EXTRACT - THE HEIRESS

 

The naked young woman lay stretched on the rack. She was held so tightly that she was unable to struggle, she simply had to accept the pain and wait. The cellar in which the rack was housed was empty, apart from her, the rack, and a couple of chairs that her torturers had used. They were not present at the moment but she knew that when they returned she would cave in to their demands. When they left her, the pain was at a low level but a night of it, coupled with the inability to move had become almost unbearable. Another turn or two of the wheel and she would lose all will to resist.

Her mind went back to the first hours of her kidnapping. When they had taken her they had tried psychological pressure to make her sign their piece of paper. They didn't tell her what it was that she was signing but they did say tell her that she would suffer if she did not sign. Then they told her that her family would suffer; both her father and her step-mother. Despite the threats, she had refused and still continued to refuse. She might have been signing herself into slavery or Freddie, her stepmother into slavery. She was sure that at the very least she would be signing away much of her inheritance.

When she had not given in they had started to hit her. She had lost consciousness on two occasions but when they had brought her round, she had still refused to sign. That had led her inquisitors to raise the stakes. The rack had arrived the previous day. They had dragged her down to the cellar and forced her to lie on it. That was quickly followed by them attaching cuffs to her wrists and ankles. There were more threats and more demands for her to sign. She had refused but then they had put the rack to its proper use and begun to stretch her.

She had screamed but they told her there was no one who would be able to hear. She had survived through the first hours, when they stretched her to just beyond the point where continuous pain set in. The psychological pressure was increased by threats to her personal safety, threats of sexual assault and that the same would be done to her stepmother. Oddly they seemed reluctant to push the pain levels to a point where she would submit. She wondered if they were under instructions not to permanently damage the goods.

That thought had been a relief to start with but, after two hours, she had known that her refusal to submit to her kidnapper's demands would inevitably fail. Even a small increase in the pain above its present level would see her give way. There was only so much pain she could take and that point was very near. Something inside her had told her that to be overcome by pain was in some way an honourable end to her resistance. To simply give in to their threats revealed her as a weak and feeble woman, her own self-belief would have been destroyed forever.

Then, against all her expectations, they had left her overnight to think about her answer, promising to wrench her arms from her sockets if she did not submit when they returned the following morning. That return was now possibly only moments away and the night of even low level but continuous pain told her that she had no longer had the ability to resist further. Within the next hour they would be back and she would be defeated. Tired and in some distress she tried to take her mind off her pain by reflecting on the events that had brought her to this point...