Saint Susan’s, as Dawn had discovered, was not a retraining center like Saint Secundina’s,
nor was it an establishment devoted to extracting information from people, as Saint
Dorina’s was. This place was intended for only one purpose: to punish. Nothing was
wanted from the prisoners, save for them to suffer. Restraints were constant, the food
literally dog food fed to them in bowls on the floor, and the torture never-ending. She
had been there only a week but already she was feeling desperately depressed. This was
all life would be? Constant torture? They were even careful not to give the prisoners,
sinners as the Church called them, a chance to die. It might happen during the
punishments; if so, no big deal to Mother Superior Olga and the Nuns who ran the place.
Likewise, if a sinner went insane from the cruel treatment, that was fine with them. They
simply tossed her out of an underwater hatch to provide food and sport for the Great White
sharks that were always around.
Actually, this current punishment was mild compared to that which she had endured since
coming to Saint Susan’s. Her body had been racked by bondage both contorted and
prolonged. Her skin had been marked with whipmarks many times. Her nipples were sore
from harsh clips being snapped on them, and her vagina ached from having huge objects
shoved in there. So, just sitting on a cold floor and feeling your arms and shoulders
ache was almost pleasant – by the standards of Saint Susan’s.
In her little punishment room, she was in total darkness, which, oddly enough, bothered
her more than the ache and pains of the ropes. There is a part of all humans that fears
the dark. We are creatures of the light, and total darkness can distort rational
thinking. Through the cold, hard walls she could feel slight vibrations; the constant hum
of the air conditioning, the occasional sounds of a motor someplace or the other, and a
rare clacking of high heels as one of the Nuns walked by outside the locked door of her
cell.
Thoughts of the friends she had made in the Resistance came to her. Were they still
alive? Or had they been caught by the Guards and hauled off to be disposed of as
dissidents. She remembered her parents, although she was forced to admit to herself that
it was harder to conjure up their images in her mind. Other faces haunted her memories:
the Nuns who had tortured her, the Guards who had transported her around and stolen a
quick grope or more when they could, even the beautiful yet evil face of Bishop Diana
Crofton, the leader of the Church in the city where Dawn had grown up. That woman was so
entrenched in the Church policy that she condemned her own daughter to the same hellhole
Dawn was currently suffering in. She had seen Julie a few times but had little chance to
talk. Julie was one of the only people who had helped her, and she had strong feelings
for the slender, young girl.
These and memories of the tortures she had endured over the last six months wandered in
and out of her mind as she sat there in the dark. The horrible feeling of electrical
shocks to sensitive parts of her body, the kiss of the whip, and even the pain of a
branding iron pressed against her lovely breasts to mark her forever with the initials of
Bishop Crofton. All these and more haunted her dreams, and made her waking moments none
too pleasant either.
She wondered what was happening to Julie. When last she saw her, she was hanging upside
down by wire tied around her big toes. She remembered the tears flowing down the girl’s
lovely but pain-twisted face to fall upon the floor. Her view was cut off when she was
hauled away to a different torture. Her heart went out to the girl who had risked and
lost all to help Dawn.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of heels clacking on a metal floor coming up
to the door and stopping. For a few long seconds there was no additional sound, and Dawn
waited. Was someone coming for her? Was it dinnertime already? It was with mixed
feelings that she heard the lock on the door click, and it began to open. Mixed, because
if she was removed from that small, dark room, she might be taken to someplace not so cold
and those tight ropes removed from her arms. Or she might be taken to someplace where the
torment would be worse than just being locked in a dark room with pained arms.
One of the Nuns was standing there, but all Dawn could see was the dark outline of a
woman looking down on her. For a while, all the Nun did was look. The silence made Dawn
uneasy. But then everything in this place made her uneasy. The words of the Mother
Superior, Sister Olga came back to her: “You were sent here for punishment, nothing else.
Here we only punish. Constant, intense punishment. Nothing else. I can tell you that
all who come here never leave. Nor do they die of old age.”
“You’re lucky,” came the voice of Sister Katrina, the Nun who seemed to take particular
delight in torturing poor Dawn. “You’ve been summoned to the Mother Superior’s cabin.”
Dawn was not sure if that was good or bad. During the time she had been a prisoner of
Saint Susan’s, she had been tortured by all the Nuns, and even forced to service them in a
lesbian sense, but never by the hand of the head Nun herself. Would she prove to be the
cruelest of them all?
“Get on your feet, sinner! Hurry up, I haven’t all day.” The command was emphasized by
a quick snap of the riding crop in her hand against Dawn’s left breast. She struggled to
her feet, mostly by pushing against the wall. Then she was being led out and down a
corridor. The Mother Superior’s cabin was in a part of Saint Susan’s she had not seen
before. Immediately she knew she was in a different world.
First, there was the carpet beneath her bare feet. After walking on metal floors, it was
strange to be standing on something soft. Then there were the colors and fabrics.
Instead of bare metal walls, almost every square inch was covered in tapestries and
drapes. Several of the tapestries depicted scenes of a rural nature; farms, forests and
plains. In one there was a sled drawn by three horses racing across a snowy field. In
another three Cossacks on horses were chasing a wolf through a pine forest. Where there
were not elaborate, colorful pictures, there was cloth in warm shades of russet, browns,
tans and oranges.
The furniture was also different from the rest of the underwater prison. Here was a
large bed with a very comfortable looking spread, the color of coffee with cream. There
were dressers and a make-up table with large mirror, all of polished wood. Across the end
of the room was a picture window like the one in the Mother Superior’s office, with a view
of a coral reef. By the dimness of the ocean view, Dawn knew it was after sunset. Two
exterior floodlights illuminated the multi-colored coral and the hundreds of fish in vivid
colors themselves. Some of them seemed to be coming up to the window and looking in.
Sister Olga, as she preferred to be called, was standing by the window, looking out upon
the colorful scene. She turned when Dawn was marched in.
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