F Campbell - Chain of Jedrah

How good it was to wear her clothes again! The tears had been neatly mended. Rannah had bathed her, removed the makeup of the night before and then, surprisingly, untied the chafed numb wrists and told her, laconically, to dress. The faint amusement in the dark eyes that watched the donning of the garments told nothing.

“I will breakfast with you,” Rannah said casually. “There is no hurry,”

Stacie drew comfort from the girl, she was a middle ground between Mohammad Yasin and the stone cell. The breakfast table was equally reassuring, it was Western and replete. She looked at her enigmatic mistress uncertainly.

“Don’t you want to . . . to tie me, or something?”

“No. I would be amused if you decided to flee. Try it.” The quiet dare was more inhibiting than bonds. Stacie seated herself at the table. “Is this the condemned’s last meal?” she inquired with little humour.

“Then I too am condemned,” Rannah smiled. “Come, enjoy it. American coffee is easy to drink.”

“Rannah . . .” Stacie paused, “Am I allowed to call you that?”

“What else? It is my name.”

“Well, I’d wondered. You know: there’s mistress and madam and miss?”

“I am Rannah. If you called me mistress it would amuse. But there is no need. I will be constantly unkind, but that has been explained. Come, let me fill your cup.”

“Rannah, I’m curious. Supposing I leaped through that door and ran, what would happen?”

The dark eyes mocked. “I would probably catch you, I am stronger than you are. If I failed, then someone else would end your flight. The best you could manage would be to circle the Courtyard wall you could never climb. You would then be taken before the master of this house who would probably order you whipped,” she smiled in secret amusement. “I would probably be whipped too for failing to control you.”

Stacie stopped eating. “You! Whipped! . . . You mean . . . ?”

“Why not! I am of Jedrah. Here all women are whipped if they deserve the lash. It is expected.”

“But in this day and age! And to one of your own . . . ! Yasin talks in the United Nations of brotherly love!”

“So! There is no contradiction. In imprisoning female prisoners you recognize punishment.”

“But a girl like you! Whipping sounds so terrible, It is terrible, isn’t it . . . ?”

“It is terrible. You are to be whipped, so you will know.” The captive was once more groping.

“That means you are being kind. You could be whipped for trusting me. For not tying . . .”

Rannah laughed. “Your world has gone. You will understand this one, little by little. Yes, I am trusting you. I think you are sure you cannot escape, so you will not try. But have no fear, I will tie you tight enough and often enough. I don’t like to be whipped any more than you.”

“Why were my hands tied last night in that beastly cell?”

“To help you adjust, a reminder. That is all. You slept.” Rannah poured two more cups.

“This is Yousef,” Rannah’s voice was as enigmatic as her eyes. “Yousef, her name is Stacie Blair. You have your orders.”

Yousef was large and very muscular. He was copper coloured and attired only in shorts. He eyed his new charge with what seemed to be a professional interest. Stacie felt she was being measured for the Rack. She hoped they could not hear the thumping of her heart. He bowed slightly as he grasped her arm. As he led her from the room she turned a glance of mute appeal. Rannah smiled and shrugged in deprecation.

They were only female.

“You would like to fight, perhaps to run?” Yousef inquired politely. His voice was soft and liquid. Stacie could imagine him selling Turkish rugs.

She looked about her at the huge stone chamber and the barred windows and the closed door. Sure, she’d like to fight, but to what end! This mass of thew and sinew would beat her into submission in moments. “I would like to run, but I will not try,”

she told him tonelessly. “Tell me what you require, I’ll obey you.”

At a height of eight feet a truss rod ran from wall to wall.

It’s fixtures indicated a varied utility. Passively holding out her hands Stacie watched the broad leather straps buckled tight upon her wrists, each wristlet held a ring. In but a few moments her arms were lifted high and spread wide to the rod above her head. She stood as though worshipping the sun.

For several moments Yousef studied his captive, then did the most awful thing of all. With powerful and purposeful hands he tore her clothing to tatters as he stripped her. He spared nothing of her garments or herself. The poor torn remnants of her modesty lay scattered pathetically upon the stone. Stacie stood, utterly bare.

It was the first time! Naked before a male she had never previously seen, helpless to shield her secrets from his gaze. Stacie knew the moment for what it was: the beginning of her torture. She had purposely been dressed in her own familiar things so that her stripping be doubly shaming and her desolation complete in seeing them destroyed beyond repair. Here was the real division. Normalcy had gone. She was delivered to a world in which her only function was to provide the naked nerve ends that would trigger her screams. She looked up at Yousef with what courage she could muster. He gave her his small polite bow and left the room.

A plaything . . . even for a torturer! The rug forever pulled from beneath her trembling feet. Was her tied pose a punishment in itself! It could well become one. Or would the hot iron and the pincers soon appear! She felt the nerves flicker beneath her flesh and muscle spasms ripple across her skin.

Stacie stood in loneliness. From time to time she looked up at her strained arms and wrists, it would be useless to fight such firmly designed fastenings. She did not try, they could hold her thus forever. She was stretched, but not on tip-toe. She wondered why. In all she had read . . . !

She soon realised that weariness and strain would exact their toll of her. But, at the moment, her most compelling sensation was of her nakedness, it was so complete, so impossible to hide. She was vulnerable to the point of cringing.

She let her gaze rove around the room. But why think of it as such! It was a torture chamber, no more no less. She supposed it could be called a ‘Punishment room’. But why use euphemisms! Its intent was clear, people were brought here to be hurt. She idly tried to name the structures and the gear, most of it told her nothing. She suspected the most innocent was probably the most deadly. Whips and canes and slender withes hung from hooks. Her gaze returned to them again and again. She gained little comfort that the notorious cat-o’-nine-tails was not in evidence. In reading of it in fiction she had supposed it mostly apocryphal. Perhaps it was. But she remembered she had been told that sometime she would be flogged . . . What instrument did they use to flog a girl! She closed her mind to the thought. Yesterday it had been unreal. Today, naked and looking at the whips, it was very real indeed.

The girl Yousef dragged in was young. She would have been pretty had not her youthful features been haggard with fear. Her eyes were wide and imploring. She did not fight, but her steps were laggard and fearful to the point where she was being dragged by Yousef’s harsh grip upon her wrist. She was already naked, prepared physically and mentally for whatever was going to be done to her, distraught with anguish she fell to her knees and clasped her torturer’s knees when he positioned her beneath the same bar to which Stacie was tied.

Stacie watched, incredulous. This belonged on a horror film on T.V. Someone would laugh and break the tension. But it was happening. It was happening to her!