Young Writers Society

The heavy leather slides through his fingers once more, this time leaving behind traces of blood on his hand. Again the black snake hisses through the air and strikes at my welt-covered shoulders.

A dart of flame runs through me on contact; another thin line of blood appears. My head jerks back, and my breath hisses through my teeth as I struggle to hold back the cry of agony clamoring in my throat.

Again the whip comes rushing down. The narrow thong licks my neck and curls around to claw at my bare chest.

“Enough.” Her voice cuts calmly through the hot and humid air that drenches my skin with sweat. Each salty droplet stings and smarts on the open wounds coating my body.

He steps back and lets the whip fall to his side.

She is out of my sight, but I feel her gaze touch my back. It burns against the shredded meat as a living coal. “Speak.”

The fourth time she has commanded me to speak. I swallow hard and take a deep, shuddering breath. “I cannot, my Lady.”

Now that the whip lies motionless in the hand of the man standing behind me, the full force of the pain sweeps up and overwhelms me. Every wound burns with a relentless flame. From the fresh ones, or those that have been reopened, blood trickles in a steady stream.

Again I swallow; my tongue moves strangely in my dry throat. Water: when was the last time I was allowed to drink? Not today, if day it be. Perhaps yesterday. My head throbs in the steady time with the uneven pulsing of my heart and each beat drives the aching pain deeper into my skull.

“I cannot,” I repeat, speaking through the agony that racks my entire frame. “My Lady, I know nothing. I cannot.”

“So be it,” Her musical tones respond calmly through the thick smog that curls through the air. A pollution caused not only by the smoke from the braziers sitting on the stone floor in the corner; there is more to it than that.

I cast a dull look in their direction, running my gaze across the three legs supporting the two squat constructions of bronze. There they heated the iron poles and placed them against my lower neck yesterday, leaving raised blisters later burst by the whip. But it is not that which causes this atmosphere of death. Nor is it from the dust and stench of rotting blood, or even the strips of still-living flesh that are beginning to fester in the heat.

The air is thick with the odor of broken promises and trusts not sacred enough to be kept when pushed to the brink. Every breath I draw in tastes deeply of betrayal.

“Continue.”

The strength to stand and resist the pain is gone; weariness runs through my body like the water I was denied. I allow myself to sag against the rope that pulling on my wrists, my head bowing forward until it touches the gray stone of the wall.

It is cool. The ground behind it keeps this wall icy cold, and so in this hell of sweat and stink that lies beneath her stronghold, there is at least this breath of relief.

The whip whistles through the air and strikes once more. And again it comes down. And again.

I shrink away from the source as far as the rope will allow, but there is no escape. Fire rises swiftly and streams over my already inflamed skin as the whip continues to hit.

I'm up to my neck in torrid waves of agony. Then the pain begins fade into numbness.

Dimly, as through a great cloud of confusion, I hear moans. My own, I realize with a vague feeling of surprise. Why, I cannot say. Sensation is seeping away even as sight leaves me and the torture room goes dark.

The snap of the whip continues to sound, but I cannot feel its rough caress on my skin anymore. There is nothing. Nothing but this vague feeling that freedom is beckoning. Every time the leather thong sings on its path downward, death comes a step closer. This abuse cannot last forever. My will has not bent but my body will soon break utterly.

“Enough!” Her command comes dimly through the great fog that seems to have stepped between us.

As the last of my consciousness slips into the world of nothing, I feel rough hands fumbling the rope at my wrists and touching my mutilated shoulders. My arms relax down from the positions they were forced into by the ropes that pulled them up, and almost out of socket.

My gray eyes flicker open even as one of the attending men passes his arm across my torn back. The room is fragmented, pieces missing and jumbled together in a mass of memories that seem to be in the room with me now. Edan smiling years ago, Mother shaking her head.

And Melody. Perhaps she also a memory, or maybe I truly am seeing her as she is now.

The midnight velvet of her gown drapes over her shapely form, falling in neat folds that hide her feet from view. She leans forward slightly in the simple chair, and her white fingers clutch at the gilded arms.

I'm moving away from her. She sits back in her chair, casting a strangely wistful look from her green eyes. They sweep up and down my half-naked body, and seem to pause on each burn, each bleeding strip, every swelling bruise. And she smiles as only Melody can.

Sweetly and beautifully, red corners turning upwards. Majestically, as one who was born to command. And mocking as only she could be.

Two years ago I left her and yet I can see the shadow of the betrayal glistening at the edges of her expression. She never forgave my broken oath.

The last of the lights go out; my eyes roll back in my head. Slowly, I float away on a stream that ripples against the raw meat that is left on my back.

And yet it is no calm water trickling through a wood. It alternates between a peaceful river of black, unfathomable depths and a sea of red fire as the pain penetrates through the layers of nothing shrouding my senses.