Chapter 2: Meanwhile, at Saint Susan’s

Chapter 2: Meanwhile, at Saint Susan’s

Dawn leaned against the cold metal wall and closed her eyes. The ropes on her body were tight, as usual, and she had been bound for a very long period of time. Her elbows hurt, her shoulders ached, and her hands were numb. The tight cords bit into her arms just above her elbows and again at the wrists. She was naked, as usual, and locked in a tiny room only big enough for her to sit down but not stretch her legs out. The walls were all steel plates, as was the floor. And, as most of the walls and such in that horrible place, they were cold to the touch. This was because the entire facility, sardonically called “The Chapel”, but more properly Saint Susan’s, was totally underwater; one hundred feet under the Pacific atop a submerged mountain that had once been an atoll.

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 whip marks 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.

“Well, how have you been enjoying your stay at Saint Susan’s?” she asked in a mock cheerful tone. Dawn said nothing. “Not talkative today, huh? Well, ve have vays of making you tock!” she said in a terrible German accent, and then she laughed. Dawn did not. Suddenly Sister Olga changed to serious. “You may leave us,” she told Sister Katrina.

The Nun bowed her head quickly then departed. Sister Olga walked over to Dawn, then around her, noting the fading whip marks, the bruises and abrasions from cruel punishments, and downcast eyes and down-curved lips. And the two letters branded onto the top side of each breast, “BD” placed there by Bishop Diana, the one who had sent Dawn to his underwater hellhole. Along with her own daughter, Julie.

“There is something I want to show you,” she said with a faint smile. She picked up a short rod from the top of a dresser and approached Dawn with it. The rod was only about a foot and a half long, and half an inch in thickness. At one end was a loop formed of thin metal. One end of the loop detached from the rod so it could be put around Dawn’s neck then reattached. It was snug but not restrictive enough to impede breathing. Dawn knew that this was not designed to choke her but to control her. With the rod in her hand, Sister Olga could easily direct Dawn in any direction she wished the girl to go. A simple twist of that handle and the band around her neck would dig in, forcing her to obey. Olga jerked down on the rod to show Dawn how effective it was. Dawn immediately bent her knees to lower herself.

“Come with me.”

She led the naked woman out of her cabin and down the corridor to an open doorway and stairs leading downward. “This part of the Saint Susan’s was originally a lounge for the researchers here. This was a secret biological research laboratory back before the war. Some nasty stuff was made down here. Fortunately none of the viruses they developed were ever released. They tell me that some of them could have wiped out all of humanity.”

At the bottom of the stairs and behind a door was a large room, by far the largest Dawn had seen there. It was filled with comfortable sofas and chairs, a couple of tables, and carpeted in a soft blue. On the walls hung pictures of nature scenes: mountains, waterfalls, a sandy beach at sunset, the Grand Canyon, and other pleasant scenes. There was a combination bar and kitchenette to one side and a dozen potted bushes and small trees. Another wall was a window out onto the coral and sandy sea bottom. The contrast of that spacious room to the Spartan utility bareness for the prisoner portion was pronounced.

“This was so the researchers could relax and remember what it was like above the surface. We use it for the same purpose. Even the cruelest of Nuns needs a little time off from torturing sinners.” Two Nuns were doing exactly that; one reading a book, the other watching a movie on a small screen. It was a shock to see Nuns without the standard black leather catsuits. One had a simple dress of pale green and the other was dressed in a flimsy light blue baby-doll nightie. They both looked up at the sinner but then went back to their reading and viewing.

Dawn suddenly noticed that the air was pleasantly warm against her skin, a marked contrast to the cold, dampness of the sinner section.

“I am showing you this so you’ll know that a short distance away from your cell or where you’re being punished there is a pleasant place. Wouldn’t you like to get those ropes off and sit down on that soft sofa over there? Have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine? Listen to some classical music? Maybe even have a nice meal of something tastier than dog food?”

Dawn wondered what Sister Olga was up to. Was she offering this to Dawn? And at what price?