

            I go for dinner.

            It is almost four hours since he was hoisted, when I return to my monitor.  He has had no relief, no visitor, nothing in all that time; now he hangs motionless, his head down, his body wet with sweat.  He would appear unconscious, but I know he is wide awake and aware of every shard of pain spearing through his shoulders and arms.

            I smile in satisfaction, and switch off the computer.  Still another eight hours until I have Bubba lowered from his suspension, so I may as well get some sleep.

           

            I'm dressed a little more sensibly for my second day with Bubba.

            Only just.

            A too-small spaghetti-strap top, a pleated tartan miniskirt and calf-length boots with heels - I thought I glimpsed a wannabe-schoolgirl in the mirror as I left, but dammit, I've got to play the game to the max.  It's humiliation; no man likes to be at the mercy of a sexy girl.  Even if she is on the uphill side of thirty-five.

            I think I'm distracting the guards; they're more eager than usual, almost stepping on my heels as we stride into the torture chamber, towards the limp, gleaming figure dangling mid-air from the manacles.

            "I'm guessing you didn't have a comfortable night," I say, as we near.

            Bubba's head lifts, his feet shift, he groans.  From the weariness on his face, hanging has been a thousand times worse than he ever imagined it would be.  "Please, let me down!"

            "Well, now, I'll be happy to do that," I say, "but first I have to ask if you'll reconsider your position. All of this posturing, claiming that you're a reformed warlock, that you're following the 'right path,' between you and me, it's all bullshit, isn't it?"

            "Please … I am not a warlock any more," he groans.

            "Oh, come now!" I put my hand out to the hard wall of his taut belly, a slow downwards caress of the firm, warm muscle; then push. Like a carcass of meat, Bubba swings back on the chain, then slowly forward, the iron creaking and grating.  He winces against the shifting stresses in his tortured arms. "You'll need to do better than that, to convince me!" I glance at the guards. "Bring him down, prepare the water torture."

            Exhausted from a night hanging, Bubba has barely the energy to struggle, as he is dragged over to a simple ladder-type rack, angled off the floor.  Held down on it by three guards, he cannot escape as the fourth guard manacles his wrists to the uppermost rung.  His ankles are tied together and roped to the winch at the rack's lower end.

            The guards step back, their prisoner restrained; but one takes the long lever of the winch, and carefully begins to turn it.  The ratchet clicks, and Bubba's muscled frame is pulled, gradually straighter, longer, until he is drawn into an uncomfortable stretch.  His ribcage is lifted, his belly hollowed, his arms and thighs taut and defined with the strain.  I put a hand to his chest to check the tension, feeling the strong thud of his heart beneath the fuzz of hair.

            "Three notches more," I order.

            The ropes squeal, the ladder-rack creaks, and Bubba gives a groan as his already-tormented arms are again put under stress.  I nod in satisfaction. "Now the mask."

            It is made of leather, resembling a featureless muzzle but for a single round hole.  Bubba’s nostrils are first plugged with wads of warmed wax; then the mask is stretched over his face, leaving only his panicked eyes uncovered.  The closeness and heaviness of the mask brings on feelings of suffocation, claustrophobia.  Only the hole over his mouth, allows breath; his nose is sealed and the mask prevents him from blowing out the wax plugs. The guards lift his head so the mask can be buckled tightly in place.

            For the second time, I put my hand to his chest.  Now, I trail my fingertips downwards, over the corrugations of his ribcage, then across the hard-pillowed landscape of his abominals. He knows where my hand is going, and even with the mask strapped on, he lifts his head to see.

            Is he aroused, despite his predicament? Could that be possible? I imagine his gaze travelling down my exposed neck, my bare shoulders and downy skin; exploring the shape of me, the way my tank-top hugs my bra-less breasts, the way my nipples poke bumps in the thin cotton.  I imagine him watching the way my tiny skirt flirts with my thighs.

            As my hand closes around his cock, his head falls back and he exhales.  It must be fear but it almost seems like arousal. He doesn't see, then, the rubber band in my other hand, but as soon as I snap it over his cock, doubling it so that it painfully constricts his flaccid manhood, he cries out.

            "Oh god, take it off, please!"

            There's more to come.  As Bubba lies pleading for the band to be taken off his penis, I retrieve one more implement, then, standing alongside his chest,  I press my hand over the mouth-hole of the leather mask on his face, sealing it shut, silencing his voice in an instant.

Bubba's eyes fly wide.  I watch his belly shift as he tries to draw breath; I feel the suction on my palm.  He tries to twist his head away from under my hand, but it is useless.

            Long seconds pass.  My hand stays in place.

            His heart is pounding.  His lungs want air, and he is trying without success to breathe.  I have been counting in my head; one minute.  In another thirty seconds, he will be at the point of utter panic, that moment when a drowning man finally tries to breathe water into his lungs and the agony of death begins.

            I wait.

            Bubba is writhing, struggling for air, his eyes wild, filled with horror and pleading. He truly believes I am killing him, suffocating him with nothing more than the touch of my palm, I can see it in his eyes.

            I remove my hand.

            Behind the mask's small hole, the warlock's mouth opens wide, and he gasps air in a huge inward whoop.  At the same instant, I bring up a metal funnel I have been holding, and shove it down into the hole.  It slides cleanly into Bubba's open mouth, over his tongue, all the way to the back of his throat.  Bubba makes an awful sound, his body heaves as he gags and retches, trying to eject the funnel, but I am already fastening it into place with a simple pair of dome-catches.  Finally, with a hollow, megaphone sound, Bubba begins to breathe, fast and ragged, through the funnel, as if it's a snorkel.  His eyes show every bit of his dread, as he realises the true horror of his situation.

            I step back and look at him.  His tall body is stretched taut, utterly helpless.  His skin gleams with perspiration. His limbs are taut and hard, straining, the veins stark.  Amidst the dark fuzz of his chest, his nipples poke up into the chill dungeon air, inviting the grip of pliers or the snip of shears. His cock is already looking blue, strangled by the rubber band tight around its base.

            Two of the guards have brought water; four large pails of it, and a scoop.  The scoop holds one pint.  Slowly, taking up the scoop, I dip it in the first bucket and hold it over Bubba's naked chest.  Drops of water splat onto his skin, and he flinches.

            "Understand how this works, Warlock," I say carefully.  "I tip the water into that funnel in your mouth.  You swallow it, or you drown.  It's your choice."

            Bubba tries to shake his head no! but I tip the water into the funnel.  It gurgles down the spout, quickly fills to the brim.  For a few seconds, Bubba does nothing.  But he can't breathe. I can see him fighting not to panic; his arms are straining against the tension of the rack, but he can't get free.

            Briefly, there is a burst and a gurgle from the funnel; he is trying to blow the water out, but there's too much; he simply loses precious breath.  I calmly dip the scoop again, and refill the funnel to the brim.

            The veins on Bubba's forehead begin to stand out.  He knows he has no choice.  Then, finally, he begins to swallow it.  Glug, glug, glug … the water level subsides as he swallows it down, with increasing desperation.  He needs to breathe.

            I wait until he has almost swallowed all the water, then dip the scoop again and refill the funnel.  Bubba's eyes almost burst from his head in horror. He still hasn't breathed; his chest is spasming for air, his stomach heaves.  Without hesitation, now, he gulps the water as fast as he can, taking it down.  Finally, it is gone, and he heaves precious air through the funnel.

            I let him breathe for ten seconds, his chest and belly rocking up and down.  Then I refill the scoop.

            "Uhhhhh," is all Bubba can say through the funnel, trying to shake his head between his tautly-upstretched arms, but I pour the third pint in regardless. This time, there is no hesitation. He swallows, swallows, swallows it down, fast and frantic gulps.  Even before it is empty, I fill the scoop again, pour it into the funnel.

            Bubba drinks.

            Four pints, now. Bubba coughs through the funnel, breathing hard. I can see already that his stomach is distended. He will be hurting. The torture has begun. I fill the scoop once again, but this time, I dribble a little at a time into the funnel. As the water hits the back of his throat, he is forced to swallow it, despite the cramping pain in his stomach. I gaze into his eyes as I pour, wanting him to understand the complete control I have over him. I decide whether he breathes, or drowns. I decide how long he can have between breaths, I decide how many breaths he can have.

            When he has finally taken the fifth pint, I take a break. Judging from the groans coming from the funnel, Bubba is in a lot of pain already. His stomach feels like it is about to burst. Already the water is quickly filtering through his system, and things are only going to get worse.

            Fifteen minutes, then I fill the scoop again and, ignoring Bubba's frantic hootings, pour the water into the funnel. Again, he swallows it down; more reflex than conscious act. When this latest pint of water has gurgled down the funnel, Bubba gives a groan.

            Another fifteen minutes, another pint.

            Then another fifteen minutes, and yet another pint.

            A little more than an hour after starting the torture, Bubba looks as if he's pregnant. His belly is bloated and taut, adding strain to his already-stretched body. Every minute or so a knot of cramp hits his stomach, and he visibly tenses, his eyes screwing up with the pain. Everything is distended, stretched by the volume of water inside him.

            I dip the scoop, and dribble a little more every half minute, and Bubba obediently swallows it. I can almost hear his innards creaking as they stretch and cramp. His bladder, too, is rapidly expanding; but with the rubber band around his penis, he can't release it.

When the latest scoopful has gone, the warlock lies groaning. The sweat has broken out across his body. He is truly in pain, now. I stand, looking down at him.  "Confess that you still practise witchcraft.  Confess that you are involved in the black arts.  Confess that you have tried to deceive the Witchseekers."

            His eyes squeeze shut. He cannot bring himself to shake his head and deny confession, but he will not nod yes.

            "Christ, this is getting boring," one of the guards complains. "He'll never confess!"  I turn, to send him an icy glare.

            "Don't underestimate this technique," I growl. "You're all dismissed, for now; but if you want to see something spectacular, come back in two hours."

            The guards depart.

            It takes patience; scoop after scoop of water, dribbled into the funnel; and when the guards return, Bubba is screaming.

            Not just groans, but full screams of pain. His belly his horribly expanded, his bladder too; his wrists and ankles are bleeding from his desperate attempts to get free.  His innards, distended and stretched by the water, hurt as if somebody was performing surgery without anaesthetic.

            Repeatedly he throws up; water gurgles from his throat, up into the funnel; he's forced to swallow it again before he can breathe, but in that time, the sheer panic of suffocation and near-drowning take him again to the edge of sanity.

            Water is seeping as sweat from every pore; but it leeches vital salts from his muscles as it does, and under the tension of the rack, the cramps are excruciating.  Another scream echoes through the torture chamber. His stretched body is shaking violently. Tears stream from his eyes.

            But I am about to make it even worse.  I approach the table holding a cane, a yard long, the thickness of my index finger. I swish it idly through the air; it makes a delicious whistling sound.

            "Remove the mask," I say.

            Bubba's head is wrenched up, the leather face-mask unbuckled.  It is pulled away, the long stem of the funnel is drawn from his throat, and Bubba heaves a small amount of water out.  They head his head drop, and he gives a long wail of agony.

"You've had time to think upon your confession," I say. "Give it now, and you will receive mercy."

            "Stop the pain," he begs.

            "Do you confess?"

            "Please, my Lady, please! I swear, I am an innocent man!"

            Without any further questions, I lift my arm and slash down with the cane; it gives a shrill whistle and then thwacks!! across Bubba's distended belly. It is like hitting a drum, the shockwave brutalising his distended organs, and he gives a terrible scream of agony. 

            I thrash his belly again, then again; the blows are hard and cruel, each one laying a savage red welt across his shining-tight skin.  He bellows in pain.  I pause, then strike him twice again; slashing across his stomach, then higher, the cane smashing down onto one nipple and making his body bounce up off the ladder-rack despite the tension.

            Bubba throws up more water, chokes and coughs, his screams replaced by desperate splutters and whoops for air.  I gauge the distance again, and slice down hard with the cane, just above his pubic hair.  The impact finds his bladder, agony exploding through his abdomen with the intensity of electric shocks. The pain knocks the air out of him, and he simply lies, stretched, his mouth wide open, incapable of sound.

            So I slice down again with the cane one more time across his belly.  The shock of impact brings a new scream from Bubba's throat that takes a long time to ebb.

The marks of the cane are raised welts on his flesh.  His bloated abdomen is already changing colour where it has struck him; he looks ready to burst open.  His cock pokes up at a strange angle, blue now, with the rubber band still around the base.

I grasp Bubba's face and turn it so that he is forced to look at me, his eyes dark with suffering, the tears mixing with sweat. "Confess.  Confess and it ends."

"Oh, God, please," he whimpers.  "You have to let me piss, I beg you, I beg you!"

The guards, behind me, chuckle. If they only knew the intensity of pain Bubba is experiencing. The warlock is oblivious to their amusement, his eyes pleading me.

"Confess and I'll take it off," I say.

"You're breaking an innocent man," Bubba sobs.

"You lie!" I shout, and swing the cane down hard towards the base of the rack.  Its end slices across the knuckles of his toes with a sound like a firecracker, and Bubba jolts, then lets out a long howl of pain.  I shout "put the mask back on him!"

"No, no, oh for pity's sake, nooo!" Bubba squeals in terror.  The guards wrestle with his head, lifting the rack and putting the mask around his face.  Bubba is begging; he is in more agony than he can bear, and terrified beyond words at the thought of more torture.

The leather is buckled securely, the funnel is brought.  Bubba clamps his mouth shut, but I change that quickly.  Another swishing blow of the cane to the ends of his toes, and he screams out in pain; the stem of the funnel is shoved deep into his mouth.

He sees me filling the scoop with water, and his voice trumpets whimpers of terror through the funnel.  They're quickly stifled, though, when I pour the water in, and his belly rocks and heaves as he is forced to swallow it down.  The resulting spasms and cramps through his stomach feel like a knife has sliced through it, and he is barely able to choke down the last of the water.  When it's all swallowed, he can't even scream; the moans I hear are those of a man barely able to catch breath.

I fill the scoop again.  Bubba's eyes are losing focus, but I hover the scoop above the rim of the funnel, letting a small splash land in his throat.  He coughs, swallows.

"One more chance, Warlock.  Confess."

He does not reply.  Perhaps he can't.  I pour the water anyway.  The funnel fills to the brim; the water glugs lazily as Bubba swallows once, twice, three times; and then, no more. He is struggling to take the water down his throat, but his body won't respond.  Instead, he is quietly drowning, the funnel still half-full.

I glance over his body. The sheen of perspiration, the stretched and straining muscles, the obscenely-swollen belly, his strangled cock. He has somehow managed to hold out; but this is only the first day.

I shake my head. "We're finished for now.  Let him breathe." Still swinging the cane, I walk from the rack.  As an afterthought I call back, "oh, and take that rubber band off his dick before his bladder bursts … but stand back!"

Judging from the guards' reactions a minute later, it's quite a geyser.

 

            He spends the next few days chained in his cell.  It takes a while to recover from the water torture; the cramps are severe, and he will ache for a week or more.  But we don't need to wait that long for the questioning to resume.

            It seems the warlock is tough. Torture that would have broken most witches has not yet wrenched the truth from this one.

            If it had not been for his open defiance of the Witchseekers prior to turning himself in for examination, I would have pronounced him innocent.  Now, I believe otherwise, and I seek to prove it.

            Bubba is wrenched into the torture chamber by two guards.  Neither man is small; but Bubba, tall and strapping, his strength recovered a little, fights them every step.  Even with wrists bound behind his back, he tests the guards' grip.

            Behind are three figures; The Witchseekers, Steve and Austin, and my sister-dungeon mistress, Tina deDance.

            In the open space beneath the suspension-chain, Bubba is thrown to the stone floor.  He lands on his knees, and crouches low.

            I acknowledge my associates, then look down at the cowering warlock. "Bubba.  Who so bravely resisted the water torture ... you know, you should have confessed while the going was so easy."

            Bubba addresses the floor: "I am innocent, and nothing you can do to me will change that."

            I purse my lips, pretending to peruse that idea. "Now, the problem is, a guilty warlock would say exactly the same thing to save his arse. So I think we'll just let the truth find its own way out." To Steve, I say, "please, proceed."

            Bubba's wrists have already been bound behind him; now, the two guards push him face-down on the floor.  Steve brings an iron bar, known as a 'spreader;' more than a yard long, with a manacle at each end.  Austin holds one leg so that Steve can close one fetter of the 'spreader-bar' about Bubba's ankle; then, struggling against the fighting warlock, the two men force Bubba's other ankle into the remaining fetter, locking it firmly.

            Bubba lies on his belly, panting and growling, his legs now broadly-spread.

            Feared for his prowess in the torture chamber as well as at the burning stake, the Witchseeker Steve will be instrumental in today's proceedings; it is he who has chosen and checked most of the implements.  His seasoned associate,  Austin, has seen more witches put to flame than any other in his time, and is on hand to assist as well.

            Steve orders one of the attending guards to bring over the heaviest of the iron weights; a fifty-pound ingot.  By a short chain, the iron weight is attached to a mooring point in the centre of the spreader-bar.

Bubba knows already what is to come.  But either he is brave, or stupid beyond belief; he says nothing, even as the suspension-chain is lowered, passed between his bound wrists, and securely locked.  Steve checks all; bonds, fastening, chains, then nods to me.

"Raise him," I say.

It is Austin himself who turns the crank.  The ratchet clinks over, the chain rattles and clatters, drawing through the pulley high overhead, and Bubba's arms are lifted behind his back. Awkward with his ankles so widely spread, he manages a kind of splayed kneel,  but still the winch turns, and his arms lift higher up behind him.

Austin rolls the winch. Fighting the constraints of the spreader-bar, Bubba somehow manages to find his feet; but every inch he concedes is another two inches taken in by the winch, and it is not long before he is on the balls of his feet, his arms rising ever-higher behind his back. The strain shows in the definition of his arms' muscles; the laterals and triceps stark and drawn.

More steady clicks of the winch.  His arms are pulled higher still, his back bows forward, and Bubba groans with the discomfort. Normally his physique would be beautiful, were it not contorted and strained, muscles bunched against the chains' pull, veins bulging with the unnatural tensions.

I signal Austin to pause, and lean my hands on my knees alongside the straining man, intimately close.  "I will give you one more chance to tell the truth and avoid what lies ahead. Tell me now that you are a warlock, and I will spare you the torture."

Bubba lifts his head enough to look into my eyes.  "One day this will be your fate, you double-crossing bitch," he snarls. "One day, you will burn. And on that day, I will watch, and laugh!"

I smile. "I'm sorry, am I supposed to be frightened by that?" I glance at Austin.  "Please, Sir, continue."

            Bubba gives a gasp and then a shout as the chain is drawn in, and, by his back-wrenched arms, he is lifted off the floor.  The pain is instant and severe. Agony in his arms, savage and heavy in his shoulder muscles and triceps, feeling as if his elbows are on the verge of breaking; pain also spears terribly down the outer muscles of his back.  The pain is so much that already he is gasping, pitching his widely-spread feet for some kind of support.

            He is raised up until his toes are six inches off the floor, with the heavy fifty-pound weight still resting on the ground.  Already the sweat is balling into droplets on his face and shoulders, his gasps and grunts testament to the effect of strappado.  But he does not ask to be let down, and he does not confess.

            "We'll give you a few hours to enjoy your new predicament," I say.

            Bubba's barely-contained shout of pain follows our exit.

            I again watch, over the closed-circuit monitor.  Bubba hangs on the strappado chain, unable to keep still, unable to keep silent. It's intolerable enough when it first begins; but after fifteen minutes it becomes excruciating, and after half an hour, he is bellowing in pain.

            Anyone who has ever had their arm twisted behind their back will have an inkling of how the pain might be; many have broken within minutes of being hoisted like this.  And yet history is full of accounts of men and women who have endured strappado without a single cry.

            Bubba is not one of them.  Below his contorted shoulders, his face is red with torment, and he shouts repeatedly at the floor as he twists slowly on the end of the chain.  The sweat drips from him, glistens on his naked body.

            Bubba's muscles have been fighting to support his weight in the strappado; but after more than an hour, they are burning, cramping, and losing strength. It makes the torment much worse, as the full strain goes onto his tendons and ligaments. It is a hot, hot pain; like burning irons thrust deep into his joints.

            Three hours since Bubba was put in strappado.  His cries echo off stone walls.  I finally call together Steve, Austin, and the two assisting guards, and we make our return to the torture chamber.  Tina volunteers to attend, in case her expertise is needed.  Things are about to get much worse for Bubba if he doesn't confess.

            "So … you've had time to think about this," I say, one hand on my hip, regarding his wretched, naked, hanging body with slight amusement.  Between his parted thighs, his cock dangles soft and vulnerable.  I eye it meaningfully. "What's say we get serious, and discuss your knowledge of the Black Arts?"

            "Aaargh," Bubba gives. He shakes his head, sweat-drops tumbling.

            Is this guy a sucker for punishment, or what?

            Austin hands me two objects of heavy black iron.  I cradle them in my palm and hold them beneath Bubba's pain-filled face.  "Do you know what these are, Warlock?"  It doesn't take much imagination: each consists of two slightly-concave studded plates, mounted in opposition on a screw-tightening device, the size of oval castanets. Bubba gives no answer, so I tell him. "They're ball-crushers, baby.  And right now, they're all yours.  Let's see how they fit, shall we?"

            "Fuck you," Bubba manages to spit.  "I won't confess!  You're - aaah! - torturing an innocent man!"

            "We'll see," I say with a shrug of one shoulder.

            "No!" Bubba shouts.  He tries to kick or thrash his outspread legs, but the beauty of the spreader-bar is that he can merely twist his hips and swing his feet ineffectually - and the chain connecting it to the fifty-pound iron weight restricts his freedom to a few inches.  Struggling only sends worse agony through his arms and shoulders, and he quickly realises his helplessness.

            With tenderness, I reach out and cup his testicles in my hand; they are warm, firm. I select the left, rolling it between my thumb and two fingers; even that is enough to make him groan.  Holding the testicle, I fit the first crusher over it.  It is a simple matter to turn the screw until the two plates press lightly on his ball.  I do the same with the other testicle, so that he hangs there with  two black metal clamps on his scrotum.

            Neither Steve nor Austin are watching; they keep their eyes averted.  Tina, on the other hand, cranes her neck to get the best view of proceedings.

            No point in wasting time: I twist the screw of the first, impelling the plates together, and the pressure begins to tell at once.  Bubba gives another shout; despite the agony in his twisted shoulders, this is a different kind of pain, deep and nauseating, as the rounded studs inside the crusher's plates press into his testicle.

            I twist the other screw, the plates tighten.  Bubba twitches and grunts.

            "The truth, now," I say, looking up at his anguished face.  My fingers are on the screw of the left crusher.  "Give me the truth."

            "May God forgive you," Bubba gasps.

            I twist the screw.  The plates compress, and Bubba jolts in his strappado, giving a new cry of pain.  His knees try to rise in reflex to the pain; but all he does is jerk against the iron weight to which the spreader-bar is chained, wrenching his own shoulders.

            I tighten the crusher again, then again; Bubba gives another groan as his testicle begins to distort under the pressure.  The rounded metal studs of the device impress themselves in the sensitive tissue, and the warlock is feeling it badly.

            "Confess!" I urge, and twist the screw again.

            Bubba gives a howl as his ball is squashed tighter.  "Oh god, take it off!!"

            I screw it tighter.

            Bubba lets out a long scream of pain, jolting and thrashing, swinging his shackled feet, pumping his hips as if he's simulating sex, trying to shake the crusher loose; but he is confined to the pain.  I ride out his efforts, and twist the screw once again; his testicle is now squeezed to half its normal width, and Bubba howls.

            But still no confession.

            I step back and regard him.  His face is dangerously pale with growing nausea from the crusher; his shining and twisted body still agonisingly in strappado.  It's time to crank the torture up a notch or ten.

            "Let's do it," I tell Austin and Steve.

            Bubba is still howling, and, twisting from his back-wrenched arms with the crusher tight on his testicle, he doesn't notice that Steve and Austin have moved to the winch, until it begins to turn, and he is raised up.  As the clattering chain hauls his wretched shape higher, the chain linking the spreader-bar to the fifty-pound weight grows taut.

            Bubba throws up.  The pain from his testicle is expressed as nausea, and a watery spurt splashes to the floor from his open mouth.

            I shake my head in disgust. "Oh, how uncool.  Just wind it in, guys."

            At my instruction, Austin and Steve together haul the winch around.  In the few moments before the weight is lifted from the ground, Bubba's body visibly straightens - his arms, backwards, up behind his head; his spine and legs straight down - and he gives the most terrible screams yet.

            The winch rolls, and the fifty-pound weight on his ankles is lifted from the flagstones.  The additional strain on his burning and tortured joints and ligaments is agony beyond belief, and he is screaming like a madman. The winch is locked with the weight four inches from the ground.

There is no way Bubba can thrash about, or even move, now; so I step in close again, and reach up to the crushers squeezing his testicles.  None too gently, I tighten the looser of the two, until it compresses his ball into an oblong.  His screams are endless.

            "I think the crushers need to be tighter still," Tina offers.

            I block her with a casual arm.  "No, babe.  Not yet.  Patience.  Let's leave him for a while until the pain gets so much he'll do anything at all for it to stop."

            Over the next half hour, Bubba proves his ability to endure.  In strappado, with his ankles locked widely-apart in a spreader-bar, a heavy iron weight hanging off it, and one testicle squeezed to the point of rupturing in the crusher, he is in quite overwhelming pain. The sweat pours off him. The veins stand out on his forehead, through his contorted shoulders; the striations of his arm muscles are stark and fierce with strain. He shouts and moans and wails. But he does not confess that he is a warlock.

            I hug myself against Tina's repeated glances in my direction: what are you going to do about it? she seems to be saying, while Austin and Steve simply wait patiently, expectantly for the next stage. I feel my face reddening with humiliation that this man dangling in agony before us is refusing to break under my ministrations.

            "Fine," I say, when, after forty minutes, he still hasn't so much as asked for mercy.  "We'll play it your way."

            "That's more like it," I hear Tina say.

            I stand in front of the groaning warlock. "Confess, and it will go no further."

            "Suck my dick," the warlock manages to gasp.

            Well, if the circumstances were different …

My hands are on the testicle crusher's screw an instant later, and I give it two full turns. Bubba screams in agony as a soft pop! comes from between the iron plates, his ball’s delicate internal structure finally surrendering to the pressure.  I make a twirling signal with my finger, and Steve and Austin begin to turn the winch again.

            By his bound and back-wrenched arms, the screaming Bubba is hoisted higher and higher, the weight still dangling off his ankle-bar.  Inch by inch he is raised towards the ceiling, until finally his wrists touch the ring through which the chain runs.  The iron weight itself is more than six feet above the floor.

            "Confess, or you are about to discover pain you never even imagined."

            Bubba gives a wail of terror, looking down in dread, but shakes his head.

            I signal to drop him.

            Austin releases the brake.  The winch spins.  The chain clatters.  Bubba plunges towards the floor, his descent lead by the iron weight; then abruptly, Austin snaps the winch's brake back again.  Bubba is jammed to a halt with a bang! and his shoulders instantly, spectacularly dislocate.  His arms are suddenly straight up above him, yet around the wrong way; his shoulders look grotesque and corkscrewed.  His eyes bulge, even as dust floats down from the shuddering chain; the heavy iron weight swings inches above the floor.

            Bubba screams. He screams without pause for over a minute, long howls of agony that are painful to the ears. His body slowly twists on the end of the chain like a piñata.  His own ligaments are the only things that keep his arms attached to his body, and the pain that rips through his limbs is beyond imagination.

            "Again!" I call, and Tina gives a small cheer.

            Now, Bubba is pleading through his shrieks. As the winch turns and he is raised up towards the ceiling again, he begins gibbering like a madman.

            "Oh god, no, no!  Stop!  Don't do it again, I beg you, I beg you!  Don't, please!"

            "Confess and it stops," I promise. I take the chance to select an iron bar from the nearby implement table, and return with it dragging across the flagstones, a metallic scraping joining the slow clatter of the winding chain.

            Bubba pisses in terror as his wrists again touch the high ring.  I have to jump back to avoid being splashed.  "Oh god, no more!  No more!" he begs.  Tears and sweat have wet his face.

            "Oh, for heaven's sake," I complain. "Drop him."

            Bubba is shrieking and screaming as they let him plummet.  He bangs! to a halt on the end of the chain for the second time, his body jolting upwards briefly as if his ligaments were bungy cords; his screams are terrible.

            As he hangs there, bellowing and shrieking in maddened agony, heft the iron bar.  I eye up my target, then, in an, upswing worthy of Serena Williams, I smash the bar up into Bubba's literally ironclad left testicle.  It strikes with a clang, slamming his tortured ball up into his groin.

            There is disappointment that the blow seems to have no effect; in fact, Bubba falls completely silent.

            The truth is that the breath has been flung from the poor fellow's lungs, and his eyes, all but popping out of his head, prove that.  Then, he screams; like a little girl.  It is a high, blood-curdling shriek of agony.

            "Christ!" shouts Tina, putting her hands over her ears.  Even I am taken aback by the utter dementedness in his voice.  He takes deep, rasping breaths between each scream, then chokes and vomits again; this time, it splashes my bare shoulder.

            "Oh, yuck!" I shout, while Tina, behind me, laughs.  "Dammit - drop him again!"

            Steve and Austin begin to turn the winch again, but as Bubba's ruined body is hoisted in jolts and jerks again towards the ceiling, he starts shaking his head wildly.

            "No more!  No more!" Bubba shrieks. "I confess - anything - anything at all - take me off - no more - let me down!"  The words run together in a desperate garble, and then he is screaming again, unable to form words, unable to stop his cries.

            "You confess that you are a warlock?" I check.

            Shrieking, he nods.

            "You admit that you are a practitioner of the Black Arts?"

            Again, the desperate nod.

            "And if I bring you down, you will ratify that confession before the Witchseekers?"

            "Oh go-o-o-od ye-e-e-sssss!" he howls.

            I smirk at Tina, then signal Austin and Steve to lower the screaming wretch.

            Bubba loses consciousness before his feet touch the ground. 

 

 

 

Bubba's Execution

 

            The Warlock Bubba was brought into the Witchseekers' chateau months ago.  He was put to the Question, and despite his best efforts to resist, eventually confessed to witchcraft.  He then betrayed those witches with whom he used to associate, bent utterly to his interrogators' will, revealing every last secret.

            Since then, he has languished in chains in a damp and lightless cell.

            But one more step must be taken before Justice has been done.  Bubba must die, in terrible pain and without a shred of dignity.

            For this execution, I alone am responsible.  I have dressed in the traditional colour - black.  But it is a delightful dress, a criminally-short silk baby-doll dress with shoestring straps, an open lattice back with cris-cross strings.  Shoes are simple open sandals with laces that tie at the ankle.  Very sexy.

            It's impossible to wear a bra with a dress this flimsy, and I can see my associates' eyes wandering from time to time to my breasts - my nipples jut shamelessly against the feather-light fabric in the chill of the dungeon as we march to Bubba's cell. It isn't just cold, though, that makes them hard, and I am almost ashamed to admit to myself that I am strangely excited by my newfound power.

            We reach a cell at the end of a narrow, musty passageway in the very bowels of the dungeon, dug into the bedrock.  The cell door itself is solid iron, and must weigh five hundred pounds.  The jailer finds its key, releases the padlock, draws the bolt, and, with effort, draws the creaking door open.  The light of our torches spills into a slimy, claustrophobic space.  Windowless, putrid; it stinks of sweat and human waste.

            Against the facing wall slumps a greasy figure.  Bubba, the once-arrogant Warlock who was brought to us and cruelly broken in the torture chamber. When he was delivered to us, he was tanned, muscular and tall; now, for all his stature, he seems fragile and pallid and thin.

            His arms are locked in chains above his head in manacles; his hands droop uselessly from the iron fetters. His moustache has been joined by the beginnings of a straggly beard. He has not shaved, nor bathed, nor worn clothes, nor even had the freedom of his hands, for more than two months. I can feel my mouth curling in disgust, and my eyes travel down to the filthy nest of hair in his groin, his greasy cock and one surviving ball.

            There was a time when this might have been a man to whom I would feel attracted. Flirted, using my eyes and body; laid my small hand on his powerful thigh.  Unbuttoned his shirt with excited fingers and gasps of delight; stroked his fuzzy chest or nuzzled my face into the fragrant pockets of hair under his arms. Once I might have caressed the firm plateau of his muscular belly, closed my fingers around his cock and made it hard, so that I could take it into my mouth and deliver him to a new dimension of pleasure.

            Now, though, the thought repels me.

            My gut instinct is to grab the blade of one of our guards and slice this wretched man's undefended throat, putting him out of his misery.  But his sins are too great for that, and Bubba's death will not be so quick or merciful.

            "Unchain him, then bind his hands and bring him," I order.

            Bubba has not seen daylight for months, and his face is twisted against the early morning light as, with arms tied behind his back, naked and grubby, he is led out to the execution site, flanked by eight guards, Austin, and myself.  He is bewildered, dazed, and fails to see some of the things that may otherwise cause him to cry out in horror.  A pick-up parked nearby, its tray piled with coal. Stacks of wood and brush. A lit brazier. All are clues to a day of suffering beyond anything he could imagine. I note, with slight amusement, the hose that stretches across the grass like a snake, coiled beside the brazier.  Just in case the fire gets out of control.

            There are people gathered to watch the execution, even this early. Perhaps no more than a hundred, but more will come as the day goes on.

            As we near the place where Bubba is to die, he sees the centrepiece of what we have prepared for him, and a hoarse cry of denial and dread rises from his throat. A wooden cross, thirteen feet long and with a seven-foot crosspiece, lies on the grass, its upper end slightly raised on chocks, its base positioned over a narrow post-hole in the ground, a small pile of earth alongside. There are guide-ropes looped around the ends of the crosspiece for raising the cross, and close by, seven-inch nails and a heavy iron mallet.  There is more to this cross, though; halfway down its upright post is an upward-facing hook of iron, like a giant fishhook complete with a barbed tip.  This simple addition will bring him a whole new world of suffering as the day wears on.

            We are met by Austin, that lumbering bear of a man, who has been given the duty of leading the execution team.

            The morning air is cool, and there are goosebumps on my bare arms and thighs; but I doubt it is cold that has the naked Bubba trembling so violently.  The warlock's knees seem to grow weak.  He can barely put one bare foot in front of the other as he is led over to the waiting cross.

            "Lie on it," I order calmly, when we arrive.

            No ceremony. No point in delaying it. But Bubba, already on the verge of breaking down, finally gives a howl of misery. "Don't do this to me!  I beg you!"

            "Oh, for heaven's sake." I really don't need this.

            "Please, please!  Have mercy! I've suffered enough. Just make it quick, just kill me quickly, please! Not this!"

            "Your suffering will be a warning to others," I tell him. "We will proceed as planned and you will die slowly. Now get down!"

            "Secure him." It is the growling voice of Austin, and at his order, the guards wrestle Bubba down. Despite his months of incarceration held in chains, he fights now with every ounce of his strength. But it is inevitable that he will succumb, and all too soon they have him sitting on the cross, the cruel hook less than an inch below his groin.  Swiftly, the bonds on his wrists are loosened, but a guard grabs each wrist and his arms are wrenched wide, his shoulders just below the level of the crosspiece.

            "Nail the bastard down!" comes a shout from the small watching crowd, and laughter and whistles of approval echo the call.  Knowing full well what is about to happen, Bubba shrieks and struggles, the sweat building up over his bare skin now, sweat of terror and desperation, his heart pounding hard, panic and dread driving him to fight.  His long arms are laid out along the crosspiece.

            "No!  No-o-o-o!" he screams, as a third guard holds his legs in a bear-hug grip, and a fourth grabs his left hand, positioning it on the wooden crosspiece of the cross.  Now, Austin takes up one of the iron nails and the hammer.

            I don't want to watch. Blood unsettles me. But I am transfixed as Austin positions the tip of the nail in the centre of Bubba's thick wrist, directly below the heel of his hand.  Bubba's fingers claw and clutch helplessly. Austin raises the hammer.

            Clink!

            The first blow drives the nail deep.  It plunges deeply into Bubba's wrist, shunting aside the delicate structure of bones and tendons, but not destroying them; the pain hits, and Bubba lurches with such violence that the guards are almost thrown off him.

            "Aaaaaaaagghhhh!!"  It is a hideous scream, and it lingers as Austin strikes the nail again, then again, then again.  The iron sinks further with each blow, now driving into the wood beneath Bubba's wrist.  He is no longer trying to pull his arm away; the pain of the nail through his wrist, shooting tendrils of fire up his arm, is too intense to resist.  A small corona of blood appears around the shaft of the nail, and dribbles down the side of his wrist, but it is slow, proof that Austin has avoided any major blood vessels.

            The first nail in, the guards go to Bubba's left arm.  He shrieks and bellows, begging and pleading: "no!  Oh God, no!  Stop, please!"  But his arm held in place, his upturned wrist presented, and the sharp tip of the nail is pressed to the skin.

            Clink!  Clink!  Clink!  Bubba shrieks in pain as the nail is hammered through his flesh and into the wood beneath.  Each solid blow sends a shockwave of agony down his arm, his fingers involuntary curling as nerves are violated by the nail's path.

            The guards release their hold on Bubba.  Wretched, weeping, his body already clustered with sweat, Bubba lies naked on the wooden cross, arms outstretched and nailed in place.  His legs shift and stir in the agony, but it is not over yet.

            "Now his feet," Austin orders.

            Grasping the warlock's lower legs, the guards lift and jerk his body downwards.  The result is instant and spine-tingling.  Bubba screams in agony as his wrists are twisted about on the nails, his arms wrenched, and the barbed tip of the iron hook stabs up into the sensitive pucker of his anus.  They draw him downwards, not quite enough for his legs to be straight, then place his left foot flat on the upright of the cross, his right foot on top of it.  Bubba is still wailing, tortured by the nails in his wrists and the violation of the hook in his arse, and makes no effort to resist as Austin positions the nail.

            The mallet falls.

            Despite his pain, Bubba jolts and shrieks anew as the nail smashes into his foot, driving through muscle and sinew.  He twists where he lies, again wrenching his wrists on the nails, and this time tearing his rectum on the hook that skewers him.  The agony is already excruciating, and his execution has not even started.

The nail pierces both feet and enters the wood; the solid thunk thunk of its penetration sends more shocks through the wood as Austin hammers it firmly in.  Then he and the guards finally stand and move back, so that they can inspect their work.

            Shining with sweat, his stark ribcage and hollowed belly heaving with agonised breath, the naked Bubba lies on the cross in the classic position of the crucified man.  His eyes stare wildly towards the sky, his mouth open in a grimace of pain.  The dark-red trickles of blood mark where the nails pinion his wrists and feet, his pelvis oddly tilted to try and lessen the pain of the hook embedded in his arsehole.

            Austin looks to me, and I nod.

"Raise him," I order.

            The guards take their positions - two to each guide rope, four crouching at the crosspiece, ready to lift.  On Austin's order, all eight men heave, shouting and grunting.  Bubba squeals as the cross is lifted slightly, tipping as its base sinks into the hole.  Taking advantage of the inertia, the guards lift and haul, and the cross rises up; two feet, three feet, four feet, its ascent cheered by the crowd.

            For a moment, it seems to stall, its upright wedged near the top of the hole, the men readjusting their positions.  Then, as all eight refocus their efforts, the cross rises up into the morning air.  Like a crowing rooster, Bubba gives a long scream as he is lifted, his weight suddenly shifting, stretching his arms, dragging on the nails through his wrists, forcing the hook in his arse deeper inside his bowels.  Those in the watching crowd clap and shout their delight at the spectacle.

            Then, the base of the cross slides down into the two-foot-deep hole.  The whole thing rocks forward, and thuds into place with an impact that seems to shake the ground, jarring Bubba violently where he hangs.  It all but wrenches him off the nails, and he gives another terrible scream of agony.  The crowd gives a mighty cheer of approval.

            While six of the guards hold the cross steady, their two companions grab shovels and pack earth down into the hole, wedging the base firmly.  Even with its lower part as a foundation, the cross is tall enough for Bubba's skewered feet to be almost a yard above the ground.  His head rolls forward and he wails again in agony, crucified.

            The ropes are tugged free of the crosspiece, the earth around the upright is packed.  The cross stands, a symbol of suffering throughout history, with this worthless wretch hanging upon it. The dawn fog has not even lifted from the nearby trees, the first sunlight catching the uppermost tip of the wooden upright.

There is another scattering of applause from the watching crowd. Some are wandering off, to return later; others seem to be here for the day, with picnic baskets and blankets, already reviewing the cross-raising on their digital camera screens. Across the open space, I can see more people arriving.

            In making Bubba's last day alive also the longest day he will ever endure, we're not doing him any favours. His first few minutes hanging on the cross are utter agony, and it will only get worse. Far, far worse. The torture of crucifixion is widely known, and in Bubba's instance, it is even crueller.

The agony of hanging by the wrists is bad; by nails through the wrists is more terrible still. With the barbed hook buried deep in his rectum and a nail through his feet, every moment is sheer living hell. 

            Posting the first shift of four guards to flank the cross, Austin, the remaining guards, and I retire to the chateau. Bubba is left to suffer, alone, naked, high on his cross as the morning sun ignites his flesh.

            The morning hours pass slowly for the suffering warlock. From my open window in the chateau, I can see the cross that stands in the wide open space below. The crowd of sightseers steadily grows.  From time to time I hear a cry from Bubba, like the lowing of a distant cow. Such is his pain, he will barely be aware of the burning in his chest as he draws breath to cry out again; but it is a hint of the horrors still to come.

            I break for morning tea at ten, knowing that the three hours Bubba has spent nailed up on the cross have been a nightmare beyond imagination. The pain in his nailed wrists and strained arms is so intense that he would do anything to ease it. Almost anything. Because every time he tries to push himself up, he tears the flesh and bends the bones of his feet a little more on their impaling nail, and rakes the lining of his rectum with the barb of the hook in his arse, bringing unbearable pain. So he hangs again - but that is equally unbearable. And so it becomes an endless writhing dance, up on the cross. It is much to the delight of the spectators; it looks as if he is trying to fuck his own arse on the iron hook.

            The sinewy musculature of his body is stark and defined with his ongoing struggles, emphasised by the oiling of sweat that glistens in the morning sunlight over his body.  He is consumed by the pains that torment him, struggling simply to exist through each terrible second.

            I return to my work.

            By lunchtime, there are perhaps five hundred people gathered, so I take a leisurely stroll down to the execution site for a closer look. Most in the crowd don’t even care to watch the ongoing torture of the crucified Bubba, preferring to chat and pass the time with their friends, knowing that the warlock is paying dearly for his pact with Satan in every shrieking moment. I hear reports that he has been pleading and begging from his cruel suspension, imploring somebody to please kill him. But his cries are met only with derision and laughter.

            The sun is high, by now, and while it warms my bare limbs in my barely-there dress, its searing touch only adds to Bubba's his ordeal. It draws new sweat from his skin.  As his struggles tear the flesh of his wrists and feet, slow rivulets of blood run down the wood of the cross, staining the crosspiece, dripping to the bare earth below.  And now, six hours after being lifted into place, Bubba is beginning to experience a new torment.

            The muscles of his chest and diaphragm have been struggling against the unusual stresses of suspension.  Now, fatigued, they are beginning to fail, and he is fighting to draw breath.  The only way he can relieve this new torture is to try and push himself up by his nailed feet; now, despite the agony, he does so.  His feet grind down onto the nail that pierces them; the hook in his arse tears a terrible wound, and as he rises up and gasps precious air, it is released almost at once in a horrible scream.  He drops at once into a hang again, but the damage is done.  Fresh blood runs down his feet, and now streaks the insides of his legs from the hook inside him.

            For a time, Bubba is racked with sobs, his chest and belly heaving, his spirit utterly broken by his torture on the cross. But even if he wanted to give up and let suffocation end his agony, his body wouldn't let him. The urge to breathe overcomes the pain, the weakness, the humiliation of hanging wrecked and dying in front of the multitude.

            Again and again, he struggles. Tearing the flesh of his feet and wrists, humping the hook in his arse like some depraved gigolo.  Crying and screaming out.  Suffering without dignity or bravado.

            The afternoon drags on for Bubba while the crowd swells to just under a thousand. A surprising turnout considering it is a man, and not some pretty young woman, being publicly executed. But the nature of this execution is so novel in its cruelty that it appeals to the curiosity of all, and Bubba doesn't disappoint. He suffers in such abject misery, struggling and screaming, although he grows weaker as exhaustion and dehydration take their toll.

            I return to my work, but rejoin the crowd a couple of hours later, this time bringing my official papers. The sun is sinking behind the chateau, its shadow long across the open ground, and the crowd is growing restless as the day grows cool. Bubba is nearing the end of his strength, finally hanging crooked and drained, the blood dried on his limbs and the wood of the cross, his chest barely shifting. His eyes are still open, but seem glazed. Only the constant sheen of sweat shows that he is still aware of every agony in his ravaged body.

            It is a little before six when Austin makes his return, accompanied by three volunteers carrying shovels.  The brazier has been smoking quietly, twenty feet away, all day; its dusty-smoke smell has been since joined by the aroma of barbecues, foreshadowing what is about to come.  In the minutes following Austin's arrival, people begin hurrying forward, their attention again on the warlock on the cross, and quickly the scattered audience concentrates into a throng, a huge half-circle fifty feet from the execution site.

            The pick-up laden with coal, parked nearby, is reversed to within a dozen yards of the cross; Austin stokes the coals in the brazier, sending sparks up into the air.

            God.  Six o'clock.  My moment.  Even in this dress, I can feel nervous sweat in my armpits as I unfold my papers and make my way to the foot of the cross.  I raise my hands high and call out,

            "Witchseekers!  Citizens!"

            A hush quickly calls, although there is a flurry of camera flashes and at least one wolf-whistle. Apparently the skimpy dress is appreciated. Battling my self-consciousness, I begin proceedings for my first execution.

"As Acting Witchseeker General, I welcome you all, this evening. In these turbulent times, we face many threats from those who have fallen into evil ways, and treachery has wounded us all.  The warlock who suffers before you now is such a case, one who tried to join our ranks as Seeker, but was soon exposed. To crimes of Witchcraft, for acts of fornication with witches and demonesses, and for sins against Mankind and God, the warlock Bubba has confessed.

"For these crimes, in these times, he must be punished severely, so that a warning will be sent to all men who would follow his despicable example.  Let Bubba now be put to death by fire!"

My cry is echoed by a great cheer form the crowd, and I feel a rush of excitement.  At once, Austin scoops a shovel full of burning coals from the brazier and sprinkles them on the ground three yards in front of the cross.  Another guard brings another shovel full, then a third, until there is a small heap of burning coal on the ground.

            Then, the heaped coal from the back of the pick-up truck is shovelled on top of the small fire.  It crackles and smokes, a grey pall that drifts up into the dusk, and a few orange flames flick hungrily up through the drifting coal-dust.  More and more coal is added, until there is a great black smoking mound before the moaning, crucified Bubba.

            As the cremating coals heat, a girl comes forward from the crowd, talking her way past one of the guards and hurrying up to Austin.  The big man bends to listen to her, then nods, and goes to fetch something, which he hands to her.  A moment later, she is braving the growing wall of warmth from the coals, to approach the cross on which Bubba hangs agonised.  It is then that I see the long, slim steel skewer in her hand - and the mallet, which Austin has given her.

            Despite the tortures inflicted on him, including the mashing of one testicle, Bubba still has the other testicle intact.  A detail obviously not missed by some of the more keen-eyed in the crowd.  Now, while the wretch hangs gleaming and exhausted, the girl rests the point of the skewer against Bubba's unprotected ball, raises the mallet, and begins to tap gently.

            Life and awareness return to Bubba with a terrible scream.  His body arches up on the cross, wrenching himself on the nails and hook again.  The skewer, half an inch into the testicle, is almost shaken loose, so as Bubba sinks back down, the girl hammers it hard.  It slides through his ball and into the wooden post of the cross.  Bubba shrieks again, but this time he is pinned in place by his own impaled testicle, and as the girl hammers the steel pin deeply into the wood, the warlock throws his head from side to side, howling in agony.  There is cheering from the crowd; and her task completed, the girl quickly darts away from the growing discomfort of heat from the coals.

            But for Bubba there is no escape.  Naked and raised up on the cross, he is spread out and open as the scorching heat of the burning coals radiates out.  Even from twenty feet away, I can feel it on my face and bare limbs, opening capillaries and heating my skin.  Bubba, barely ten feet away from it, turns his face.  New sweat beads on his naked body, and I can see his muscles shifting, but he is held immobilised by the excruciating pain in his skewered ball.

            Over the next hour, as the sun sets and darkness falls, the fire grows.  Flames break out through the mound of coals, flaring to the sky, huge rolls of smoke billowing up.  Bubba is orange-lit in its glow, appearing to shimmer and shift behind the fierce heat.  It is close enough to scorch and sear him, but too far to kill him, and the constant cooling effect of air being sucked into the fire prevents heat from ending his life too soon.  It grows too hot for me, and I take a long walk around the edge of the crowd, listening to the excited chatter, seeing the occasional camera flash. Bubba's wounded howls occasionally echo out from where he hangs on the cross, proof that he still lives, still suffers.

            Finally, the roaring flames of the coals die down, and instead they shimmer and pulse angry orange with savage heat.  Austin and his volunteer companions gather their shovels for the next stage of the execution.

            It is tough work; even in long sleeves and heavy clothing, the men struggle against the heat as they begin to spread the coals around the base of the cross, like a glowing lake of fire.  Three inches deep, ten feet across, a fiercely-glowing blanket.  Bubba on his cross is lit from beneath by its cruel red light, and as the coals are shifted into place, the blistering heat engulfs him.

            It takes only a minute.

            He squirms.  Shifts.  Gives a moan.  But like meat over a barbecue, he is surrounded by a terrible bed of glowing coals, and there is no escaping it.  There is a visible wall of heat, a shimmering updraft that stirs his hair and causes him to turn his face towards the sky.

            His feet begin to roast.

            Bubba gives a wail as this new agony overrides everything he has suffered before.  The heat of the coals is literally starting to cook his skin, and as the fats and oils are drawn out and the ends of his toes start to split and blister, he is suddenly trying to wrench himself higher up the cross.  He barks, shouts, then screams at the top of his voice, as his lower legs start to redden.  In a frantic effort, he flexes every muscle in his tormented body to rise up.  As he does, the skewer through his testicle rips his scrotum open.  I look away, but there is no avoiding the screams as remaining ball is suddenly exposed to the blistering air, the delicate internal anatomy hit by the funnelling heat.

            Somehow, Bubba arches his back and pelvis off the cross, his legs straightening, the nail through his feet bearing all his weight in a hideous torture as he tries to escape the heat of the coals.  He has left his ball behind, a fat bloodied grape on its skewer; now the hook in his rectum all but disembowels him, ripping him open in a horrific display. Blood streams down the insides of his blistering thighs, and some in the crowd put their hands over their mouths in amazement at the gory spectacle.

            But the terrible agony of the fire is so great that Bubba can't help rising and falling again and again, despite the grinding of the nails through his flesh, despite the hook brutally tearing in and out of his arse.  He screams and howls but he can't stop trying to lift himself away from the fire. His feet are beginning to smoke, oil and fat dripping to flare brightly in the seething coals below him.

            Bubba's screeching is hideous, and the crowd cheers madly at the spectacle of the warlock suffering so terribly. The hair on his body is charring. The wood of the cross is beginning to visibly scorch, and there are small flames licking up around the base.  The air becomes heavy with an unmistakable smell; that of roasting meat.

            By now he must be in a nightmare world of near-madness.  Tortured by an entire day up on the cross, and now being slowly roasted over a bed of coals.  The cameras flash and people point and cheer and exclaim, all knowing that the warlock is in his final climactic throes of torment.

            Then, an act of cruelty that takes my breath away.  Three pretty teenagers in halter tops and boob-tubes and miniskirts run giggling and shouting up to the hose that has been provided in case the fire goes out of control.  I look in alarm to Austin, but he is watching with interest; a moment later, they are jetting cold water onto the suspended, screaming warlock.  Steam curls from his skin, billows upwards from the coals beneath him; but as quickly as it was turned on, the hose is shut off.

            Temporarily cooled, Bubba stops his shrieking, and hangs bewildered and dripping, dazed, his lower legs steaming.  But in less than half a minute, the water has evaporated, and the searing heat again begins to torture him.  Once again, Bubba begins to shriek, struggling, writhing and rearing up on the cross.

            "Oh God, please have mercy!"

            They are the only discernible words, as his cries dissolve again into inarticulate shouts and screams of pain.  Shouting and jeering at him, the girls with the hose let him burn and scream for long minutes, then hose him down again.

            The three girls torture him like that for almost an hour.

            It is a hit with the crowd, cheers rising up every time the water spray reaches the crucified Bubba, slow rhythmic clapping as the heat and pain again build up.  I have never witnessed a burning so prolonged.  How this man has remained alive throughout the horrors of the day is beyond my comprehension.

With each round of water from the hose, however, Bubba's ensuing reaction to the fire becomes weaker.  Finally, the heat and exhaustion steal the last of his strength.  Steam, and then smoke, wisps up from his feet and lower legs, and though his head shifts from side to side and his clawed fingers twitch from the ruined nerves in his wrists, he has no more reserves to struggle.  He can do nothing other than suffer unbearable, excruciating pain, and wait for death's release.

            Their game over, bare limbs oiled with perspiration from the heat of the fire, the three young women sashay proudly back into the welcoming crowd.

            Seeing that the warlock is fading fast, Austin signals his three volunteers.  They gather up armfuls of the brushwood that has been bundled ready for the burning, and, turning their faces from the savage heat of the coals, bring it close enough to throw onto the fire beneath Bubba's feet.

The brush is dry and thin, and flames explode upwards, reaching, spiralling, twisting up around the warlock's unprotected legs.  More is thrown onto the fire, and the crackling, roaring sound of the burning brushwood is joined once more by the shrieking of Bubba as he is encircled in savage, tearing razors of fire.  The heat of it feels scorching even from thirty feet away.

            Flames rip and race upwards, as more fuel is tossed onto to the fire.  The cross itself is alight, even the crosspiece beginning to smoke.  Bubba's writhing becomes jerky and frantic, but now that the flames are licking and embracing his body, it is all but over.  His skin is curling back, flayed from him by the knives of fire.  His flesh is alight like a giant candle, and the mellow aroma of roasting is replaced by the odour of charring flesh.

            As fire explodes up into the night sky, chasing a fireworks-cascade of sparks, the crowd hushes to listen to its crackling, bellowing thunder.  Bubba has become a shifting form veiled by flame.  And then, at last, he hangs motionless in the midst of the inferno.

            It has been a day of suffering in the extreme for the warlock Bubba.  But finally, it is over.  A scattering of applause goes through the crowd.  Some people are packing up and leaving.  Others will wait to watch the warlock's bones explode, the eyes melt from their sockets, and his charred remains finally tumble from the cross.

            Justice has been done.

 

Kirsten Smart

19 September 2004

 

 

Part 5 – Wendy

 

I have seen Wendy Satin's photograph, but I didn't expect her to be as beautiful as this.  Perhaps it's the wedding gown she still wears as Austin, Steve, and three guards drag her into the torture chamber. Sheer white satin-weave, from its strapless bodice to the long fitted skirt, it is a gorgeous dress. She wears no jewellery, but her blonde hair is tied in a perfect chignon and adorned with flowers; white, lemon, and pale green. There is a sprinkle of glitter across her cheekbones, a touch of rouge on her lips.

            "What the hell is this place?"

Wendy's eyes are wide in disbelief at the torture chamber before her; greasy stone columns, chains dangling on the walls and from the high, vaulted ceiling; obscene instruments of suffering that loom in the half-shadows cast by fluttering torches. The aromas of sweat and fear and burned flesh have become infused in the very walls.

"What do you want?  Why am I here?" Wendy finally asks, in a trembling voice.

"Quiet, Witch, or we'll rip your tongue out" one of the guards growls, butting her shoulder-blade with his hand. "You'll speak only when a question is asked of you."

Wendy almost fires a retort, her eyes blazing defiance, but she bites her lip instead. Her slim wrists are shackled behind her back, and it gives her an almost coy demeanour; the reluctant bride. The skin of her bare shoulders and décolletage is delicious and flawless, glowing with a golden tan.

"She's had a few hours in a cell to cool off," Steve tells me. "When she realised the trap we'd set to catch her, she went nuts. Tried to scratch Austin's eyes out, until we got the shackles on her."

Wendy tugs on her trapped wrists.  "It was a fucked-up trick to play," she spits at Steve.  "When I get out of here, you'll all fry for this!"

I barely hear the exchange.  I am so taken with the way she looks in her gown, the incredibly fine stitching, the gorgeous boning of its bodice, the sheen of the smoother-than-skin fabric, that for a few moments I fail to notice Steve's expectant look.

"You want we should strip her, now?"

Wendy:  "What?"

I hesitate - tempted by the idea of hanging her up by the wrists still in that dress.  But the reality of a night dangling in chains - the half-moon tide marks of sweat and the grey of soot from the torches that would quickly grubby the virgin fabric - prompt me to nod.  "Okay - but it comes off over her head, get it?"

The three guards and Steve look at me as if I'm mad, but then Steve shrugs and, as Austin moves off to prepare for Wendy's introduction to the torture chamber, gives the order.  Despite her protests and struggles, Wendy's wrists are unfettered, and her arms are forcibly lifted while the dress is unzipped and pulled off over her head.

"Holy smokes," one of the guards says.

As soon as the dress is off, Wendy clasps her hands over her pouting breasts to preserve her modesty; but all attention is on the delicate white silk panties she wears, and the white suspender-belt attached to sheer, translucent-white silk stockings that end high on her golden thighs.  She wears simple white slip-on shoes with two inch heels, and with her hair still prettily adorned and her flawless makeup, even I can't deny that she looks most appealing.

"Aww, come on, Boss," a guard implores Steve.  "You gotta let us have a piece of this one!"

"Yeah, please - while she's still in once piece," the first adds.

Steve looks shaken by Wendy's allure; I can see him thinking what a waste … but then his eyes catch mine.

"If anyone tries to deflower this bride, I'll have their balls in a vise," I snarl.  "We do not fuck the business."

Wendy's eyes meet mine, and behind the hatred, I see that she concedes a little gratitude.  "Thank you," she says in a low voice.

I look at her grimly.  "This has nothing to do with protecting you.  It's the men I'm concerned about  - fornicating with a witch is sheer stupidity."

Gratitude turns to anger.  "But I'm not a witch, damn you!"

"That's what we are all here to determine," I reply.

She looks at me dumbly, and then, finally, realises. Horror, for a moment, controls her expression, and she shakes her head. "No, no way! Are you all crazy? I demand you let me go!  I don’t belong in this place!"

 "Oh, for heaven's sake, get a grip," I tell her. "We have a process to follow, and you will be fairly examined, as every accused witch must be." To Steve and the guards, I say,  "prepare her."

She will be hung by her wrists for the next twelve hours.

So easy to say; so terrible to endure.  Wendy has little idea of the horror that lies ahead, as she is dragged over to the manacles that dangle on a long chain from the ceiling. Her eyes follow the chain, up through a ring moored in the high ceiling, and down to a ratchet-locked winch, at which Austin stands ready, and I can see that her heart quickens in fear.  The very concept of restraint in iron manacles is terrifying.

The guards miss no opportunities in readying Wendy.  'Accidentally' brushing a hand across her bare breast or her silk-clad buttocks; touching her stockinged thigh.  She curses and struggles as they force her slim and unmarked wrists into the cold fetters, closing and locking them so that her hands are trapped.

Steve nods to Austin, who slowly turns the winch.  Nobody wants to miss this; as the chain gradually rises, Wendy's slender arms are lifted up.  She is fighting to hide her fear as her hands are pulled over her head.  A few more turns of the winch, and her spine extends, her ribcage rising, and the pouting mounds of her breasts are lifted also.  Her belly hollows, her long legs grow taut, and, finally, with her arms pulled hard above her head, her heels are lifted out of her high-heeled shoes. Wendy grimaces, and I give a signal to pause.

Already, it is uncomfortable.  The iron bites into the bones of her wrists; her arms are taking much of her weight, and her muscles are tight to compensate.  There is a shine of nervous perspiration in her pale and smooth-shaven armpits, between her breasts; but a peppering of goosebumps down the corrugations of her ribcage, which shifts with her rapid, fearful breath.  Her rosy nipples are erect in the dungeon's chill.

She watches me with resentful eyes.  No woman likes to be as exposed as Wendy is right now.  Held on tip-toes with her arms upstretched means that she is on display, half-naked and helpless; and worse, her humiliation is to the delight of her captors.

I intend to rub that in. As is my preference, I circle her, now. I want her to feel her vulnerability, I want her to know my freedom.  I want her to know that I can do what I want; I can whip her, or I can caress her, she can do nothing.

Standing behind her, I admire the perfect structure of her back; the definition of her shoulder blades, the long gully of her spine, her figure's taper to a small and taut waist; her tight and perfect buttocks within the delicate white triangle of her panties, the suspender-belt around her waist. The feminine teardrop-shape of her sleek calves, her slender thighs. 

"Continue," I decide.

The winch creaks over, and the chain pulls.  Wendy stifles a gasp as the manacles haul cruelly on her trapped hands, and, by them, she is lifted from the floor.  She is at once swirling and reaching her toes, frantically trying to find some easement from the pressure on her hands and arms, but as the winch turns, she rises higher still; three inches, four inches, five inches, leaving her shoes on the floor below her swinging toes.

"Let me down!" Wendy shrieks.

I order the winch to stop at six inches.  Enough for her to be tantalisingly close to the ground, but knowing that she will never reach it.  Between upstretched arms, her face has grown dark with her efforts to endure the discomfort.  Her arms' muscles are tight in involuntary resistance to suspension.  It feels, to her, as if her body is already drawing longer.

"You bastards!" she shouts.  "It hurts!  Let me down, now!"

"You will be let down when we are ready," I tell her.

"Fuck you, you bitch!" Wendy shouts.  She kicks and pedals her feet, and her angry cries chase us as we leave her hanging in the torture chamber.

Instead, I watch her on the monitor in my room, knowing that Wendy's ordeal hanging by her wrists will be a battle fought over many hours.

The initial discomforts are obvious; pain in her wrists, and the psychological torture.  Her full bodyweight is on those iron shackles locked below her hands, and the edges, although rounded, feel as if they're cutting into her wrist bones.  Her jaw is clenched in an effort to endure; she tips her head back and pedals her feet, swinging slowly on the end of the chain.  As much as she is able, she tries to move her hands within the shackles, letting the iron wedge against the heels of her hands and relieving some of the pressure from the bony parts of her wrists.

It is so sexy to watch.  This beautiful woman, hanging by her wrists in shackles, naked but for those delicate white panties and her silk stockings; stretching her toes towards the floor, kicking her feet about, staring up at the fetters in frustration.

Although she fights to hide it, Wendy is afraid.  She feels the deep, chilling dread of imminent torture.  She knows it will come, and she knows that, as long as she hangs there, she will be helpless to it.  It is that fear of the inevitable that drives her to escape.  She tries to see behind her, tries to reach her feet out for anything that might give her an opportunity, but of course, there is nothing.

Finally, after hanging for half an hour, she clenches her teeth and tries to pull herself up.  Her fingers close into fists, the muscles in her slender arms tighten and clench as she draws herself up.  All those hours in the gym getting into honeymoon shape seem to have paid off; shaking with effort, she raises herself until her eyes are level with the shackles.  It is then she sees that they are locked by a catch that requires the insertion of a screwdriver-like key.  She cannot open them.

So she looks upwards.  The chain from which she hangs stretches another six feet above her, through the ring in the ceiling, then down to the winch some fifteen feet distant.  Probably she knew all along that it was an inescapable restraint, but desperation drove her to try anyway.

Her strength hasn't failed yet.  The muscles in her arms are bunched and hard as she holds herself up, and now I see the feminine definition of her belly as she brings her knees up to her breasts.  She is attempting, in some pseudo-gymnastic manoeuvre, to get her stocking-clad feet up to the shackles and relieve the strain on her wrists and arms.

I watch in fascination.  Wendy struggles for several minutes, trying to kick her legs high enough, desperate to achieve any small victory; but as simple as it is, her restraint is inescapable.  With a final wail of misery, she accepts defeat, and drops clumsily back into a full hang, swinging on the end of the chain.  Once again her perfect body dangles slender and long, her skin now gleaming with a light sheen of sweat. 

But for Wendy, the fight is far from over.  I can see from the definition in her arms that she still isn't ready to surrender to her suspension.  She is hanging, and by now she realises that she can't escape that; but for now, she is still holding her body's weight with her muscles.

Less than an hour after being hung in chains, her muscles will be burning with fatigue, that same deep hurt that comes with doing too many repetitions on the pull-down machine in the gym.  I can see it in her expression, and by the gathering sweat on her body.  What was a feminine glow is now a cluster of droplets all over her bare skin.  The torch light of the torture chamber flashes off the liquid polish of her body, catches the slow drips that fall from her down-turned face.  It is the fiercest workout of her life, and it isn't going to stop just because she reaches the point of exhaustion.

Still, she fights.  For another hour she hangs, struggling to absorb the strain of suspension.  Her white panties are translucent with the sweat that has run down the groove of her navel, and now I can see the narrow shaved strip of her pubic hair.  Her stockings cling to her long legs.

I continue with my work, watching the monitor from time to time, and after two hours, the strength of Wendy's toned arms has finally been drained.  The limpness spreads through her body and she dangles unresisting; but her suffering has only just begun.  Her body's weight is held now by her ligaments alone; it is a bone-deep, gnawing, burning, unrelenting pain.  And there isn't a thing she can do about it.

The torture has begun, so I switch off the monitor.

Five hours later, when I turn it on again to check on her, it's as if there is a still-photo on the screen, rather than a live feed.  Only the flickering of a torch in the background of the image shows that it's actual footage.  Wendy's gleaming body hangs motionless, golden and half-naked in the torture chamber, her head almost resting on her chest, her hands curled into useless claws above the manacles.  It is only when I zoom in and catch the rapid shifting of her chest that I know she is still conscious, still in pain.

Her shoulder and elbow joints will, by now, be in agony.  The pain will feel fiery-hot, all the way along her arms, down into her ribcage.  Her wrists, too, will be burning from the manacles' grip.  And it gets worse and worse as the day crawls towards night; the more tired she gets, the worse the pain will seem.  Every minute is a lifetime to endure, a nightmare of pain and fear.

It will be no consolation to her that, in her suspenders and stockings, she looks utterly sexy as she hangs there suffering.

 

The Witchseeker General and the Chief Interrogator are among the delegation that assembles outside the torture chamber in the morning.  The guards, Austin, Steve, and a scribe are also present.  Word has quickly got around that the accused witch hanging in chains in the chamber is quite beautiful; although, of course, that is not the reason for the presence of my superiors.

"You have been remiss in your duties," Oberon had told me earlier.  "You are meant to present accused witches for inspection before putting them to the question."

So I have invited them to be present.  Austin unlocks the heavy door to the torture chamber and allows us in; I lead the procession across the floor to where our prisoner still dangles, after some fifteen hours.

Wendy is still beautiful, hanging from the manacles; her body shines as if with coconut oil.  The flowers are still in her hair, and the suspender-and-stockings set seem as virgin-white and pristine as when she came in.  The panties, though, have become transparent with sweat and cling to her hips.  She is so exhausted from her night of suffering that she fails to react as we gather in front of her.

"Bring her down," I tell Austin.

He lumbers to the winch and cranks it down a little.  Now, Wendy shows signs of awareness, her head lifting.  Her eyes look glazed with fatigue, but realising that she is finally being lowered, she reaches her stockinged toes for the floor; when she touches it, she gives a soft gasp of pain as the strained joints of her shoulders and elbows are relieved of her bodyweight.

Austin stops the crank with Wendy's heels an inch off the floor, so that she is forced to stand on the balls of her feet.  Her head rocks forward, but then, slowly, rises, her eyes filled with pain and defiance.

"You bastards," she manages to say.

"Strip the little upstart," Oberon says.

This task is mine.  Ignoring Wendy's ongoing curses, I release the snaps of her stockings, one at a time, then draw the sheer fabric of her left stocking down over her equally-silky thigh, then all the way off.  I do the same with the right, baring her long and tanned legs.  Wendy damns me to Hell, but exhausted and half-suspended as she is, she can offer no real resistance.

Oberon clears his throat and clasps his hands in front of him.

Next I hook my thumbs over the hip-strings of Wendy's damp panties and draw them down her legs, revealing the tidy narrow strip of her pubic hair, the tight orbs of her naked buttocks.  Finally, the suspender belt, and she stands stretched on tiptoes before the delegation, stark naked.

"She is ready," I announce.

"Oh, shit, here we go," Wendy moans.

They swarm over her, and Wendy's distress is apparent as she curses and struggles under the hands that grasp and prod.  Their faces are  close to her golden curves, their breath on her bare skin.  Several times a blemish is noted, and reported to the scribe.  Fingers probe between her thighs, separate her buttocks.  Not an inch of her body is missed, and the examiners are finally satisfied.  Wendy half-hangs humiliated.

"Very, er ... very good," Oberon says, his face flushed, evidently from his devotion to the task.

Tina is more cool, but her eyes flash venom that any woman could be this perfect.  "This witch should be interrogated thoroughly," she says.  "Whip her!  Then use the pear on her, and the breast-ripper!  And hot irons on her flesh!"

"No!" shouts Wendy.

"Woah, hang on," says Oberon.

"Maybe that's too much," Steve suggests.

"Aw crap," says a guard.

"I would prefer not to mar her body unnecessarily," I say, to be diplomatic.  "Once she is a confessed witch, she may be tortured for information with impunity, but until then, we must consider her future welfare."

Wendy inserts hastily, "for God's sake, I'm not a witch!"

I ignore her.  "May I suggest we christen a device I have recently had constructed?"

"By all means," Oberon says, in some relief.

"Please," Wendy tries.  "Please, you don't have to torture me, I am innocent, I've told you, I'm not a witch!"

"It is expected that you will deny being a witch," I say calmly, as the guards unfasten her bruised wrists from the shackles above her head, "until pain prevents you from uttering any more lies."

With arms pinioned again behind her, protesting still, Wendy is wrenched across the torture chamber in my wake; followed by Oberon and Tina.  When her eyes fall upon the device on which she is to suffer, what little strength remains in her knees is drained, and she sags in the guards' grip.

"Oh, shit," she groans.

It is called a chair, but bears only a passing resemblance to one.

The focal point of this 'chair' is a vertical spike.  Iron, twelve inches tall and five inches diameter at its base.  A toothed iron rail forms the 'back' of the chair, mounted on which is a narrow carriage, fitted with manacles for wrists and elbows and a leather strap for the torso, with a hand-crank so the torturer may raise or lower it a fraction of an inch at a time.

There are other features; a chute beneath the 'seat' of the chair leading to an insulated firebox, and an adjustable series of vents in the seat itself, to channel hot air.  But these intricacies are lost on Wendy, whose eyes are fixed only upon the terrible spike.

"My God, you're all sick!" she erupts.

"It is only through pain that the Truth will emerge," I tell her.  "Guards, secure her for questioning."

"You fucking perverts!  Let me go!"

Screaming and struggling, Wendy is wrestled to the chair and forced to straddle it.  The deadly spike stands between her spread legs, its tip barely two inches below her anus.  She gives a long wail of dread as her arms are pulled behind her, forced into the manacles of the raised carriage at the back of the chair.  Elbows, first; squeezed cruelly together behind her, barely four inches apart and restricting her ability to struggle.  The strain is evident in the tension of her pectoral muscles, the definition of her triceps; but more distracting is the way her ribcage and breasts are thrust up-and-out.  Her wrists are snapped into the lower two manacles, pressing her spine against the adjustable carriage.

The leather strap, also anchored on the carriage, is passed around her lower ribcage - securing her torso as Austin pulls it tight.  Her feet are forced into the ankle manacles, low on either side of the chair's base, spreading her thighs.  It takes her off balance, putting most of her weight on her arms, and I can see panic on her face at the realisation of how helpless she is.

Steve gives the bindings a final check, then signals the all clear, and the guards step back.

Wendy looks magnificent.  Her naked body straddling the chair, the spike poised below her, her arms cinched tightly together behind her.  Her thrusting breasts are heaving with fearful breath, her nipples standing in defiance of the chill air, while a cold sweat creeps over her exposed body.

"You should be proud, Wendy," I say.  "You will be the first to suffer upon this delight of persuasion!"

"You don't have to do this," Wendy gasps, a last-ditch effort to save herself. 

"Yes, we do," I reply.

"You're all out of your minds!  If I confess, you'll burn me alive at the stake!"

"Of course we will," I reply.

"But ... what kind of choice is that?"  She looks up at me in growing despair.

"When the pain has torn away your ability to think, there won't be a choice.  There will only be Truth," I tell her.

Tina and Oberon nod in sage approval, and Wendy gives a sob of misery.

I move behind the chair.  The crank of its carriage, to either side of which Wendy's elbows and wrists are manacled, is fitted with a wooden handle, and I close my hand around it.  With my heart pounding in anticipation,  I give it the first turn.

Smoothly, slowly, the carriage descends the first quarter-inch, and Wendy is lowered fractionally towards the spike.  It takes her by surprise, and she gives a shriek, struggling to raise her hips; but the nature of her restraint affords her little movement.  I turn the crank again, forcing Wendy lower still, until the iron tip of the spike is poised in the gully between her buttocks.

            "You fucking psycho, let me go!" Wendy spits at me.  But I turn the handle again, the carriage impels her lower still, and the spike's inquisitive point nudges Wendy's clenched asshole.  The horror of its touch brings a new wail from her, and I can see she is struggling to get free, but to no avail.  Another turn, and she is lowered a little further, the cold iron penetrating her anus by a quarter inch.

            "Oh God, you'll rot in Hell for this!" Wendy shouts.

            "Me?  You're the one who'll burn," I respond, and punish her with several more turns of the handle.  Wendy sinks a whole inch down onto the spike, the iron spreading her sphincter and probing deeper inside her.

            "Okay!  Stop!"  She twists her head to try and see over her shoulder.  "For God's sake let me up, I don't deserve this!"

            "Tell us the Truth," I insist.

            "The truth is I'm not a witch!  I'm not, I'm not, I swear!"

            So I crank the handle and the spike drives another half inch into Wendy's rectum.  She gives a grunt as her internal muscles flex and spasm around the intrusion in a reflexive action, but she cannot eject it, and I give another half inch to make that fact clear.  Wendy gives a shout of pain, followed by another obscenity; her sphincter is spread an inch already, uncomfortable but technically not pain.  She can feel the iron tip more than two inches inside her, and we have barely started.

"Confess that you are a witch," I urge.

            "If I confess, you'll just hurt me more!"

            "Yes, but this will stop," I say, as I turn the handle.  The carriage descends on its track, forcing Wendy further down the spike, and she gives another groan.  Sweat is shining between her perfect breasts.  With her arms so savagely twisted into the manacles behind her, every muscle strains.

            I crank her down two more notches, and she gives another moan as she is further violated by the unforgiving iron, three inches inside her  It is not merely the physical aspect that causes her such distress, but the utter humiliation of suffering on such a device.  Her audience watches, enthralled at her pain, entertained and aroused by the chair's slow violation of its beautiful victim.

            I give her four slow notches: with each click, the carriage descends minutely, forcing her down.  The ever-widening circumference of the spike slides into her rectum, stretching her sphincter, and the pain is growing incrementally.

            From behind, Wendy is quite a sight.  Her tanned and slender arms manacled together to the chair's carriage unit; her shoulder-blades jutting and pushed together.  I can see the flare of her hips, and below her, the spike, its upper end disappearing up between her buttocks.  Sweat is gathering in droplets across her naked back.

            Click.  Her head rocks forward.  "Oh, God, please stop!"

            "Confess that you are a witch!"

            "No!  I won't lie!  Fuck you!"

            Click, click; the hard iron drives another half inch into her asshole, and this time she gives a moan of pain.  Her internal muscles are cramping and spasming urgently, and the chair is beginning to deliver its potential.  The veins on Wendy's neck stand out in her efforts to endure; she is breathing fast.

            Click.  Her body shifts further down the spike and she gives a shriek.

            "For God's sake, stop!!"

            Click.  Four inches inside her, and she cries out again.  Her anus has been spread nearly two inches, and it must hurt.  The tears begin to spill from her eyes.  "Please," she calls out.

            But I cannot let compassion influence me.  Pain in the extreme is the only way to cut through the lies a witch tells to save her flesh; and Wendy is not even close to suffering the way she eventually must.  I give her body time to adjust to the latest intrusion of the spike, then, firmly, turn the handle again; click, click.

            Wendy is forced another half inch down onto the impaling spike; its tip probes deep inside her bowels while its circumference forces her anus wider, and she gives a cry of pain.  "Oh, God, stop now!  Stop!"

            But this is nothing.  Inserting the pear would hurt more. I give her another two notches, and the carriage wrenches her down, the spike penetrating deeper into her ass, five inches now.  She wails with pain and humiliation.

            Oberon and Austin are discussing how well the chair appears to be working; Tina comes and stands beside me, with gentle fingers clearing a loose strand of hair from Wendy's pain-flushed face, collecting droplets of sweat from the witch's tanned shoulder.

            "Why not just crank her all the way down, right now?" Tina asks me, and her eyes, meeting mine, have a mischievous gleam.  "That would get a reaction!"

            "Too fast, and she'll tear," I reply, and find the next notch.  Wendy's body is shoved down onto the spike, and she barks in pain, her head rolling.  "It has to be done slowly, so her body has time to accommodate it."  Click. 

            "No-o-o-o!" Wendy wails.

            "She'd confess," Tina tells me confidently.

            "She might not - and if not, she must be allowed to go free without life-threatening injuries."

            Click.

            Wendy shrieks again, and now I can hear an edge of true pain entering her voice, not just the shouts of discomfort and dismay.  The sweat is rolling off her body.  I savour the next turn of the handle - click - as six inches of iron are buried up inside her ass, her tender asshole spread two and a half inches.

            She is halfway.

            Click, click; as Wendy is impaled further, the pain grows and spreads.

            "No!  No, I can't take it!" she howls.

            It doesn't deter me: I give her another notch, and the iron slides another quarter inch into Wendy's rectum.  She screams again.

Like the rack, or the pear, or the boots, my chair delivers incrementally-greater pain, letting the prisoner suffer mental anguish as well as physical as the torture worsens.  Wendy cries out endlessly in pain and horror as, over the next twenty minutes, I slowly give the handle turn after painful turn.

An hour after first being manacled to the chair, she has eight inches of iron spike impaling her.  It fills not just her rectum, but the tip of the spike has begun to probe and distend her colon.  It is an invasive, terrible pain.  Her anus has been stretched around its circumference, spread by three-and-a-half inches.

            But she is only two-thirds down, and the remaining inches are going to hurt more than anything she has experienced in her life.  As the next notch pushes her another quarter inch down onto the spike, she gives a scream of pain.  The sweat is a gloss over her naked body; her muscles are hard with her body's efforts to cope, her thighs quivering as she tries unsuccessfully to brace her slow descent.  Her pelvic floor muscles are convulsing and pushing to try and eject the iron intruder, but it only adds to her pain.

            Another notch, and Wendy's mouth opens wide; she screams in pain.  The spike brings agony; it stretches, distends, twists and distorts her internal organs, causing exquisite agonies.  But it will not permanently injure her.

            Click.  Wendy's scream echoes from the stone ceiling.  "Please sto-o-o-op!"

            "Confess!" I urge.  "Confess, and it will end!"

            Wendy gives a howl of misery.  "You'll burn me at the stake!" she squeals.  "How can I confess?  Oh please, please, stop torturing me!"

            She is still capable of rational thought; the Truth is not yet laid bare.  So I crank the handle again, and, with a creaking sound, Wendy's ass sinks further onto the spike.  She gives a long scream of pain, and I watch a rivulet of sweat slide down the groove of her spine.  Her shoulders are shaking with her pain-wracked sobs.

            Nine inches.

            The mirth and entertained smiles of earlier have gone from my audience, now.  They know that this has entered the realms of true torture.  Even Tina, earlier dubious of the chair's ability to bring swift results, is looking impressed.  Wendy suffers beautifully, and as the next notch pushes her further down the spike, she gives a contralto scream of pain, her head back, her mouth wide.

            Click.  Where the spike disappears into her anus, it is four inches across.  Wendy's sphincter is dilated grotesquely, her rectum stretched, the pain driving deeply into her abdomen with the huge intrusion of the spike.  Click.  Wendy's screams are long and loud, her sweat-wet breasts and ribcage heaving with her anguished breaths.

            It has reached the point where each notch of descent onto the spike brings significantly greater pain, and when I turn the handle again, after giving her organs another five minutes to adjust, Wendy screams anew.  Already her voice is becoming hoarse; but fatigue is to the torturer's advantage; it heightens the prisoner's perception of pain.

            Click.  More than ten inches.  Gradually, leaving ever-longer periods of adjustment, I lower the carriage on its rail, impelling Wendy, by her pinioned arms, further down onto the iron spike.

            As the eleventh inch of iron disappears into her agonised rectum, Wendy shakes her head over and over.  Her voice is weak, now; the sweat drips from her lowered face, streaks her naked body.  She is shaking.

            Click.  Wendy bellows, but even the slight motion of her diaphragm is creating fresh agonies through her distended colon, and she tries with all of her strength to stifle her own cries.  But when the carriage forces her another quarter inch down onto the spike, and her buttocks finally kiss the iron seat of the chair, she cannot help but scream once more.

            Click.  Wendy's body spasms violently as the agony of the shifting spike racks her organs, but her head is lolling, and her scream trails out to a long groan.  She coughs, wails with the agony it brings, and then vomits up a small trickle of liquid; it spills down her defined belly.

            Click.  Just when we thought there was no suffering left, Wendy finds voice to scream as she is pushed down onto the spike again.  Her anus is stretched five inches; the iron spike buried twelve inches inside her.  It has taken an hour and a half, but finally she is all the way down.  Releasing the handle, I step around to regard my victim.

            Wendy is panting.  Her head is lowered, her mouth open, her eyes wide in disbelief at the pain that fills her lower body, sweat dripping steadily from her face.  If there is blood, it is minimal; none seeps from below her.  Her breaths come in shallow, panting gasps, the pain preventing her from anything more.

            "Say that you are a witch," I demand.

            Wendy manages a groan, then slowly shakes her head.

            She believes that she has endured the worst that can be inflicted upon her by the chair.  In truth, she has simply been prepared for the real torture.

I look to the guards.  "Anvil.  Rope.  Tar.  A pail of water.  A woollen blanket.  And a lit candle," I say.  As the three men go, I mouth to my remaining audience the words, ten minutes.  Wendy's confession is close.  Drawing near her gleaming body, I grasp her bundled hair, still adorned with flowers, and lift her head.  Her face is running with sweat; her eyes, heavy-lidded and barely focusing, fight to fix on my face.

"It is time for the Truth, now, Wendy," I say quietly.  "Nothing else matters."

"Please," she gasps.  "Oh, God … it hurts …"

The guards bring the heavy anvil, sixty pounds of solid iron; along with the other items.  It is placed alongside the chair, and I carefully release the shackle around Wendy's right ankle.  "Hold her for me."

Pain from the spike draws another wail from Wendy, and she is all but oblivious as the guards place her heel on the anvil.  With the dark, oiled rope, I bind her ankle and lash it to the iron, her leg sticking straight out from the chair, her foot vertical.

Her toes are perfect, even sexy.  Delicate and slender, each nail painted with an opaque white varnish, sculptured and buffed into shape.  Not a single imperfection.

For all the diabolical and sophisticated devices at my disposal, there is still a place for the most rudimentary methods of persuasion.  I have been given a tub of tar, and a small brush; carefully, I daub some of the thick, black ooze over Wendy's smallest toe.  Her foot twitches and shifts at the brush's touch, so I hold it steady with my hand, casually continuing.

Another spasm wracks her impaled bowels, and Wendy gives an unprompted cry of agony. 

I thickly coat each toe with tar; taking care to cover the pad, to brush it in between the toes, over the knuckles and nails.  Wendy knows that something is happening to her foot, but she is dazed by the unceasing agony of the spike.  Even so, I am careful to explain to her what will follow.

"I'm going to set light to your toes, now, Wendy.  The tar will make sure each one burns to the bone.  But before they have all burned, you will confess."

At this new, awful threat, Wendy finds a fevered lucidity, lifting her head to look in anguish at her trapped foot, her tar-coated toes.  "Goddamn you," she sobs.  "I swear, I'll get you for this!"

I extend my hand for the candle; the guard hands it to me, and I carefully shield the flame, my eyes drawn to its steady, bright teardrop-shape.  Then, grasping Wendy's foot again, I lower the flame to Wendy's smallest toe.

"No!" Wendy shrieks in horror and panic.  "No!  No!!"

The bright candle-flame embraces her tar-covered toe, licking intimately.  The tar smokes, then lazily catches alight with a fluttering flame.  I release Wendy's foot, and at once she is rocking it from side to side, but the tar is alight, and flames quickly spread from her smallest toe to the next, black smoke ribboning up into the air.

The pain hits.

Wendy jolts violently, wrenching herself on the spike as the pain explodes up from her foot.  She screams.  The bird-flap flutter of growing flames is quickly joined by the hissing and crackling of her flesh burning.  Another toe, then another; then all are alight.  Wendy shrieks and screeches in agony, her struggles rattling the carriage to which her elbows and wrists are fettered; she twists her body on the impaling anal spike; her leg shudders and jerks as she tries to pull away, but she is helpless.

The flames jump six inches into the air from her immolated toes, and Wendy screams and screams in agony.  She can not speak, nor think, she can only thrash about, skewered on the hideous spike, all but dislocating her own arms in her efforts to escape the pain.  Smoke and flames twirl up from her burning foot.

And then, from her shrieks, words barely-formed: "I confess, I confess, I confess, I confess, oh Jesus, I confess ..."

"You confess that you're a witch?" I cry.

"I am!  I confess!  I am, I am!" she howls, over and over as her toes burn brightly.

It is what we needed to hear.  I quickly drape the woollen blanket over her foot, smothering the flames, but Wendy still howls and shrieks as the hot tar cooks to the very marrow of her toes, an unfathomable pain.  I pick up the wooden pail of water, and pour it over the blanket.  There is the deep muted hiss of the hot tar being extinguished.

When I lift the blanket again, a puff of steam rises up.  Wendy's two smallest toes seem to have melted away, the others are curled and gnarled, the tar burnt into her flesh.  Her chest shudders in great, whooping breaths; her shining breasts jiggle, the tears streak her face.

"Her confession is enough, for now," I say to the scribe, but then I look to Steve.  "Bring a brazier and place it behind her.  Heat enough coals for our purposes.  We will return in a few hours."

Steve nods.

 

            The chair has been christened, but not fully tested yet.  This fact is to be much to Wendy's misfortune.

            Two guards still stand watch over Wendy as I make my return, accompanied by the usual observers, as well as Austin, and Steve.

            The confessed witch has been secured on the chair for hours.  Her bowels have been distended to accommodate the huge intrusion, and cramps spear through her constantly, drawing groans, her head turning in endless anguish.  Her burned toes, too, must be a source of almost unbearable pain.  Fixed naked on the chair, her body gleaming, even the flowers in her blonde hair seem to have wilted from the torture.  Her arms, cruelly twisted and pulled together behind her back, must hurt almost as badly as in strappado; but the way the restraint lifts her ribcage and presents her pouting, rosy-nippled breasts still draws longing looks from the men.  Her ankle has been returned to its shackle at the base of the chair, her deformed foot  curled to guard her ruined toes from knocks or touches.

            Three yards away, a brazier has been filled with hot-burning coals, the air shimmering above them.  A fresh pail of water stands beside the chair.

            "Wendy, we  need to talk again," I say.

            Wendy is too exhausted to show much fear, but her eyes flutter open and she looks at me as I draw near.  "We need you to reaffirm your confession that you are a witch."

            She nods.

            "You confirm it is true?"

            "I'm a witch, I admit it," Wendy says weakly.  "Please, just let me up …"

            "That's the problem, Wendy," I say.  "We know that witches don't learn their craft without help.  We know that you'll have friends, other witches, people you know.  Before we let you find your release at the stake, we want you to tell us everything you know."

Wendy looks bewildered through her pain.  "But I don't know anything like that!"

"It's my job to help you remember," I say.  To Steve; "will you kindly stoke the coals and make them ready?"

"Oh, God, no," Wendy pleads.  She is desperate.  "I have confessed, damn you!  Just get on with it, just let me die!"

"And take all your secrets with you?  I don't think so!" I respond.  "But perhaps you can remember, now, some details which may save you a lot of suffering?"

The tears begin to spill.  "I swear, I don't know!  You're all fucking monsters!  Tell me what I have to say, I'll say it, just tell me!"

"It doesn't work that way," I say.

I move to Wendy's side, aware that Tina has joined me, eager to watch this next stage of the torture.

At the back of the chair, from its base, is a chute of sorts; it provides access and ventilation to a firebox beneath the spike.  While Wendy strains to see what is happening, I give the nod to Steve, who, wearing heavy industrial gloves, scoops from the brazier a shovel full of glowing and flaming coals.  Embers and sparks drift brightly to the floor, grey smoke trails his approach.

I bend close to Wendy's ear, near enough so that I can see the drops of perspiration that crawl down the side of her face.  I put my hand gently to her upper chest, and feel the rapid knocking of her terrified heart through her clammy-hot skin.  "Soon, you will feel pain unlike anything you have experienced yet."

I am so close to Wendy that I actually see the tiny blonde hairs on the bare nape of her neck rise at my words, and a moment later, Steve pours the coals into the chute, filling the firebox beneath her.  She erupts into tears.  Not just weeping, but bawling, shaking her head, her feisty spirit broken.  I step back, and watch.

There is a glow from the firebox chute.  The coals, piled against the foundations of the spike, are starting to heat the iron.  That heat will travel all the way up, warming the metal inside Wendy's bowels; a truly cruel addition to the torment she already suffers.

For several minutes she sits and sobs, the rest of us wait.

"Please, tell me what you want from me," she tries.

"Details," I say.  "Names.  Places.  Evidence of your guilt."

"Evidence?  Like what?"

"Tell us about your liaisons with Satan," Oberon contributes.

"I don't know anything like that," Wendy moans.  "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please, I don't know anything!"

She is beginning to squirm, and I realise that the spike is hurting more as its iron grows warmer from the coals.

"Have you fornicated with the Devil?" Austin asks.

"No!" Wendy says, then gives a whimper; the muscles in her arms and belly tense as she endeavours to pull herself off the heating spike.  "Oh God … yes, maybe …"

"Describe what you did," Austin urges.

"Tell us names," I hiss at her.  "Those who deserve to burn!"

Wendy's eyes are open wide, now, the panic showing on her face.  Her fingers are fluttering beyond her wrist manacles.  Her feet are twisting in their shackles.  The spike is getting hot.

"Names?  The names of anyone?" she asks.

"The names of witches," I say.

"I don't know the names of witches!  Oh, God, take me off, please, please, it's burning me now!"

I rest my hand on the crank that holds her in place, but do not turn it.  "Talk to us, Wendy!  Tell us the Truth!"

Wendy's mouth opens, but words do not come.  Instead, she breathes rapidly as the pain builds inside her.  I can smell a singeing, sweet odour, as the sweat between her buttocks evaporates around the iron spike in her anus.

Wendy jolts.  Her head snaps back, then sinks forward.  She gives a shout.  "Oh Jesus, take me off!  Take me off please, I'm begging you!  I can't bear it!  Aaah!!"

I can see the faces of our audience; their eyes shining, hands clasped, as the torture of the chair begins to take hold.  Wendy's struggles become more frantic.  Her rectum is beginning to sear from the heat.  The pain, already bad even before we started, is now beyond her threshold to endure.

She shrieks.  Her shoulders make loud cracking sounds as her back-twisted arms are wrenched agonisingly by her struggles.  Her anus, where it clenches around the spike, is beginning to burn.

Ah, the music of a witch truly screaming.  Now Wendy is drawing breath only to yell dementedly in agony, every exhausted muscle straining to rid herself of the crippling, unbearable pain inside her.  As I see the first signs of smoke curling up from beneath her buttocks, I grasp the crank handle and turn.

The iron carriage to which Wendy's arms are shackled rises, drawing her upwards and off the spike.  Her scream mellows into a shrill wail as the iron seems to slide endlessly out of her ass, steaming.  Her natural internal lubricants allow the spike's smooth exit, and her head rolls to one side at the incredible relief.

"Oh - oh God - oh God …" she squeals, panting hard.  I raise her up until only a few inches of spike are still buried in her rectum, then stop the handle.

"Names, Wendy.  Tell us names.  Confess your fornications with Satan!"

"I confess!" she wails.  "I had sex with Satan, I was his whore!  I did it all to him!  I'm sorry, please, please, I admit it, don't torture me any more!"

"What of other witches?"

"I …"  Wendy doesn't know what to say.  Fear screws her face into an expression of abject suffering as she realises what will  happen, but she does not give an answer.  So I turn the handle, cranking her downwards again.

The spike is driven into her asshole,  hissing and squealing as she is forced further and further down.  Her descent is swift, inch after inch sliding into her, and steam escapes from between her ass cheeks as the hot metal fills her bowels.  Her screams are frantic, maddened with agony, the chair rattling as she thrashes and struggles.  She can only scream, oblivious to everything but pain.

I let it burn her for ten terrible seconds, then turn the handle again, lifting her off the obscene spike.  This time there are unspeakable residues on the iron, proof that she is taking damage from the torture.  Her body is shuddering with her agony, her eyes rolling.  She releases a dribble of urine and it boils and steams in a quickly-evaporating puddle on the iron of the chair beneath her.

"Talk," I command.

Wendy's tanned body is wet with sweat, helplessly held in place by the shackles about her wrists and elbows that cinch her arms behind her back; her raised breasts and ribcage heave desperately.  Every muscle is stark with her pain-maddened struggles.  She sobs and shrieks but gives no information, so I turn the handle again.

Down Wendy goes; the hissing spike is again forced into her ass as she is impelled lower and lower by the cruel chair.  The shrill soprano of her screams fills the torture chamber.  The coal-heated spike explores deep into her colon as she is forced down onto it.  This new impaling is a thousand times worse, as steam is forced up into her lower intestine, bloating it, creating agony more terrible and debilitating than the pear ever could.  The sheer magnitude  of pain forces the air from Wendy's lungs, and she simply gasps at the ceiling, her eyes bulging, her body shaking violently, to the sound of her own intimate parts hissing against hot metal.

Almost at once, I am raising her again.  Her head drops forward, she whoops air and then manages to howl in agony as her ass is lifted off the spike.  Even as the iron slides out of her, I am shouting again:

"Name your sister witches!  Name them!  Name them, or you will have the spike inside you again!"

"Nooooo!" Wendy shrieks in abject horror, and, as I begin to crank her down again onto the spike, and its searing circumference fills her tortured rectum once more, she begins to gibber desperately.  "I know them, I know the names, I just can't remember, I'll give you names, oh God, don't torture me, I'll give you names!"

The spike is part-way inside her ass, and I pause.  The agony must be unbearable, but Wendy, between shrieks and howls, begins spilling out names.  It is a long list, and none of them mean a thing to me, until Tina shouts out -

"Wait!  Did she say Stacy?"

"Witch!"  I shout at Wendy, halting her babbling, "did you say Stacy?"

"Yes!  Stacy!  She is a witch too - aaaahh! - she is, I know it!"

"Stacy Sambilay?" I demand.  That is one name I have encountered, and Wendy could be the lead we have been wanting.

"I …"  Wendy looks confused, turns her face to Tina for prompting, so I crank the handle.  The spike is glowing at its base now, the metal radiating savage heat, and as Wendy is forced down upon it, it rends her insides with a horrible squealing and hissing.  Smoke and steam billow from beneath her as she is impaled again, and she throws her head about and shakes her straining shoulders, sweat droplets flung from her body, her screams shrill and maddened.

The chair fucks Wendy's ass slowly and deeply with its savage, heated spike while she struggles and screams; when I raise her off it again, she finally sags, her head rolling forward.  The heat and shock of her ordeal is taking its toll, and I know she won't last much longer.

"Think, Witch!  Is her last name Sambilay?"

"Yes," Wendy groans.  "Yes, yes, yes … "

I nod.  "Very well."

The torture is over.

I bend to the pail of water by the chair, and tip it in a cascade over Wendy's sweat-wet body.  She gasps at the chill relief, her skin coarse with goosebumps, the water splashing and hissing across the iron below her, taking the edge off its cruel heat.

"Guards, we are done here," I say.  "Take the witch off the chair and return her to her cell.  I will send a physician to tend her."

As Wendy falls into a faint, Oberon, Tina, Austin and Steve nod approval.  I allow myself a wary smile and for the first time realise that my own body is wet with perspiration.  This was as much a test of my own performance, as it was the chair's.  But the accused witch has confessed, and has named another; it is all we need.

 

Execution day. My outfit says don't fuck with me in big, bold letters.

A black leather bustier, lace-up in front, pushing my breasts into pouting, teasing mounds, and leaving my midriff exposed.  And a long black silk sarong-skirt, split on the left so that my whole leg is effectively left naked, giving the lucky few an occasional glimpse of the black leather thong bikini underneath.  High heeled sandals.  It feels dangerously sexy – and, judging by the enthusiastic applause that rises up from the thousand-odd spectators filling the amphitheatre as I climb onto the scaffold, it looks pretty damn good too.

I stand alongside the chopping-block upon the wooden scaffold.  But Wendy will not be granted the mercy of beheading.  It has been made clear already that her execution will be lengthy and agonising.

Not fifty feet away, Steve is arranging the last of the wood and straw around the stake at which Wendy will finally die. Nine feet tall, surrounded with a low scattering of wood bedded on brush and kindling. High on the stake, a single bolt has been fixed, from which dangle two short chains, open manacles at their ends. Those, and only those, will be her restraint for execution. Nearby stands a brazier in which coals lazily burn, and a tar-soaked torch to light her pyre.

Beside me on the torture scaffold, iron implements shimmer in the heat of a brazier.  Its warmth wards off the autumn chill from my bare limbs.

Over at the Chateau, the main doors swing open, and the execution party emerges. My dungeon assistant Zell heads half a dozen guards; in the midst of them is Wendy.  She is stark naked; her wrists are roped tightly behind her back, her head is down and her face is streaked with tears. She hobbles badly, one foot injured by torture, and her more delicate parts scorched and raw from her suffering upon my Chair. At the rear of the group comes Austin, his bear-like form swathed in robes.

Wendy's eyes find the high scaffold quickly, and alight on me.  I see fear on her face for just an instant, before it is replaced by hatred.  She mouths a curse at me, but I simply smile.  She can curse me all she wants; I will be watching her die.

Seeing that Wendy is finally being brought to her execution, the spectators give voice to their excitement; a surge of applause, calls and cheers, shouts of abuse.  Her complicity with the Witchseeker General Oberon has raised her to the status of Villain amongst the members of the Witchseeker group, and all are eager to finally see her face justice.

As the execution party reaches the bottom of the steps, I pick up a cat o'nine tails.  It is heavy; from its stout handle, the yard-long lashes swing, each made of hard, braided leather into which platinum wires have been woven.  Adding to its weight, while letting the lashes move freely.

Wendy struggles as they reach the top of the steps, and her eyes settle first on the whip in my hands, then on the implements heating in the brazier.  Finally, she looks at me, the fear obvious in her eyes.  "Just burn me, you sadistic bitch!" she hisses.

"And deprive everyone of a good show?  I don't think so."  To Zell I order, "secure her for the whip."

The gallows doubles as a whipping-post: the rope dangling from it today is far more slender than a hangman's. Zell unties Wendy's wrists from behind her back.  Her arms are quickly brought in front of her, re-bound, then lifted to the free end of the rope.  It is fastened about her wrist bonds, and two guards loosen the other end of the rope from its iron stay.  They make short work of pulling it through the high metal ring, so that Wendy's arms are wrenched up over her head.  Her face briefly shows pain as the rope bites into her wrist bones, and by her wrists, she is drawn up onto her tiptoes.

Wolf whistles. Shouts. Secured like this is immensely flattering to Wendy's body, drawing her lean and long; her ribcage and breasts are lifted, her belly hollowed, her back gracefully curved to the taut swell of her buttocks, her thighs and calves defined.  From this close, I can see the rapid shifting of her ribcage.  And in the cold air, I can see the goosebumps on her naked body.  With deliberate tenderness, I collect a simple hair-tie from Zell and, standing behind Wendy, secure her blonde hair into a ponytail.

I whisper, "so that it doesn't get in the way of the whip."

With Wendy prepared, I let her half-hang there while I turn to address the crowd, raising my hand for their attention.

"I will not bother to read aloud the official charges against Wendy," I tell them, "since they are widely known.  She is a confessed witch, she conspired with Oberon to burn her innocent cousin, and she has done her best to spread dissent through the group.  Her crimes are many, and today she will be punished for them."

I continue.  "Wendy will be given thirty strokes of the whip, after which her sinning flesh will be purified with red-hot iron, before she is burned alive at the stake."

Wendy must have known what awaited her.  But hearing it, her head drops forward and she releases her breath in a groan of despair.  Her crimson hands close into fists above the binding ropes.

I find my position on the boards behind her, swish the whip in my hand a few times to measure the distance.

"Whip her hard!" I hear from the crowd.

"Flay her alive!"

I throw the first lash.  Whistling, the cat lands hard across Wendy's smooth upper back, and she is thrown forward, giving a shriek of pain.  I give her a few moments; the strike of the lash is an intense, severe, crippling pain that briefly flares and grows worse before it eases.  Then I strike again.  The sound is almost as sharp as the ringing crack of a single-lash; but I know that each of those braided tails brings its own line of hot agony.

Wendy shrieks again, and then comes the sweat.  It is a basic physiological response to intense pain; the heartbeat increases, the adrenaline flows, and sweat appears.  I see it emerge onto Wendy's naked flesh in tiny, clustered dewdrops after only a few strokes of the whip.  The next lash raises a fine spray into the air.

            "Oh God, stop!" Wendy screams in her pain.

I make each stroke count, flinging the lash with all of my strength, in a slow progression from the backs of her shoulders, down her slender back, towards the top of her buttocks.  Each blow of the whip leaves a score of tiny welts, as if her skin has been lightly trailed with a scalpel.

When I have given her ten strokes of the cat, I step back.  Wendy is hanging heavily in the ropes, her head forward, her body gleaming, her ribcage heaving.  Rivulets of blood trail down her back.

Zell is next to take the whip. He bows his head gracefully to me, positions himself behind Wendy, then slices low. The leather braids cut across the back of Wendy's thighs, and she shrieks, picking her feet up off the scaffold and swinging freely on the rope. The crowd gives a cheer of approval.

"Mercy!  Please!" Wendy shrieks. 

But Zell will not be stopped.  He whips Wendy's bare legs; her thighs, her calves, her feet, the lashes curl around her like serpents, leaving welts that encircle her legs.  The pain must be hideous, and Wendy cries and shrieks with each blow.

The second ten lashes are delivered, and Zell hands the whip to Austin. 

Swiftly, Austin casts off the heavy robes, to reveal black executioner's trousers and a bare torso.  A powerful and muscular man.  He swings the lash to test it a few times, then, moving to stand in front of Wendy, aims it for her breasts.  There is a whistling sound as the whip swings, then the sharp impact as the wire-braided leather lands on the firm globes of her breasts; hitting them with such force that they bounce upwards.  Again, then again he lashes her breasts, and Wendy can only scream.

Austin spares a few strokes for Wendy's undefended belly, angling the lash across her naked hips, but it is her breasts that suffer the most, and when he is finished, they are almost cut to ribbons, blood running down her ribcage.

Wendy hangs in the ropes, sobbing in agony, her body bloody and striped from the whipping.

"Bring her down," I order.

The rope is freed from its stay, and Wendy collapses, a sweating, tortured wretch, into the arms of the guards.  They free her wrists from the binding rope, but at once re-tie them behind her back. This time, a rope is also passed about her elbows, wrenching them together into a cruel restraint, preventing her from struggling.  Her whip-scored breasts are forced high and proud on her arched ribcage.

"Lay her on the block!"

Wendy is made to lie on her own bound arms, across the chopping block.  Her head is held back, arching her naked body like a bow, with her breasts uppermost.  Her nipples stand upright in the chill air, in defiance of the cruel whipping Austin gave.  The position is painful, and she can barely breathe; but that is the least of her worries.

I pull on a heavy gauntlet.

"Now," I call to the crowd, "let the iron punish her flesh."

I draw a heavy set of pliers from the brazier.  Their end glows a vicious orange, the very outline of the metal seems to be soft-focus with intense heat.  I can feel its warmth on my bare skin.  I move to the block over which Wendy is bowed, and look down on her heaving, helpless breasts.

"This," I say, "is for your impertinence."

"Oh God, no-o-o!!"

As the pliers close on her left nipple, it seems to explode.  With a loud pop, a burst of steam jets from her nipple.  Then Wendy is screaming, struggling, agonised as smoke rises up from her searing nipple.  I twist the pliers about, corkscrewing her breast for almost a full minute, until the pliers unexpectedly come free.  A black, smoking wound marks where her nipple used to be; the remains of her sensitive flesh smoke as an oily residue on the pliers themselves.

I return them to the brazier and draw out a fresh set of pliers.  Again they shimmer and crackle in the air.

"Kirsten, I beg you!  Don't, please!  Forgive me!" Wendy shrieks as I draw near.  But I am not interested in her false words and pleas, and I crush the pliers onto her right nipple.  The squealing and hissing of her burning flesh is joined by her shrill and agonised screaming, and in half a minute her right nipple is but a charred remnant.

"Reposition her," I say.

I have never heard a woman beg as desperately as Wendy begs now. Turned onto her front, she is bent over the chopping block with her naked ass in the air, her legs held apart. The intimate anatomy of her vulva and anus are presented to the sky, open and vulnerable. 

"Kirsten, don't, oh God, don't do it, don't, please, don't do it …"  On and on.

I draw out, first, the most slender iron.  It glows with heat.  I know Wendy's rectum still suffers the wounds of her time on the Chair; now I will finish its job.

"This," I tell her, "is for your treachery."

"Oh no - no, no, please, no!!" Wendy shrieks.  Her little brown sphincter twitches in dread and anticipation.

I touch the tip of the iron to her hole.  It burns and squeals and Wendy screams; then I plunge the poker deep inside.  Wendy's scream erupts into a long, shattering howl of agony as steam bursts out around the iron, her rectum searing and burning.  Her body thrashes and strains in the grip  of the guards, but she is utterly helpless.  She can only feel the agony, and scream and scream.  The crowd cheers and roars.

When I pull the iron free, it brings the smoking char of her flesh with it.  Even if she were not to be executed, her wounds now would eventually be fatal. 

But it is not over.

Wendy lies there, her body shuddering and heaving air, sobbing, her body so wet with sweat that it looks as if she has been hosed down.  Steam rises from her naked flesh in the cool air. With her elbows roped together and her wrists bound, she cannot struggle, but her fingers are curled into little claws of suffering.

I draw out the thicker, heavier iron.  It shimmers and smokes, orange-hot and savagely crackling.

"This," I announce, "is for your complicity with Oberon."

With the tip of the iron, first, I touch Wendy's clitoris.  She gives terrible shrieks as her most secret place blisters and burns. I lift the iron, then plunge its entire fiery length into her vagina.  The crowd gives a mighty cheer of approval as Wendy bellows in utter agony.  Steam and smoke curl up into the air.

When I tear out the iron, Wendy falls into a half-faint.  Smoke still rises from between her legs, but I order the guards to prepare her for the final stage: her tongue, which formed so many treacherous words, but also gave Oberon pleasure.

On her back again, with her head resting on the chopping block, Wendy is helpless as the guards force her mouth open and hold it for me.  I prepare the final iron.

"This is for all your lying and deceit," I tell her.

Wendy's eyes bulge and she makes incoherent noises.  But I put the red-hot iron inside her mouth and press it down onto her tongue, and she screams and howls around the cloud of steam that billows up from her mouth.  The traitorous witch will speak no more.

I shove the iron back into the brazier.

"Secure her at the stake and let her hang there until dusk," I order.

Wendy is barely conscious as they carry her down from the scaffold and drag her to the tall wooden stake. Even her restraint is unusually cruel: she is lifted up, so that her slim wrists can be enclosed in the shackles, leaving her hanging naked against the wooden post, her toes dangling a foot above the wood-pile. Her head droops onto her chest, her body shining and motionless.

The crowd disperses.  Oberon and Tina are taken quickly back to their cells beneath the Chateau.  I post half a dozen guards to watch over Wendy.

 

I know, as dusk begins to fall and the crowd returns to watch the evening burning, that Wendy will be anticipating death as much as she dreads it.  The pain of the hot irons has not ebbed as the hours crept by, nor that of the lashes on her body.  In moments of near-delirium she may well have imagined herself whole again, free again, with a life still ahead of her.  But the choices she made have instead led her here, to this.

It is cold, and still in my two-piece outfit, I shuffle as close as I dare to the straw and wood scattered below Wendy's dangling feet, hoping for a little warmth once it is lit.  There is no ceremony, no announcement; Steve simply brings a burning torch from the brazier and touches it to points around the circle of tinder.  Fluttering and dipping in the cool breeze, the little flames scatter and spread and climb on their slow, lazy trek towards the gleaming figure that hangs from the tall post.

            The fire grows, clambering up through the dry branches, translucent veils of grey smoke drifting up.  Sparks float up on the warm currents of air, sap pops and crackles. 

              I can barely begin to imagine what Wendy is going through, during these long, long minutes while the fire grows. The humiliation of being hung up by her wrists before a huge crowd, knowing that she is soon to be in unbearable pain, knowing that she is soon to begin dying - and that her death is what the throngs have come to see.

I can see the gleam of nervous sweat amidst the week’s stubble in her underarms. I can see every intimate detail of her terror in the downwards-curl of her mouth, the quivering of her lips as she battles the urge to scream out her misery.  Her eyes search the crowd, a mixture of hatred and pleading; she loathes them all, but she would give anything for one of them to douse the flames whose smoke now spirals and teases around her helpless body.  The growing fire is reflected in her sweat-polished skin.

I feel the warmth as the flames crackle and whoosh ever-higher. Their heat begins to sear Wendy's nude body, and she moans aloud. With a long-handled rake, Steve guides and nurtures the fire, making sure the flames stay low, and it is not until fifteen minutes after the fire was lit that the first little razor tongues lick at Wendy's dangling toes.

She is too weak from her tortures to struggle or lift her legs, but she is not too weak to feel, and as her skin shrinks back, as the oils ignite, she finds her full voice again. The piercing screams of her agony ring out across the amphitheatre, met by cheering and shouts from the crowd.

The fire remains low; her feet and ankles burn slowly while her naked legs blister and sear.  The scant triangle of her pubic hair chars rather than flames, and the sweat steams lazily from her suspended body as the air around her shimmers.

"Burn, Witch!" I hear from the crowd.

"You get what you deserve!" comes another cry.

Wendy still screams out in her agony and misery: despite her suffering, she doesn't want to die.  But she can feel the flesh-tearing horror of fire stealing her life away, minute by agonising minute, and her terror at what waits beyond the gaping maw of death enters her screams.

Steve lets the fire climb a little higher, so that the flames flay and gnaw at her lower legs, her thighs glistening with oils drawn from the skin, her belly and breasts polished.  But even after half an hour, she is not dead.

Her screams ring out as Steve adds fuel. The hungry fire eats at her buttocks, and I wince as the slow-burning flames corkscrew up around her pubic mound. The iron already destroyed her most intimate parts, but now fire eats what remains, agonising tongues that lick into every crease and crevice, tear away her womanhood and pare her to the bone.

Her hands drawn down hard into the now-blackening manacles, Wendy hangs screaming in the fire, insane with agony, her screams broken and harsh. Flames curl and flutter in the small of her back, lick up her shining sides, cauterising the myriad wounds laid open in her flesh by the whip. Her already-tortured breasts are cupped by fire, until they seem to melt.

Still she screams.  Flames are leaping now at her arms, licking and blistering her armpits and curling around her shoulders, and then her hair catches alight.  It is a brilliant flare, as hair burns; Wendy flings her head back and forth, shrieking madly in pain, and I hear the thunk of her skull hitting the stake again and again. The flames char her scalp, and wrap around her naked arms, the steam of vaporising sweat joining the smoke that now coils up from her twisting body.

Her feet are charring deeply; I hear the distinctive pops of bones splitting. Her lower legs, too, have burned to the bone, the natural oils have turned her flesh into a candle that feeds the flames consuming her. I hear the deep cracking sounds of her leg-bones bursting, and she hangs screaming in the midst of the inferno, still throwing her head about, but now completely engulfed.

More than an hour after she first felt the fire, Wendy finally loses her voice to it.  Suspended by her wrists in the inferno, engulfed, devoured. The shimmering wall of flame and smoke obscure her hanging, writhing figure; now only Wendy's fingers can express the utter agony that still enfolds her.  They spread and stretch above the manacles, as if reaching for salvation.

Then there is only the roaring of the flames, the squealing and hissing of burning flesh. Her body is alight, her once-perfect breasts exploding in a gruesome burst of hot fat that scatters some in the crowd, and they jump back with shouts and laughter.

Finally, Wendy's shaking fingers curl over, the flesh reddening as flames finally reach them.  Then there is no more movement, and as the minutes pass, the likelihood grows that the witch has died.

Into the night, the dead witch's body continues to burn, like a slow candle, until, piece by piece, it falls into the ashes and is consumed to nothing.

Justice has been done.

Part 6 - Kirsten on the Wheel

 

 

Witchseekers personal journal entry, Wheel Experiment

 

            I am, naturally, anxious about my experience on the wheel rack.

            It is an instrument of torture after all, and I have volunteered to experience it.  The logic is that, through better understanding of the victim and the stages of psychological and physical distress through which she goes, I can become a more effective interrogator - able to gain confessions and information with minimal damage to the prisoner.

When Zell greets me in the private dungeon, little more than a musty cave hewn from the bedrock beneath the Chateau, known to almost no-one but ourselves, I am shivering with more than just the cold and damp.  Even so, I pull my silk dressing gown a little closer around my body.

            Zell is dressed more appropriately for the dungeon climate.  A heavy grey robe drapes his form, its hood over his head.  I have no idea what he wears beneath, but I can only envy his warmth.

            "This way, Mistress Kirsten," he says with enthusiasm.

            Lit by torches on the walls, the wheel rack stands in the middle of the dungeon. on a raised stone plinth, a macabre shrine to suffering and torture.

            It is just under six feet in diameter, although its slight elevation on wooden supports from its heavy base adds a little height.  It is crafted with skill; a thick, solid, heavily-studded rim mounted on heavy cross-beam spokes.  It is turned by an iron cog, in turn operated by a ratcheted lever.

            The "rim" of the wheel, the curved surface of its circumference, is nearly three feet wide.  Near the upper curve are bolted two lengths of chain, ending in open manacles.  To the wooden base, immediately below the foremost extreme of the wheel's rim, two more chains and manacles.

            "Shit," I mutter.  It is terrifying to see the wheel rack up close.  The iron studs in particular look gruesome and forbidding.

            "This rack is turned by a simple gearing mechanism," Zell explains happily.  "An easy movement of the lever – thus – causes the wheel to shift about one half of a degree, effecting a stretch of one third of an inch."  He cranks the lever to demonstrate, and the big wheel groans, turns fractionally.  "So, should we get started?"

            My heart thumps.  "But we haven't discussed a safe word!"

            Zell rolls his eyes.  "What do you want with one of those?  It's so … so … so …"

            "Safe?" I try.

            "Exactly!  How about we decide on a number of turns?  No more than, say, twenty."

            Quick mental calculation.  More than six inches.  Jesus!  "I want a safe word," I insist.

"Fine," Zell sighs, leaning against the wheel.  "What should it be?  How about, 'eeee - aaaahh - aaiiiiieee'?"

"'Eeee ahh aaiiiiieee?'"

"Eeee aaaahh aaiiiiieee," Zell corrects.  "It has to be right, or I won't stop."

"That's crazy!  We'll go with something sensible, but something I wouldn't ordinarily say under torture.  How about I tap out?"

"'I tap out'?  That's the best you can do?"

"When I'm this nervous, yes!"

"Then I suggest the word 'yellow,'" Zell says.

There is no mistaking the look in his eyes.  I know Zell has had a crush on me since he arrived – it's one of the reasons I trust him more than any of the others – but his disdain for the idea of a safe-word is obvious.  I feel utterly embarrassed as I accept the label of cowardice.  "'Yellow' it is, then."

Zell gestures towards the looming monster on its plinth.  "Shall we get started?"

I nod.

Here goes.  I feel sweat prickling along my hairline, down my spine.  My heart is pounding almost painfully.  My throat is suddenly dry.  I remind myself to remain objective, to absorb each little sensation – the fear, the near panic – and to remember it, so that I can exploit it when I have a witch to interrogate.  Knowledge is power, and when I understand the victim, I can break her so much more effectively.

With shaking fingers, I undo the silk tie of my gown, and let the garment slide like liquid from my shoulders.  It trails itself over my body as it falls away, and Zell's eyes automatically stray downwards; to the small swells of my breasts.  My cinnamon nipples react to the cold in the predictable way, stiffening and swelling so that they stand out embarrassingly.  Much to Zell's obvious delight.

He continues his scrutiny; following the line of my arms, my naked belly, the fluffy thatch of my pubic hair within the cradle of my hips, the soft muscularity of my legs.

"Wow," he says.  "Mistress, you are even more beautiful than I imagined!"

"Thank you."

"I will be an honour indeed to stretch you."

It takes every last ounce of courage not to run straight for the door.  Instead, I take Zell's hand as he guides me up onto the stone plinth, and makes me stand in place alongside the big wheel.  Its iron-studded curve brushes my shoulder blades icily.  Zell kneels at my feet, gathers up one of the manacles, and fits it around my ankle.

It is a long time since I have worn a shackle.  I am immediately reminded of its heaviness, the solid metal weighty and cold against my skin. Zell locks it shut, fastening it with a small padlock, and lets it drop; it rests against my ankle bone and the top of my foot.  He places the second shackle around my other ankle, locks it, checks the chains.

My feet are now secured to the wooden base.

Gently, Zell holds out his hand again for mine.  I take his hand gingerly, and he lifts my left wrist to the open manacle, which lies against the curve of the wheel.  He closes the thick, cold iron around my wrist and locks it, again with a small padlock.  He does the same with my right wrist, and as the padlock clicks shut, I feel a fresh prickle of sweat over my body.  With my arms slightly raised, I am now completely helpless, utterly in Zell's power.

I automatically grasp the chains that run upwards from the wrist manacles.  My toes curl and rub against the wood beneath them.  I am acutely conscious of my nakedness, my vulnerability.  I am aware of how fragile my flesh must seem, alongside the heavy mechanisms of the wheel rack.

Click - beep.

I lift my  head.  "Zell!  What are you doing?"

Zell looks at me over his digital camera, then glances again at its little screen as he lines up another shot.  "For posterity, Mistress.  Forgive me, I cannot resist!"  Another photo.

"Zell, stop that!"

Zell bows slightly.  "As you wish."  He tucks the camera into the folds of his robe, and instead steps up onto the plinth again, going to the wooden handle of the wheel rack.  He grasps the lever, but instead of turning it, simply agitates it back and forth slightly, drawing deep clanking sounds from the ratchet mechanism.  It sends a wave of anticipation through me, so intense that it seems to burn inside my belly.  My heart feels like a fluttering bird in my chest.  I move my hands a little, the chains knocking on the wood above my head.

"Tell me how you feel, Mistress Kirsten?"

"I'm okay."  I don't know what he wants to hear, but I find the question somehow humiliating.

            Zell pulls the lever.

            The wheel groans, creaks, and shifts, and I feel the chains draw on my wrists.  Another notch.  Then another.  Little by little, as the wheel rotates, my hands inch higher.  Click, click, click …  the anticipation deepens into a kind of dread as I begin to experience the slow, inexorable progress of the turning rack.   

            As my wrists are drawn upwards, they are also drawn backwards, following the curve of the wheel.  It arches me back, so that the cold iron studs dig uncomfortably into my back and shoulders.  My spine begins to extend, my breasts lifting, my belly hollowing, my armpits and ribcage exposed, and my sense of helplessness grows with my discomfort.

            "Wow … this is quite an experience," I say, trying to sound brave, as my manacled wrists creep up, above and behind my head.  The wheel continues to creak and groan as Zell cranks the handle without hurry.

            "What do you feel now, Mistress?"

            "Anticipation.  Vulnerability.  Fear."

            A fraction of an inch at a time, my arms are drawn to their full extent over my head.  My back arches more severely as my body follows the curve of the wheel, my shoulders, shoulder blades, lower back and now buttocks all pressed against the cruel iron studs, while my legs extend straight down.  With the next few notches, my heels rise off the platform, so that I am standing on the balls of my feet.  It is very uncomfortable, even the mere act of breathing causes the studs in my back to painfully press into my flesh.  The manacles are biting into my wrists.

            Zell stops winding the handle, and steps down from the stone plinth.  He takes out the camera again, lines up some careful shots.

            "With your permission, Mistress?"

            "Okay, fine," I concede.  I am no longer so concerned about the photos; it may be interesting to have such documentation of my session.  I am here, after all, to learn.

            Despite that knowledge, it is hard not to feel afraid.  A droplet of sweat slides down the arch of my ribcage from one underarm.  My whole body feels unnaturally strained already.  It is an effort even to lift my head.  My arms, although not truly stretched, are feeling the pressure of my body's weight.

            Zell finally says, "Mistress, upon the wheel rack, you look more beautiful than words can express.  It fills me with a desire that threatens to drive me insane."

            "Well just hang on to that sanity, eh?" I suggest in a shaky voice.  "I'm kind of relying on you for that."

            Zell says nothing more, but smiles, and returns to the lever.

            I close my eyes.

            The wheel shifts as he hauls on the lever, and on its studded rim, I am lifted a little further by my shackled wrists.  My body, curved backwards, stretches a little under the gentle urge of gravity; but I know there are much crueller forces waiting to act upon it.  Another notch, and I am on tiptoes.  My legs are at full stretch.  I can feel the muscles of my calves knotting with the strain.  The iron manacles seem to burn into my wrist bones, my hands tingling.

            Zell draws the lever again.  The wheel groans, and my toes clear the ground.  For the first time, I am half-suspended over the circumference of the wheel.  It draws a grunt from my throat.  The studs in my back and the iron on my wrists are painful, the arching of my back a considerable discomfort also.  Another notch, and with ease, the wheel lifts my body back-and-up on its arc.  I can feel the weight of the fetters and chains hanging off my ankles.  The position is seriously uncomfortable to the extent of being a battle to endure.

            I flex my toes, trying to reach the ground as Zell cranks the lever again.  I cannot touch it.  Looking down, I can only see my own naked chest, my breasts drawn almost flat into my ribcage, but my nipples jutting like fat berries into the air.  The curve of my body is such that I can see no further without lifting my head.

            Another notch, and I feel, for the first time, the tug of the manacles on my ankles.  It is only subtle, but enough to tell me that the chains have drawn taut.  My toes must be at least six inches off the ground.  The discomfort through my arched body is severe.

            "What is my beautiful Mistress feeling at this moment?" Zell asks, his hand waiting on the lever.

            "Some pain," I say.  My breath is short from the strain of my position.  "Fear, still.  And I feel exposed … very vulnerable …"

            "Your words fuel my desire so!" Zell sighs, and pulls on the lever.

            The rack begins its work.

            The manacles on my wrists haul my hands a fraction of an inch further, while the manacles and chains on my ankles hold my feet in place.  Tension translates all along my arms, my spine, and down my legs; the tension of a yoga stretch.

            "Ahh…"  It is only a forced release of breath from the awkwardness of my arched position, but it prompts Zell to take his hand from the lever.

            "I believe it is traditional at this point," he says, "to let the witch dwell on her pending agonies for a time?"

            "That would be right," I agree readily.  "But … we can skip that, okay?"

            Zell looks disappointed.  "Okay ..."  Instead, he takes out his camera again, and takes a dozen high-resolution shots.  Close-ups, full-body shots, from different angles and vantage points.  I am his helpless subject, arched over the wheel, locked in an instinctive battle against the strain, the pain of the iron studs in my flesh.

Zell finishes with his photos.  "Before we continue, Mistress, please just give me two minutes; I have to go to the bathroom."

            "Okay – but hurry back," I grunt.  "This is really uncomfortable!"

            The dungeon door thuds shut.  I hear the clunk of its bar sliding into place.

            Then, silence.  Utter and absolute.

            I am naked and cold, half-hanging across the curve of the wheel, shackled at wrists and ankles and mildly stretched.  And utterly, completely helpless.  The iron studs dig into my back, but I cannot move to relieve their painful pressure, nor can I ease the hot bite of iron on my wrists and ankles.  I can only endure.

           

            Minutes pass.  I do not have any way of gauging time, but I know it has been more than two.  It has been more than five.  And still no hint that Zell is returning.  The pain is growing worse as time passes and the cold gnaws into my body; I am fighting the urge to shiver, which would only make things worse.

            Minute after slow minute.

            I estimate ten minutes have passed when I begin to wonder if Zell will return.  Fuck, what if he doesn't?  I can't possibly get free – I know that already.  Even so, I tip my head back, an effort in itself, and look towards my own shackled wrists.  The heavy iron sits snugly around my wrists, locked shut with the padlocks.  I could not, in a thousand lifetimes, free myself.

            "Zell!" 

            My voice barely even reverberates in the dungeon enclosure, muted by the thick bedrock from which it is hewn.  I doubt that it would even be heard beyond the door; let alone along the narrow fifty-foot tunnel that leads to another heavy wooden door, beyond which is labyrinthine gloom of the Chateau's dungeons.  I could scream and yell, but I would never be heard.  Nobody but Zell knows I am here - and nobody ever comes in here by chance.

            "Ze-e-ell!!"

            Unexpectedly, panic arrives.  It is overwhelming.  My heart-rate surges.  The sweat bursts from every pore.  The adrenaline pounds and gives my muscles new strength; the pain of my strained position is immediately forgotten.  I begin thrashing as much as I can, which amounts to little more than tensing my arms, and waggling my feet slightly against the tension of the chains.  I twist and turn my hands in the manacles, reaching my fingers for the padlocks; I catch the lock on my left wrist-manacle between two fingers, but all I am able to do is tug at it feebly.

            So I grit my teeth and put even more effort into it.  Every last ounce of my strength, until my muscles are pronounced and hard with straining, my limbs shaking in the effort to pull myself free - even though I know, as a torturer myself, that I will not escape.  The iron studs bite and press into my flesh, only bringing more pain.

            I am helpless.

            The panic ebbs as quickly as it began, but it is replaced by anger.  Zell  has betrayed my trust - and there isn't a thing I can do about it, except wait for him to come back.  "Zell, you insubordinate shit!  I'll have your balls for this!" I snarl at the ceiling.  At the same time, I realise how pathetic that must sound, coming from a woman arched naked over a wheel rack.

            I brood and hold on to my anger for longer; maybe forty minutes.  Maybe more than an hour.  But even that eventually dissipates, until there is nothing left but the chill eating into my bones, the iron studs boring into my flesh, the shackles eating into my wrists and ankles, and the ache of fatigue eating into my muscles.

            I knew that pain would come.  I have observed it a hundred times in victims of the rack, and suspension.  But in my earlier panic and then anger, I had forgotten about it.  Now, though, more than an hour after Zell left me alone down here, it begins to gnaw at me.  My back is hurting.  Not just the flesh where the iron studs are digging.  But a deep pain in my spine, in the muscles of my shoulders and lower back.  In the tendons.  Being arched backwards for such a long time is an unnatural and forced position, and my body is feeling it.

            It is the same with my arms.  They ache.  The muscles, the joints, the tendons.  A dull, deep ache, as if there are bone-deep bruises.  Only my legs, stretching down towards the ankle manacles, are relatively free of pain.

            I have lost count of the minutes.  But it seems that at least another hour crawls by, and I remain secured on the wheel rack, helpless, and in silence.  Down here, it is cold; barely sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and the chill seems to eat into my helpless body.  My nipples stand hard on my flattened chest.  Goosebumps texture my bare skin.  My teeth start to chatter.  But I am helpless.

            Perhaps another hour passes.  Perhaps two  hours.  Perhaps only half an hour.

            I have no way of knowing.  It feels like an eternity.  I begin to feel detached from the real world, detached from my own identity.  Being like this, arched and naked on a device of torture, I am reminded that all I really have in this world is my own body.  And even that, even the temple of my flesh and blood, can be ripped apart.

            Time creeps.

            I am in a numb daze when I hear sounds.  A rattling at the dungeon door.  The bar is drawn, and I hear the door creak open.

            "How do you feel now, Mistress Kirsten?"  Zell enters, re-locking the door behind him, then stepping up onto the plinth.  "You look cold," he says, noting my chattering teeth, my bullet-hard nipples. 

            "You left me alone," I shiver in a weak voice.  "Why did you do that?"

            "Forgive me, Mistress.  I simply mean to make your experience authentic."

            "Take me off, now, Zell.  Please."  Fatigue and pain have drained my tolerance for this experiment completely, and all I want is to get out of here.

            "No, Mistress."

            Zell looks straight into my eyes.  I look into his.  There is absolute seriousness in his tone.  Is he playing the game?  Or is this for real?  I am suddenly more scared than I have ever been.  There is only one way to find out: to say the safe-word.  But to do that would be to end the experience now, even before the rack had truly started to turn, and it would defeat the very purpose of this exercise.

            His words are not a denial, they are a challenge.  I turn my face from his.

            "Then do what you must," I say.

            Zell moves to the lever of the wheel rack.  I have already tested my restraints many times, and I know myself truly helpless, but my heart quickens with an impulse to try and escape as he grasps its stout wood.

            "Confess that you are a witch," Zell says.

            "I am not," I say.

            Zell pulls the lever.  The mechanism of the rack groans, the wheel shifts, and as my body is wrenched upwards, my legs feel the stretch most, as they pull against the ankle manacles.  He finds another notch, and with the wheel's next shift, I feel a hot, burning pain deep in my hips, mirrored by pain in my lower back.

            I feel my head move suddenly with the sharpness of pain.  "Oh, that hurts!"

            "How much?"

            "Like a strong cramp."

            "Not bad!"  Zell seems impressed.  "So, do you confess?"

            "Not yet, Zell -" I warn, and he turns the rack again.

            I am stretched, and a fiery pain fills my hips and lower back, and seems to spread up my spine.  I feel it in my shoulders, now, too; quickly overshadowing the pain of the manacles and the iron studs that dig into my flesh.  The pain of being stretched is far more intense, like fire along my bones.

            "Ohh!!  Zell!" I gasp.  "I meant 'don't turn it yet!'  I was trying to - uhh - adjust to the pain!"

            "I understand, Mistress," Zell says, and cranks me another notch.  The wheel creaks, but I also hear my own spine pop, and hot pain flashes along my back, down through my legs.  It seems to tear up through my shoulders, too, and I give an involuntary groan.

            "Zell, please, stop, stop for a moment!  God, it really hurts now!"

            "So you confess?"

            "Seriously, Zell, it hurts!"  I can feel my body's response to pain, now; sudden profuse sweat all over my bare skin.  I feel hot, even in the dungeon's chill.  The pain is intense, fiery, worse than I had expected it would be this early into a racking.  "Oh, shit … that's bad …"  My breathing is shallow, my ribcage already expanded by the arching of my back, and I can feel my pounding heart thumping against my spine.

            "Confess!"

            "No - Zell, no!" I shout, but he pulls the lever anyway.  As the wheel moves, my wrists are dragged a fraction of an inch further, my ankles remain anchored, and my body is stretched.  New pain fills my hips, spreads up my back, breathtakingly huge.  I feel my eyes widen, and I give an involuntary groan.  Quickly, there comes an intense agony in my arms, too, seeming to spread from my armpits up to my elbows, hot pain as if a scalpel has sliced along the bone.

            "Oh Jesus, Zell!  Fuck!  This is really, really painful!" I squeal.  "Ahh, shit!!"  I start to shake my head.  "No, I've had enough.  Enough!  Yellow!"  I can feel droplets of sweat running down my face, beading up on my drawn breasts and my taut belly. 

            Zell lets go of the handle, but leaves the rack secured.

"Zell!  What are you doing?"  As I remain arched and in pain, he walks around me.  The digital camera is out again; he is snapping off shots.  I try to follow his movements, but the roar of pain is too distracting.  There is no longer any question of being objective or detached from this experiment.  It hurts too much.  "Zell, come on!"

            "But Mistress, it has only started!" he says.  "I would be so disappointed if you gave in so quickly!"

            "I  am giving in, Zell!  Yellow!  Please, let me go!"

            "How can it be an authentic experience if you control it so easily?  When the going gets tough, you just give up!"

            "That's because it really hurts!" I snap.  "Let me go now!"

            "I think we should talk about that," Zell says.

            "What?"  I am incredulous.  "For fuck's sake, Zell!"

            He is returning to the lever.  I suddenly find myself gibbering.  "Zell - no, no, don't touch that, don't you dare, don't do it Zell -"

            He cranks the lever. 

            The wheel groans around, and my body is stretched.  As the pain flares brutally down through my legs, up my spine, up through my arms, it is liberating just to let out a shriek of pain, although I am able to stifle it quickly. 

            "Why are you always so cold to me, Mistress?" Zell suddenly asks.

            "What?"  For a moment I can't comprehend the question.   I can feel the sweat running off me, now.

            "I try so hard to please you – but you treat me like all your other minions!"

            "Zell!  Shit – please – what are you saying?!"

            "I think it's time you did something for me," Zell explains calmly.  "First, I want to be promoted to 'Torturer.'  I want to conduct my own interrogations."

            "You have to be kidding!" I manage to say.  "Why - aahh!! - why would I do that?"

"Why?  Because of this," Zell says.  Another notch of the rack, and my scream is high and frantic, my mouth wide, as the fire intensifies along my limbs.  I hear my joints crack in succession, a creaking from my tearing spine.

"Oh God!!  Zell!!  Aaah!!"

"Second, I want to be Tina deDance's executioner."

            "We'll talk about it!" I squeal.  "Okay?  We can talk about it!"

            "We are talking about it," Zell says.  "All you have to do is say 'yes.'"

            "Zell, please, please, I can't stand the pain," I babble out.  The sweat is stinging my eyes, so that I can barely see.

"Third, I want to see Tina get publicly tortured before her execution.  Maybe get Kelley or someone to do it."

I say desperately, "Zell, we can discuss it, please, just loosen the rack!"

            "Please, Mistress, let's discuss it now," Zell insists, and, to my utter disbelief, he cranks the lever again.  Raw and terrible agony explodes along my legs and arms, and it feels as if my abdominal muscles are tearing, my spine breaking apart.  I am not even aware of screaming for the first several seconds; it is a completely involuntary reaction to the pain: I am making woooaaah - woooo - ooooh - aaaahh noises at the top of my lungs.

            When at last I can contain my screaming, the tears flood from my eyes, spilling down my cheeks.

            "Oh God, Zell, please, please stop," I sob.  "I'm begging you, now!"

            Without hurry, he steps from the lever and stands close to my wrenched body.  Even stretched back over the wheel, with my toes high off the ground, his face is level with mine.

            "Oh, Mistress Kirsten, you look so beautiful, suffering like this.  I wish it would never end!"

            "Aahhh … " is all I can say.

            "Shall I repeat my demands?"

            I realise I am in no position at all to deny him. "Zell, ple-e-e-ase," I wail.

"So beautiful."  He puts his hand to my solar plexus.  Stretched this taut, I can barely breathe, only my drum-tight belly shifting with desperate little fish-gasps of air.    He trails his fingers up over my ribcage - bump-bump-bump over each rib - then the slight swell of my breast.  His palm brushes the hard pencil-eraser of my nipple, but I am unable to flinch from his touch.

Finally, he leans in until his nose is almost touching the taut, pale bed of my sweat-shining  armpit.  He inhales the scent of my suffering; then licks slowly along the taut ravine of straining tendon and muscle.  His eyes close as he savours the taste.   "Oh, Mistress!  The sweat of your torment is sweet indeed!"

I feel utterly humiliated; but it is nothing compared to the agony in my stretched body.  "Please, Zell, just loosen it a little," I sob.

"Why do you deny me, Mistress?" he whines.  "You know, you leave me no choice."

As he steps back to the lever, fresh terror hits me.  "Zell!  No!  No!"

But I can't stop him; the cogs turn, and the big wheel shifts slightly with a sailing-ship creak.  The hot, tearing agony that explodes all along my limbs and torso is incredible, intense, overwhelming, and this time I can't stop my screams.

When I don't have enough breath, I simply groan in agony.  I am sure my back is about to break.  My hips feel as if they are being ripped apart, my shoulders likewise.  The ravaging agony is so intense that I can't even feel the manacles on my wrists and ankles any more.

"Okay!" I manage to squeal.  "You win!  Anything you want!"

"You will promote me to Torturer?"

"Yes!"

"You will let me be Tina's hangman?"

"Yes!"

"And you will have her publicly tortured?"

"Yes!"

"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Zell asks smugly.

I can barely speak.  "Please - Zell, please - loosen it, you promised … oh God, I can't stand it … it hurts so much …!"

"Tell me, Mistress.  Tell me how it feels."  Through eyes swimming in tears of pain I see Zell's blurred shape move away from the lever, and I give a wail of horror, knowing that he isn't going to ease my agony yet.  Instead, he snaps more photos.  "What thoughts are going through your wonderful mind?"

"Oh God, Zell, I don't know, I can't think, please, you're killing me!"

"Tell me how much you want me," Zell says.

What?   I can't believe what I am hearing.   "Zell …"  

He returns to the lever, grasps it, and hauls another notch.  It seems impossible that I could be stretched any further without being torn apart; but the wheel shifts, and I stretch.  The agony is doubled and I am screaming dementedly.  An instant later, there is a crack! from my left shoulder and my whole arm feels as if it has been electrocuted.  Then, a feeling like a red hot spike driven directly into my shoulder joint, and the pain is so severe that my breath is stolen from me.  I simply lie, arched over the wheel, gasping at the ceiling.

A moment later, a softer pop and my right shoulder dislocates.  The pain is a thousand times worse than anything yet, and I can feel my eyes bulging in agony.  It is a few more seconds before I am able to fill my lungs and start screaming.

"Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!"  My own voice echoes off the walls of the small dungeon.  My own mindless, wordless agony.  Zell pulls the lever again and the wheel turns, further drawing my shoulder joints apart, the tendons and ligaments straining, pain beyond belief.  There are tears streaming down my cheeks, sweat rolling off my ribcage and belly.  I finally manage to howl, "stop, Zell, please, stop, stop, I'll do anything you ask, anything at all!"

"Surrender to your feelings.  Say you will make love to me," he says.

 This time I don't even hesitate.  "Yes!  Yes, I'll do it with you, Zell!  Please - aaaahh it hurts, you're killing me!!"

"How do I know you'll keep your word?" Zell is suddenly asking.  "What if you're just saying what I want to hear?"

"Zell I swear, I swear, I'll do anything you ask, I'll suck you, you can fuck me in the ass, anything, oh God, just end the pain!!"

"Oh, Mistress Kirsten!  That sounds like an offer I can't refuse," Zell bubbles happily.  Stepping from the lever once again, he pushes my saturated hair back from my brow.  "I'll tell you what I'm going to do.  I'm going to write up an agreement for you to sign.  I'll loosen you from the rack and unchain one arm so you can sign it - okay?"

"Yes!"  Even speaking seems to send shock waves of pain through my limbs.  I try to lift my head, try to blink the tears and sweat from my eyes, but I am still half-blind, still in agony beyond endurance.

"Tell me who is your master."

"You are, Zell," I gasp.  "You are my master!"

"Now kiss me."

Even in such extreme agony, I can't believe the humiliation he is putting me through.  But I cannot deny him a single thing.  I give a frantic nod.  He puts his mouth to mine, and I battle the agony that tears every fibre of my racked body to kiss him.  I slide my tongue into his mouth, suck on his lip, let him know that if only he eases my agony I will reward him so very well.

When the kiss is over, Zell has a satisfied look on his face.  "Thank you, Mistress Kirsten."

He returns, at last, to the lever, and finally begins to ease the tension on my body.  But even as the wheel inches forward again, the shifting of my joints, the contracting of muscles, is pain itself, and I shriek and gasp.

It has to be done a fraction at a time.

Stretched so taut, but also held so perfectly in place, my disjointed shoulders all but reset themselves; it only takes a small push from Zell and each one clicks back into its socket, bringing relief that is almost orgasmic.  My arms seem to buzz as if electricity tingles all through them.

He locks the wheel again when my heels touch the ground, but leaves me with arms shackled over my head, half-hanging off the curve of the wheel, still locked in padlocked fetters and helpless, while he snaps the last few photos and goes off to prepare the agreement.

 

 

I, Kirsten Smart, declare the following:

That Dungeon Assistant Zell has demonstrated extraordinary skill in the torture chamber, and will hereby be promoted to Torturer, so that he may carry full responsibility for interrogations.

That, by way of acknowledging this promotion, he also be named honorary Executioner,  tasked with carrying out the sentence of Tina deDance.

On the strength of his advice, I will also have Tina tortured publicly before her execution, as an added entertainment to those who have come to watch.

Furthermore, I have decided to offer a more personal show of my appreciation; a night spent in my private quarters, during which I will willingly and gladly grant Zell any pleasure he may want from me.

I affirm that these decisions are of my own volition, and that should I renege in any way, I authorise Austin, Steve, and any other representative, to be chosen by Zell, to participate in my public racking as punishment, to a degree determined by Zell alone.

 

Kirsten Smart

 

            He reads it aloud to me slowly, while I remain hanging in a painful arch over the torture wheel.

            "Will you sign?"

            "Yes," I say.  My voice is heavy with resignation; I know that to refuse will only prompt Zell to begin turning the rack again, until unbearable agony forces me to concede to anything he may ask.  And next time I may not escape so lightly.

            Producing a key from beneath his robes, Zell reaches up and unlocks the padlock from my right shackle, then presents me with the declaration, fastened to a clipboard.  Bringing my arm down, it feels as if my shoulder joint has been packed with broken glass.  It is almost more than I can bear; I have barely any strength.  I manage to rest my hand on the clipboard while Zell slips a pen between my fingers.  Weakly, I scratch out my signature at the bottom of the page.

            Zell smiles.  "Thank you, Mistress Kirsten.  Now, let's get you back to your quarters … and get some ice on those aching joints."

Kirsten Smart

18 October 2004