My mind is numbed by the agony. My muscles are stretched beyond their limits.
Something cold and hard cinches my ankles.
It pulls stiffly downward, unyielding.
The stress threatens to tear me in half.
Sharp spasms rack the muscles along my back, and I arch against it. Bucking against my bonds as best I can.
If it weren’t for the pain, I would swear I was already dead.
A soft-edged whimper escapes my throat.
Hoarse but distinctly feminine.
Who am I?
I cannot remember.
I only know that I am not who I am supposed to be.
It’s dark.
I can’t see.
Where am I?
Who am I?
“Holy fuckin’ shit! Goddammit!” Ben’s voice was echoing distantly. “He’s done this before and the last time his friggin’ heart stopped.”
Doctor Sanders’ voice followed thickly, her words ricocheting from his. “What do you mean his heart stopped?”
“I mean it just fuckin’ stopped! He almost died.”
“Calm down, Storm! He still has a pulse. Mister Gant? Mister Gant, can you hear me?”
My ears discern the mournful squeal of rusted hinges.
I’ve been in the darkness for what seems an eternity.
A faint light filters in from above, and it is almost blinding.
How long have I been here?
I strain to lift my head.
My ears have grown accustomed to the unbroken silence, and the mechanical snap of a light switch comes like a gunshot.
I can even hear the hum of the electricity as it arcs along the contacts.
A bare incandescent bulb ignites above me, casting harsh streams of light.
I wrench my head away, regretting the act the moment the pain it brings bludgeons me. I blink. I regret that too.
Even blinking hurts.
Slowly, biting back the stabs of misery, I raise my face once again to look around.
I peer cautiously through the stringy mats of my long, flame red hair as it hangs in front of my face, and I try to focus on my surroundings.
A rough concrete wall, grey and pitted with age, confronts me. A large crucifix adorns its otherwise blank emptiness. Countless unlit white candles of all shapes and sizes cover a small wooden table before the shrine.
I am in what appears to be a basement.
Biting hard on the gag in my mouth, I tilt my head farther back, squinting my eyes against the harsh light.
Black iron shackles encompass my scraped, blood crusted wrists. Connected by a heavy chain, they are affixed securely above.
I am hanging from a thick beam.
I am suspended from the rafters.
The small amount of strength I mustered is fleeting at best, and my head tilts back forward of its own accord, bringing my chin to heavily meet my chest.
Breasts.
I am a woman.
Something sequestered in the nether regions of my mind tells me that this isn’t right. I am not supposed to be a woman. Or am I?
I have no idea who I AM supposed to be.
Slow, deliberate thudding partnered with the doleful cry of creaking wood meets my ears and chases my latest revelation away from immediacy-along with its still unanswered questions.
Someone is coming.
HE is coming.
Unfettered, acidic terror rips outward from my abdomen and singes me.
Something warm begins to run down my inner thighs and splatters wetly to the floor.
I have no control as my bladder releases.
I begin to cry.
A strangely familiar feminine voice stretches itself past me in a textbook example of Doppler distortion. “Help me get him on the free table over there.”
“Nooooooooooooo!” My scream is muffled by the soggy, biting fabric in my mouth.
A mechanical sound reaches me, felt as well as heard.
Tick, tick… Click!
Tick, tick… Click!
Tick, tick, tick… Click!
My body tenses as I feel my shoulders slowly and simultaneously ripped from their sockets. Something is pulling down against my ankles and my legs are straining to remain joined with the rest of my body.
The metallic click of a gear ratcheting reverberates again.
Tick, tick. Click!
Tick! Clunk!
“Nooooooooooooo.” My cry is no more than a meek whimper.
Muscles and tendons are tearing. Various spots along my upper back spasm and snap like broken rubber bands. White-hot projectiles of torment race through my nervous system at a quickening pace.
Bursting like bullets from my chest, they only turn to re-enter and retrace every inch over and over again.
It is more than I can stand.
As the light begins to fade, I can see his shadow on the floor in front of me, large and foreboding. I can barely hear muffled words.
Something about proof of my crimes.
Something about proof of my heresy.
Something about evidence to validate my “confession.” Something about begging the forgiveness of God.
Darkness overwhelms me.
A deep voice echoes to me. Someone I should know. A name comes to mind. Ben. “Come on, white man, you sonofabitch! Don’t you die on me!”
I am no longer in the basement.
I am outside.
I am still nude.
It is freezing.
Icy wind is slicing through me like a razor.
My arms are bound behind me, as if it mattered. They hang limp and useless from my shoulders. I am secured to something that is rough against my back. It feels like a post or a tree, but I can’t be sure.
The pain is the only thing of which I am positive.
Even the frigid night cannot kill the pain.
I can taste something oily and acrid mixing with the blood in my mouth.
Something strong.
Something caustic.
It numbs my tongue and burns my nostrils.
The smell of it is familiar.
The memory tickles my brain.
Something about light.
Something about warmth.
Kerosene.
It is kerosene and I can feel it splashing down my body.
Dripping.
Corrosively eating away at my open wounds.
“Kendra Darlene Miller.” A dark voice accuses me, “You have openly admitted your crimes of heresy and of engaging in the practice of WitchCraft.”
An enormous, gloved hand roughly grasps my jaw and forces my face upward.
Oily kerosene drips from my soaked hair and into my eyes, burning them.
Blurring my sight.
“I hold before you evidence. Evidence recently obtained from your apartment which validates your confession of these crimes.”
Through my clouded sight I can scarcely make out the silver shape of a pentacle dangling from a chain.
A necklace.
My necklace.
His proof.
The hand releases its grip, and my head is dragged rapidly downward by gravity.
I can hear shuffling footsteps amidst the bitter, sighing wind. The footsteps come to a halt behind me.
An involuntary shiver trickles through my freezing body.
“We, by the mercy of God,” the dark voice begins in an imperious tone, “seeing that you, Kendra Darlene Miller, have been accused before us by public report of heresy, and that you have for many years persisted in those heresies to the great hurt of your immortal soul; and We, whose duty is to exterminate the plague of heresy and WitchCraft, wishing to be more certain of whether you walked the path of darkness or light, have diligently examined you, and find you are indeed infected with the said heresy.”
“No. This isn’t happening,” is the only thing that passes through my mind.
“In as much as you have duly and properly admitted your crimes, and having before us the Holy Gospels that our judgment may proceed as from the countenance of God, by this sentence we cast you away as an impenitent heretic, Witch, and Concubine of Satan, and do hereby deliver you unto the power of our most Holy God. As you are damned in body and soul, your sentence on this day is death. The sentence is to be executed immediately, without appeal, in the manner of expurgation by fire.”