Condemned to Slavery (20 page)

The Warden ignored her imploring stare and shoved Lydia back onto the bed before tying the rope that she had anchored to the weight upon the front of her collar. A final pull lifted her to tiptoe, the burden serving to hold her aloft while she refused to try and shift away and lift the weight.

With Lydia laying face first against the wire, the excess lengths from the nooses were taken up and one was tied to each bedpost. Their slack was sufficient to let her pull away, but not enough so that she could move around and access the rear of the bed or the battery. Suddenly she compiled the truth of the situation and started to try and fathom a means out of it.

The Warden took up the leads from the battery and snapped them to the metal. The wires hummed with the charge and cast Lydia backwards with a shriek, the brief jolt making her haul the weight into the air to escape the electrified grating.

Straining at the solid burden hanging from her neck she fought to back up, her vision filled with the faintly growling bed before her. After a few short strides the nooses at her neck twanged taut, trapping her.

“Think about your fate, and I shall return at some point to see if you have changed your mind,” the Warden offered, and with a soft chuckle she left the room, leaving Lydia in a terrified predicament.

Her limbs began to shake with the strain of holding aloft such a load, and occasionally she stumbled and was dragged nearer to the bed, the concrete tube descending with her approach. If it touched the ground, or even came close, she would be held fully to the voltage sodden mattress. This forced her to fight against her weariness and hold it aloft, unable to slip aside and remove it because of the nooses at her neck that strangled every time she attempted to negotiate a path behind.

Terrified hours began to elapse, her body slowly succumbing to fatigue as she strove to keep away from the bed. She ran through countless positions to try and make the task easier, but none helped, and she knew she could not keep this up forever.

The drag at her neck rose from a discomfort to a crooked throb, a pain that started to migrate down her straining spine, spreading through her back and making her efforts harder with every passing second. Her knees trembled and shook, the muscles hot and throbbing from their labors and her wrists ached from their reckless bid to slip the cuffs responsible for leaving her helpless to this fiendish plot to break her.

As her last dregs of energy began to fade and she was delivered closer in occasional shuffles, she wailed and hauled afresh, trying to restore herself to a safe distance, but it was taking all her effort to just maintain her decreasing distance.

Hours passed and she was gradually brought to within inches of the humming mattress, the faint tickle of voltage upon her hairs intimidating her to the point of hysteria. Every tiny measure she was slipped forward bloated her malaise, until in a distraught haze of jeopardy her limbs gave out and she was hugged lovingly to the cold metal.

With a shout she was delivered into the web, her scream ripping through the air when she was savagely rocked by the voltage. The shredding agony made her fight afresh and retreat whence she came, gaining a distance that soon began to shrivel as her depleted vitality conspired to return her to the site of electrical venom.

The cycle of her quest to keep a sacred distance and the subsequent reeling in onto the mattress continued to repeat itself with incredible accuracy, making the shocks more frequent when her already exhausted frame was pushed beyond all limits of endurance.

Finally, the door opened and the Warden strode in, moving to the cupboard and removing a stout leather strap while Lydia regarded her with a frightened anguish.

“Please, I can’t take anymore. I’ll do anything you want, just stop this.”

“Then tell me the name,” absently replied the Warden, taking firm grip on the short weapon and closing in behind Lydia.

“I don’t know! I swear it! Why won’t anyone believe me?”

A short silence followed as Lydia awaited an answer, only to have the strap speak to her through brief stinging applause across her rear. The initial blows made her jump with shock, her balance being crippled by the weight and before she could stop herself she was cast back to the mattress. With a wail of pain she tore herself back, fighting to shuffle away and moving straight back into the Warden’s range where the strap slashed from side to side, its leather tongue shading in her flesh with rich flushed red.

Torn between the voltage and the oscillating blows of the Warden, Lydia was left in blistering persecution, unable to choose between the two banes to her existence and denied the means to end either one of them.

Swatted between scourge and mattress, she was insane with fury and frantic fear, unable to even speak while she was pushed onward, tortured without pause to make her relent and inform.

When a silver blade flashed up and cut the ropes at her neck she dropped back and collapsed, her body so long accustomed to a massive burden at her throat that she could not balance properly without it. Floundering on the floor, the Warden towered over her and spoke with subdued fury.

“Obviously it will take more than physical duress to crack you. Fortunately we have just the weapon to use, and though it will corrupt your very soul, you will tell us what we want to know. The chance for freedom is gone, we will have this information extracted, and you will be condemned to your new lot for the rest of your life,” growled the woman with a libidinous smirk, pressing her boot onto Lydia’s form to revel in her position of power over the helpless victim.

“Guardas!” roared the Warden, making Lydia flinch from the sudden volume of this bellow.

Two guards entered instantly and looked to the woman as she ground Lydia beneath her sole.

“Tomenla abajo.”

The moment the words left the Warden’s grinning lips, the two men marched forward and grabbed Lydia, lifting her lifeless frame up and dragging her off, her feet scraping along the floor as she hung as a stolid shell.

She was vaguely aware of passing rows of cells, where wretched figures hovered like damned specters and the stench of despair, misery, sweat, and filth was overwhelming.

A banded metal door was unlocked and drawn back, the massively thick entrance like a vault. Lydia’s feet rattled down a set of steps and along a ragged, roughly hewn tunnel where sporadic lighting did little to banish the gloom. Another iron portal was hauled open with difficulty and a light switched on, the flare of dimly unveiled detail causing her to gasp and struggle in mortified alarm at the sight of the Stigean torture chamber. The nightmare apparatus was arrayed with precision upon every wall, the engines of agony skulking amidst the copious shadows, the lack of light granting them an even more malignant appearance.

Her bearers drew her to the side where a row of eight metal panels followed the wall, their lids given fat hinges and a padlocked bolt. The cuffs at her elbows were released and the officers opened the locks and lifted the thick sheet to expose a crude stone pit. The dimensions were sufficient to keep a resident low with space enough for a brief shuffle in any one direction and the small grille of a drain in the center to permit sanitation. Casting her in, she landed heavily and awkwardly. Unable to use her cuffed hands to cushion her fall, she almost broke her arm from dropping upon it.

Without word the cover fell back into place with a near deafening clang, the sound of the weighty closure ringing in her ears. The prospect of confinement once more was abhorrent, her mind having developed a loathing and deep phobia for this mode of close incarceration. Frantically flipping over onto her back, her arms held beneath her, she threw her enfeebled legs up, pushing to the steel roof, trying to stop the guards from sealing her in. Lifting the lid a short way, she stopped them from throwing the bolt and for a moment her heart leapt with joy. The brief sense of victory she eked was stolen as the tyrant’s simply stamped onto the lid, the officer’s lending their weight to defeat Lydia’s chagrin efforts.

The locks were re-secured and the sound of booted feet began to fade until they were lost after the deep pounding slam of the vault door being shut.

With free flowing tears she speedily threaded her shackled wrists under her rear and over her feet, bringing them before her and banging her fists to the lid in unison as she begged for justice. The calls went unanswered and she sank into a despondent mire, rocking softly in a bid to comfort herself in this most heinous hour.

The minute sealed pitllowed her to reach a stooped squat and no higher and gave lease to a single shuffle in any direction before the rough teeth of the rocky confines denied any more. Despite numerous attempts to force herself upright and burst the locks she could not achieve this Herculean objective, the attempts further serving to make off with her energy. Surveying her prison with her fingers in the absence of light, she found only air holes and the small drain at the very bottom of her cell. Was this to be her cage from now on? Had they returned her to isolation with the threat of torture hanging over her until she was removed to be subjected to the purposes of the chamber beyond?

Curling up into a ball she vent her misery with sobs and weeping, her emotions in shambles, her mind reeling, her body numb from the abuses visited upon it.

Meditating on what her fate might be, she let herself drift into a shallow sleep, her thoughts afflicted with anguish as to the prospect of real torture. What were they intending to do to her? Would it be an inquisitional hell, with brands and racks, fire and knives, or were they more evolved in their torment, pushing their expertise into surgical abuse? What was to befall her? How long would she last? Hundreds of nightmarish possibilities crept through her thoughts, the fear eating at her from within, the sheer dreadful terror of what inhumane atrocities were to be inflicted upon her helpless flesh. She had wanted to be in a cell of her own, to be freed of her harridan companions, but now that it had been granted she only wished a return. At least with the two jungle born bitches she knew were she stood and what to expect, whereas here only slow and ugly death hung in loitering expectation.

The sound of heels clacking upon the stone floor under a measured tread stirred her from her worries, and she thought perhaps she was to be set loose, the threat being the means to make her talk. Instead, another of the pits was opened and the occupant drawn out.

Intrigued, she put her ear to the cool metal and listened, having been unaware that others dwelt here. She was inclined to find out what was to be done to them and thereby gain insight into what was to be her own destiny.

The sound of trammels being affixed about limbs had a quality distinct enough to recognize, and while she continued to listen, she heard a momentary whistle of displaced air and the loud crack of a whip biting into flesh. The gagged feminine cry that followed was an interlude between the next lash, and the beating continued without remorse or relent, a savage flogging that had the damned prisoner squealing against her muting gag.

Anguish flooded Lydia’s thoughts at the prospect of such archaic methods, and she was soon pressing her palms to her ears in the hope of fending off the hated sounds of torture—the pitiful scream, the whiplash snap of the weapon being employed, the metallic clatter of a struggling body as it writhed against unforgiving restraints.

The signal of the scourge passed, but the maimed shrieks continued as other means were employed. The malaise she felt was all the more grave for the mystery of the acts being deployed to coax forth such howls, leaving Lydia to conjure her own possibilities, to concoct the deed that were drawing out such harrowing wails. Her imagined afflictions had her cowering in alarm, her belly fluttering as her mind swam with nausea from the prospect of being mutilated thus, her thoughts showing her no mercy and bringing forth visions of acts so nightmarish she almost swooned.

The subject was eventually set free and dragged back to her cell, where the thump of a leaden form had her pondering whether or not they had survived the ordeal.

Chapter Seventeen

The tune of the locks above her being played filled the shallow pit with noise and her heart bloated with trepidation. The creak of metal issued as the veil was removed, exposing her jailer and imminent torturer. Shielding her eyes with her hands, the shackles clinking softly as she peered up from her dark dwelling, Lydia was not surprised to find that a female was to be her nemesis.

She had a curvaceous figure, one she had little concern about flaunting, either to tease her prisoners or to pander to her own ego. Her shapely legs were bare, her feet slipped into patent court shoes with stiletto heels. A peplum latex miniskirt clutched tightly about her abdomen, giving way to a matching zip front bodice which vanished beneath the cropped hem of a gleaming rubber biker jacket. Her long sable hair fell about a stern visage and her gaze was piercing and intense, the stare adding to the aura of intimidation she generated like a physical force.

In her hands she clutched an elegant riding crop, a weapon with which she indicated for Lydia to exit with a whistling wave.

When she did not move, the instrument flashed downwards, leaving behind a deep purple welt and a storm of pain.

“Out!” spat the woman, and threw up the crop in preparation for a fresh strike.

Cowering with her linked arms raised for shelter, Lydia scuttled from the pit, permitting the woman to throw down the lid and scrutinize the new captive in a stronger light.

Lydia knelt and cringed, her manacled hands between her knees as the woman paced thrice around the naked form, her eyes taking in the details of the prisoner, conjuring schedules and torments, horrors to inflict and abuses to instigate.

Reaching down, fingertips brushed Lydia’s cheek before skipping back to close about her hair, the grip pulling at her roots and making her scalp burn. Instinctively her hands leapt up to try and remove the hold, only to receive stinging blows from the crop until they ceased their interference and moved away. Wincing from the severe hold, Lydia gritted her teeth and paused, gripping her palms between her knees to help defeat any more instinctive responses.