Chapter 8: Life on the Edge

Chapter 8: Life on the Edge

Released from her suspension in the morning, Jane was allowed a shower. Well, it was a shower but by Saint Susan’s standards. The itch syrup had worn off towards morning, allowing her to obtain a few snatches of sleep. She was marched to a small room with bare walls and a drain in the floor. A hose and valve were the only attachments. With her hands locked behind her back, Jane was pushed into the room and then blasted with cold salt water from the hose. The Nun holding the nozzle was careful to wash every part of Jane, including some very private parts for which it was necessary to order her to turn her back and bend over. Clean and with dripping hair, she was then taken to breakfast.

Another surprise awaited her at breakfast. She was used to the rather good food served at Saint Dorina’s and other Church centers, and expected the same there. It was, therefore, a shock when she was forced to kneel down and eat from a dish of repulsive chunky brown stuff. She noticed another woman, one she did not recognize, eating at the same time. That young woman had her arms tightly bound behind her and her legs tied together as she knelt to lap up the unappetizing stuff. There was a quick glance at the newcomer, but no words spoken, even when she had finished her meal. Jane forced herself to eat some of it, finding it to have a slightly meaty taste.

A bowl of water was then put down for each of them. They were forced to suck up the water, for no straw was made available. When Jane was ordered to stand and taken from the room, she noticed that the other sinner was still kneeling in place, head bowed, nice and submissive.

To her surprise, Jane was taken to a room where she found Dawn. The room had only two notable features, one was a set of rings in the ceiling and the other was a pair of metal bars that went from one wall across to the other on the floor. The bars were about four inches apart, of inch-thick metal but tapered to a sharp edge on top. Dawn was standing on those two edges on her bare feet. Her arms had been bound behind her with the wrists crossed and tied high up on her back. Her legs were not tied but there was a noose around her neck with the rope leading up to the ring in the ceiling. That rope was pulled taut enough so that her head was tilted to one side. Jane could see that the rope was very tight around Dawn’s neck.

She almost called out but then remembered having been told not to speak on threat of punishment, so she held her tongue. Her handcuffs were taken off and her arms bound up on her back like Dawn’s. A noose was placed around her neck and she was ordered to step up onto the two bars. The edges cut into her bare soles painfully. A stepladder was brought in so that one of the Nuns could stand on it and tie the rope from the noose around Jane’s neck to the second ring. She adjusted the rope carefully so that Jane’s neck was constricted but she could still breath.

They were then left alone.

It was a struggle to stand on those sharp edges and keep your balance. The girls simply had to move their feet when the edge cut in too much. But they dare not step off the bars. It might have lowered them by only six inches but that would have been enough to strangle them. They stood in misery and had to wonder how long this would go on.

But neither was gagged, and that gave them a chance to talk.

“Oh, Jane, I’m so sorry they caught you,” was the first thing Dawn came out with. “And that you’re in this hellhole with me.”

“Any chance of our reaching each other’s ropes?” Jane asked.

“No. The rope on our necks is too short.” Dawn lifted one foot and used it to touch Jane on the thigh. “That’s about all we can do.”

“How long? I mean, how long will they leave us here?” Jane pretty much knew the answer from her training at Saint Dorina’s. Anything short of half a day would be considered too mild. A full day was more in keeping with the Church guidelines for punishing sinners.

Dawn did not answer the question. Instead she asked one of her own, “How did you manage to get put here?”

Jane explained her attempt to force Bishop Crofton to release Dawn and the resultant failure of that task, ending with her being captured. “She was very mad when she sent me here,” she concluded.

“No madder than she was with me,” replied Dawn.

Suddenly: “Oh, Dawn, you’re branded!”

“Yeah, the Bishop put her initials on me.”

Jane was silent for a moment while she shifted her foot on the sharp edges. “Did it hurt?” she finally asked. “I’ve seen other women branded. It is not all that common, but sometimes used to punish a special sinner. I have often wondered how much it hurt. The woman all screamed loudly. A few fainted. Did you?”

“No, it would have been nice to faint, but I did not. And, yes, it hurt like hell. But you know, I’m lucky.”

“How so?”

“She put ‘BD’ on me for ‘Bishop Diane.’ She could have put her full name and titles.”

There was a silence for a while. During the morning they chatted a bit, but as time wore on they became more occupied with the pain in their feet and trying to find a way to support themselves that did not hurt terribly. There was none.

Jane told Dawn of the expedition to Russia to find the weapon that Dawn had been instrumental in discovering. Since she was captured before they returned, she had no idea if the mission failed or had worked. They both agreed that for a powerful weapon to come to the Resistance would be wonderful. Then their talk trailed off as each became more absorbed in her personal pain. At times, Dawn would look at Jane’s young, firm body and remember how wonderful it had been when they were both free and had been lovers.

Sister Mary came in after a few hours, looked them over, and then swatted Dawn across her bare ass with a riding crop. She yelped and instinctively jerked her bottom away, which made her lose her balance, her feet slipping off the edges. For a few seconds, Dawn’s body was lowered a few inches and the noose around her neck tightened down enough to cut off her breathing. With her head turned to one side by the noose, she struggled to get her feet back on the edges. When she finally did, she still could not pull in the air she needed, the noose, having been tightened down, was very slow to loosen. Her face was turning red as she gasped for air. For a full minute she struggled to pull in air, the noose letting go of its death grip very slowly. All that time, while Dawn thought she might die, Sister Mary simply stood there, watching with a faint smile on her face.

Only when it was obvious that Dawn was going to survive did she sigh and left the two girls alone.

“You okay?” asked Jane.

“Yeah, more or less. This damned rope is still too tight.”

After a long time, Jane asked what was foremost on her mind. “Will they put us in a cell together?”

It was not hard for Dawn to recognize what Jane was thinking; she was thinking the same thing. Just to hold each other would be so nice. And a chance to gain some small measure of pleasure amid all this pain and suffering would be wonderful. But she doubted that they would get that chance, and she told Jane that she had never been in the same cell with another other sinner during all the time she was at Saint Susan’s. After that, they were quiet again.

At the end of the day, they were taken down, carted off to the mess hall and fed their ration of dog food. Jane ate to assuage the hunger, but she hated every moment and thought that she might not be able to keep it down.

After dinner she was taken to a cell where she was fixed for the night. The cell contained a metal beam across from one wall to the other, a beam about three inches wide. Dawn’s arms were untied and she was laid down on the beam on her back. Her ankles were tied together and lashed down to the beam by one Nun while the other locked each wrist in a loop at the end of a chain. The chains then went down to rings in the floor on each side so that Dawn’s arms were pulled down and spread wide. The ropes and chains would assure that she remained squarely on that beam and immobile. The metal under her was cold against her bare skin and narrow enough to be uncomfortable. The door slammed shut and the light went out. Despite the discomfort, Dawn managed to sleep some.

She did not see Jane again for several days.