Chapter Tweenty-four

Jeremiah now pulled Cheryl’s torso up from the table. After allowing her to steady herself on her feet he affixed a slight chain around her neck and pulled her forward towards the exterior door. Cheryl stumbled at first, it being somewhat unnatural to be led blindfolded, hands behind the back, barefoot. But the tug at her neck was insistent and she quickly acclimated herself to the pace established by her keeper.

As soon as she left the shaded concrete bunker, Cheryl could feel the heat of the sun upon her body. It was a searing, smothering heat, almost unnatural, and quite an experience for one used to temperate climes. She had no idea where she was, but the fact of the intense moist heat convinced her that she was either in or near a jungle. It was a small comfort.

She was dragged up the walkway towards the main house and brought in, not through the main entranceway that led off of the extensive veranda. She was not brought in through the servants’ entrance in the rear of the building. Instead she was led to a door that opened to the cellar of the mansion. It was not actually below ground. Cellars, as such, were impractical here, where the water table was so high and the soil so soft. But the actual first floor of the dwelling was used as a storage and utility area. There were several entrances all around the building, each designed to admit one to a specific functional portion. The door to which Cheryl was being led was the portal of such an area of specific function, one that she would soon discover.

Jeremiah carried with him a spate of keys and was able to produce the one necessary to unlock the heavy steel door. Cheryl waited while he did so, taking in the sounds of the door opening, its foreboding heft apparent from the noise of its hinges. She was led in and the rough, stony texture of the walkway was changed to the smooth coldness of indoor concrete. Cheryl heard another door being unlocked and then slammed after they had passed through it. She did not know where they were going, but she knew that she was being inexorably led to a discovery of what that angry, hurtful man had called “fun.”

Although Cheryl felt powerless and knew that she was at the mercy of a cruel, hard man, she did not feel owned. “How could anyone own another?” she thought to herself. She was a person, with rights and an identity. Wherever she was, there must be some way to escape, to find help. For the present, Cheryl considered her plight, as drastically fearsome as it may be, temporary. The ordeal she was about to undergo was meant to help dispel those notions.

For the room to which Cheryl had been admitted was the “Discipline Room.” She had yet to see the various instruments and mechanisms of pain that were stored here. She did not see the rack-like device that would be used to stretch and tear at her muscles. She did not see the sharply pointed “horse” she would have to ride. She did not see the whips and canes mounted on the walls along with various implements of intense and cruel confinement that hung there.

Cheryl felt her hands being untied. She knew better than to struggle or to try and flee. Not only was she no match for this brute of a man, but where could she go? Whose help would she seek? What direction should she flee in?

Jeremiah brought Cheryl over to a crucifix-like device. He pushed her back up against a steel pole that ran up from the floor. Cheryl felt one wrist, then the other affixed to a bracelet on the end of a pole that ran horizontally and which was somehow attached to the pole that she leaned against. It was about chest high for her and presented no specific difficulty for her to adjust to her binding. Her arms had been placed over the bar and her wrists joined to the bracelets on its underside. This had the effect of wrapping her arms around the bar. She felt a slight discomfort to her shoulders as she tried to adjust herself to this strange posture.

Jeremiah knew what this device was for and he knew that its nature was now deceptively benign to this new slave. All that was left to do was to confine the girl’s ankles in a short chain, one that ran behind the perpendicular pole and would prevent her from kicking or flailing her feet. This was a satisfying moment for him. It was the first moment that this dog of a white whore would discover what torments awaited her.

He let Cheryl acclimate herself momentarily to her confinements. He ran his hands over her breasts, appreciating their delectable heft, the softness of the flesh. The Master had made a good choice. She was a treasure indeed. He yearned for the time when she would be his. He knew he would not have too long to wait.

Jeremiah aborted his reveries and got down to the task at hand. Behind the perpendicular pipe was a handle attached to a ratchet. The wheel, when turned, caused the perpendicular pole to rise. Jeremiah applied himself to the handle and began to turn.

Cheryl, at first, attached no significance to the fact that the pole to which her arms were attached seemed to be rising. At each turn of the wheel, the perpendicular pole rose, carrying the horizontal pole, to which Cheryl’s arms were attached, higher. It was when her toes could no longer gain purchase on the ground that Cheryl realized the infernal nature of the device to which she was attached. Since her wrists were attached to the underside of the horizontal bar, she could not grab it to try and spread the weight of her body along her arms. As it was, the entire stress of her weight was born by her shoulders. Within a few seconds, her shoulder muscles ached with the strain.

Jeremiah caused the bar to rise to a height sufficient so that Cheryl could tantalizingly scrape her toes on the floor. They were not in a position to transfer any of the burden of the weight of her body. But Jeremiah knew from experience that Cheryl would strain her leg muscles vainly to try and make sufficient contact with the floor to ease what would soon become an excruciating pain in her shoulders.

As Cheryl tried to acclimate herself to this fiendish device, Jeremiah removed her blindfold. The light bulb dangling from the ceiling above her head created harsh and sinister shadows. Nonetheless, Cheryl had no problem taking in the plentitude of instruments of pain that were arrayed across the room. She was positioned perfectly to take in virtually all of the room’s contents and she was horrified at what she saw. Was she in some medieval dungeon? Was she soon to be tortured to her death? To what purpose? Cheryl felt a terrifying foreboding about the events that were soon to come.

She had remained silent and docile until now. But now she pleaded with her eyes to the tall, muscular black man who had brought her to such intense physical delights just a short while before. She tried to speak through the wooden gag that acted like a bit in her mouth. Only small, whiney sounds escaped.

Jeremiah tweaked Cheryl’s nipples and then moved to leave the room. As she saw him go, Cheryl realized that she was being abandoned to the nefarious discomfort of her bindings and to the terrible visions that arose in her mind as she contemplated the devices of torture. She redoubled her efforts to speak, to beg him to free her, not to leave her to the devices of that horrible angry man who had raped her mouth on the plane. But Cheryl was not the first slave Jeremiah had left here to contemplate the horrifying torments that awaited them. He patted her head, turned and left.

Jeremiah had left on the lights in the room so Cheryl could plainly see and contemplate the many instruments of torture that were displayed. Her blood ran cold. Her stomach sank. Her mouth became dry. All of the clichés of fear came true for her. She peed.

While her primary attention was focused on the terrible implements mounted on the walls and around the room, Cheryl ignored the nagging pain in her shoulder muscles. But only after a few minutes, ten, at most, she began to be concerned. She had wondered at the unusual angle at which her arms had been bound. Now the reason was beginning to dawn on her. Frantically, she tried to stretch her toes to reach the floor. If she really pushed, she could scrape her big toe on the rough concrete beneath her feet. She would get no support from there. She tried to anchor her feet on the pole, but, after only a brief moment, her feet would slide down and the relief she obtained in her shoulders was minimal.

As the time dragged on, Cheryl’s pain grew worse. She had given up trying to brace her feet on the pole and was reconciled to just hanging there, hoping that someone would come and release her. But, when she gave it any thought, she realized that the sole purpose of her being in this room was to make her suffer physically and mentally. That horrid man was out there somewhere; the black man was out there somewhere, undoubtedly contemplating the agonies they had delivered her to. Only when their desires to inflict a more personal pain on her overcame their present delight at her predicament would she gain surcease from this punishing torture.

She didn’t know how long she hung there. All she knew was that she had passed through many stages of mental and physical distress. When the aching seemed too much to bear, she cried. After a while, her cries turned to sobs. A deep, baleful moaning was next. She yelled and screamed behind her gag for help, out of rage against those had done this to her and the deity who had permitted it. And then back to crying. Finally, the pain was so intense that all she could do was hang there and softly groan.