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Altered States - New Story By Jedakk

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In the next post, cat has become Maia in her altered state of consciousness. Nailed to a Roman cross, she struggles to breathe, to find some relief from the pain one place at the expense of having to endure agony in another.

As her legs grow weaker, she slips lower on the cross, and she has a decision to make. She can either lower herself to hang by the nails in her wrists again, or she can try to rest, take the pressure off of the nails, at the expense of her womanhood. But this sedile is designed for the the sole purpose of torturing a woman. And Maia is about to learn how high a price she'll pay for a few moments of relief from hanging on the nails.

Meanwhile, Joe and Doc continue to monitor cat on her cross in the oppressive heat and stink of the dungeon. And Doc wonders about the strange changes in her vital signs and brain scans. He's never seen anything like it, and he doesn't know what to make of it. Not yet.
 
Maia
“Hey asshole! How’s the weather up there?” A young man watching me from the small crowd by the road shouted at me, laughing. I ignored him. I was working as hard as I could to fight the pain in my nailed feet so I could get a few more breaths and I wasn’t going to waste them.

“Yeah, how are you feeling today?” A man passing by on the road shouted, laughing.

“Hot day, but looks like you’re dressed for it! Or maybe undressed for it!” Yet another yelled.

I was losing the battle, slipping lower on the cross. The men and women in the crowd, the passers-by yelled and jeered at me.

“I want to see her take that sedile up her cunt!”

“She won’t do it this time, she’s not far enough along yet!”

“Bet a sestertius she tries it, even if she doesn’t stay on it!”

“I’m not taking that bet! She’s going to try it out sooner or later.”

The shouts and jeers, the callous hateful comments went on and on.

The rough wood of the cross grated against my bare ass as I slipped still lower on the cross. My quads – where did that word come from? - were burning with the strain, the wounds in my feet throbbing. Below waited the agony of hanging by my wrists again, the panicked struggle to breathe.

I felt the wooden spikes that extended to either side of the sedile’s base as they scraped along the insides of my thighs. They were so wide that I had to spread my legs further the lower I dropped. And I had to make a decision soon before my legs were too exhausted; sacrifice my pussy to save my wrists for a little while and breathe, or thrust my hips forward to avoid the sedile entirely and hang by my wrists?

I felt the turned-up point of the front of the sedile first, pressing into my wide-spread pussy underneath, in front of my hole. I quickly tried to shift to one side to get it out of me, but that was what the horizontal spikes I’d already felt along the inside of my thighs were for. There was only one place that the edge of that fucking sedile was going.

Before my legs failed entirely and went into spasm, I pushed my hips back, pressing my ass against the cross to try to get the front of the sedile in front of my abdomen. In resignation, I let myself slide lower.

It still wasn’t enough! The damned point on the front of the sedile was hitting underneath the front of my pussy! I had to roll my hips back until I had my asshole pressed against the rounded post behind me to avoid that point, which meant that all of my weight would be resting on my pussy, forcing it down against that thin edge.

The sedile was curved to fit a woman’s anatomy, and I groaned as it fit itself into mine, wedging between my lips, spreading them apart, going in deep.

“Owww! Damn it! Fucking bastard!” I yelped in pain and frustration when it mashed my clit. I felt it roll to one side, and the ring in it did something that felt like it was twisting it. I used the last of the strength in my legs to lift up a little, spread them as far as I could and open my pussy lips, wiggle my hips to try to settle it down onto the hard edge less painfully. Some of the onlookers hooted and laughed appreciatively at that.

And then I settled my full weight on it and learned how really painful it was. My legs squeezed together instinctively, protectively, but the spikes on either side of the sedile stabbed the inside of my thighs, forced me to stretch myself wide. If I could have, I’d have pushed up and gotten off of it.

But there was nothing else I could do. I had no choice. I just had to endure the burning pain between my legs. The damned thing was splitting me in two!

Yes, it eased the agony of the nails, but my whole body trembled and strained to take the agony between my legs. I took deep breaths and let them out in long, slow moans through clenched teeth, tears of pain in my eyes.

“She’s never going to sit on that for long!” An old woman cackled.

“I don’t think she has a choice!” Another woman said. “Looked like her legs gave out on her. I think her cunt is in for it for a while!”

She was right. I knew what happened when you pushed your muscles to exhaustion. It hurt so fucking badly that I had to get off of it, had to! But I could no more lift myself off of that sedile than I could fly. All I could do was squirm helplessly, which only seemed to work the edge of the sedile in deeper between my lower lips, mashing and stretching tender parts of me.

“Look at her!” The first old woman cackled again. “She didn’t know how much that thing was going to hurt, stuck up in her cunt like that!” Some of the teenaged girls knotted together in a small group watching me in wide-eyed fascination giggled nervously at that.

“I bet that’s the hardest thing she’s ever had between her legs!” A man laughed.

All of my straining had sent my legs into spasm, cramps knotting my thighs and nothing at all that I could do about them. I used the air I could now fill my lungs with to moan in agony. Sweat was pouring off of my body as the burning heat continued to beat down on me.

I felt a familiar tension between my legs and a fluttering deep inside my womb.

God, this is amazing! I thought.

Joe
“Shit, it’s like a sauna in here!” I said for about the tenth time. I was wearing nothing but a pair of swim trunks, as were all of the other men. The women were all in either two-piece swimsuits or just wearing the bottoms and going topless. All of us had towels for mopping the sweat that dripped constantly.

From time to time groups of us would disappear to go upstairs and hit the outside shower to cool off, then come back still dripping to plop down in lawn chairs and watch the show or contribute some jeering. Liz, of course, was wearing only semi-transparent thong panties which became fully transparent once she hit the shower the first time. On top of all of the other smells in there, the fallout shelter smelled like a locker room with so many sweaty bodies in it.

“She’s been crucified for an hour. I’m going to drop the temperature to 80,” I said.

“Works for me!” Doc said. “I think her alternate reality has become so solidified and real by now that gradual changes here aren’t going to shake her out of it. Might help to bring her heart rate down, too.”

“Nothing I should be worried about, is there?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, “just something odd…”

“Odd?”

“Yeah, well, like I said, nothing to be worried about. It’s just data that doesn’t fit with what I’m seeing.” Doc looked up from his tablet to stare at cat. “I mean, look at her, she’s been hanging there like that, for the past fifteen minutes or so.”

I thought about it for a moment. She’d lowered herself a while back and avoided the sedile this time to hang by her wrists instead. The sedile was probably getting to be pretty damn painful by now and hard to take. “Yeah, that’s about right I think. So, what’s strange about that?”

“Her heart rate and respiration seem to spike up and down periodically, even though she’s not moving very much. Same thing with the bMRI, cyclic changes in pain levels that match the cardio changes with no apparent cause. But it could be pain driving the cardio fluctuations too.”

“Ok. Hmm…”

“Well, nothing dangerous in itself, just no apparent cause that I can see. But hell, something has to be changing to cause that! Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I just don’t know what it is yet.”
 
Maia
“Hey asshole! How’s the weather up there?” A young man watching me from the small crowd by the road shouted at me, laughing. I ignored him. I was working as hard as I could to fight the pain in my nailed feet so I could get a few more breaths and I wasn’t going to waste them.

“Yeah, how are you feeling today?” A man passing by on the road shouted, laughing.

“Hot day, but looks like you’re dressed for it! Or maybe undressed for it!” Yet another yelled.

I was losing the battle, slipping lower on the cross. The men and women in the crowd, the passers-by yelled and jeered at me.

“I want to see her take that sedile up her cunt!”

“She won’t do it this time, she’s not far enough along yet!”

“Bet a sestertius she tries it, even if she doesn’t stay on it!”

“I’m not taking that bet! She’s going to try it out sooner or later.”

The shouts and jeers, the callous hateful comments went on and on.

The rough wood of the cross grated against my bare ass as I slipped still lower on the cross. My quads – where did that word come from? - were burning with the strain, the wounds in my feet throbbing. Below waited the agony of hanging by my wrists again, the panicked struggle to breathe.

I felt the wooden spikes that extended to either side of the sedile’s base as they scraped along the insides of my thighs. They were so wide that I had to spread my legs further the lower I dropped. And I had to make a decision soon before my legs were too exhausted; sacrifice my pussy to save my wrists for a little while and breathe, or thrust my hips forward to avoid the sedile entirely and hang by my wrists?

I felt the turned-up point of the front of the sedile first, pressing into my wide-spread pussy underneath, in front of my hole. I quickly tried to shift to one side to get it out of me, but that was what the horizontal spikes I’d already felt along the inside of my thighs were for. There was only one place that the edge of that fucking sedile was going.

Before my legs failed entirely and went into spasm, I pushed my hips back, pressing my ass against the cross to try to get the front of the sedile in front of my abdomen. In resignation, I let myself slide lower.

It still wasn’t enough! The damned point on the front of the sedile was hitting underneath the front of my pussy! I had to roll my hips back until I had my asshole pressed against the rounded post behind me to avoid that point, which meant that all of my weight would be resting on my pussy, forcing it down against that thin edge.

The sedile was curved to fit a woman’s anatomy, and I groaned as it fit itself into mine, wedging between my lips, spreading them apart, going in deep.

“Owww! Damn it! Fucking bastard!” I yelped in pain and frustration when it mashed my clit. I felt it roll to one side, and the ring in it did something that felt like it was twisting it. I used the last of the strength in my legs to lift up a little, spread them as far as I could and open my pussy lips, wiggle my hips to try to settle it down onto the hard edge less painfully. Some of the onlookers hooted and laughed appreciatively at that.

And then I settled my full weight on it and learned how really painful it was. My legs squeezed together instinctively, protectively, but the spikes on either side of the sedile stabbed the inside of my thighs, forced me to stretch myself wide. If I could have, I’d have pushed up and gotten off of it.

But there was nothing else I could do. I had no choice. I just had to endure the burning pain between my legs. The damned thing was splitting me in two!

Yes, it eased the agony of the nails, but my whole body trembled and strained to take the agony between my legs. I took deep breaths and let them out in long, slow moans through clenched teeth, tears of pain in my eyes.

“She’s never going to sit on that for long!” An old woman cackled.

“I don’t think she has a choice!” Another woman said. “Looked like her legs gave out on her. I think her cunt is in for it for a while!”

She was right. I knew what happened when you pushed your muscles to exhaustion. It hurt so fucking badly that I had to get off of it, had to! But I could no more lift myself off of that sedile than I could fly. All I could do was squirm helplessly, which only seemed to work the edge of the sedile in deeper between my lower lips, mashing and stretching tender parts of me.

“Look at her!” The first old woman cackled again. “She didn’t know how much that thing was going to hurt, stuck up in her cunt like that!” Some of the teenaged girls knotted together in a small group watching me in wide-eyed fascination giggled nervously at that.

“I bet that’s the hardest thing she’s ever had between her legs!” A man laughed.

All of my straining had sent my legs into spasm, cramps knotting my thighs and nothing at all that I could do about them. I used the air I could now fill my lungs with to moan in agony. Sweat was pouring off of my body as the burning heat continued to beat down on me.

I felt a familiar tension between my legs and a fluttering deep inside my womb.

God, this is amazing! I thought.

Joe
“Shit, it’s like a sauna in here!” I said for about the tenth time. I was wearing nothing but a pair of swim trunks, as were all of the other men. The women were all in either two-piece swimsuits or just wearing the bottoms and going topless. All of us had towels for mopping the sweat that dripped constantly.

From time to time groups of us would disappear to go upstairs and hit the outside shower to cool off, then come back still dripping to plop down in lawn chairs and watch the show or contribute some jeering. Liz, of course, was wearing only semi-transparent thong panties which became fully transparent once she hit the shower the first time. On top of all of the other smells in there, the fallout shelter smelled like a locker room with so many sweaty bodies in it.

“She’s been crucified for an hour. I’m going to drop the temperature to 80,” I said.

“Works for me!” Doc said. “I think her alternate reality has become so solidified and real by now that gradual changes here aren’t going to shake her out of it. Might help to bring her heart rate down, too.”

“Nothing I should be worried about, is there?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, “just something odd…”

“Odd?”

“Yeah, well, like I said, nothing to be worried about. It’s just data that doesn’t fit with what I’m seeing.” Doc looked up from his tablet to stare at cat. “I mean, look at her, she’s been hanging there like that, for the past fifteen minutes or so.”

I thought about it for a moment. She’d lowered herself a while back and avoided the sedile this time to hang by her wrists instead. The sedile was probably getting to be pretty damn painful by now and hard to take. “Yeah, that’s about right I think. So, what’s strange about that?”

“Her heart rate and respiration seem to spike up and down periodically, even though she’s not moving very much. Same thing with the bMRI, cyclic changes in pain levels that match the cardio changes with no apparent cause. But it could be pain driving the cardio fluctuations too.”

“Ok. Hmm…”

“Well, nothing dangerous in itself, just no apparent cause that I can see. But hell, something has to be changing to cause that! Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I just don’t know what it is yet.”
That sedile is a triumph of sadist engineering. I wonder if the cackling granny would ever have seen anything like it when crucifixion was routine, or if it is a 21st century gift from the BDSM community to Rome.
 
That sedile is a triumph of sadist engineering. I wonder if the cackling granny would ever have seen anything like it when crucifixion was routine, or if it is a 21st century gift from the BDSM community to Rome.

I've been trying to figure out how they ended up with that too. Seems like a lot of thought went into it, probably too many late nights and too damned much imagination!

I don't know how the Romans thought that up, but when I re-invented it, I was thinking of the way that 4" x 4" piece of timber worked earlier in the story, forcing cat to spread her legs and inevitably forcing that edge up into her. Now that part is not entirely fiction - I got that from what a woman told me who had been roped to a cross with just such a big timber sedile. When it comes to describing what a woman would feel, I actually ask women what they felt under similar conditions or how they'd describe certain sensations - orgasm, for example - and try to capture and dramatize that in a story.
 
Maia's crucifixion goes on as she struggles on her cross alongside Amara, the Aethiopian girl crucified beside her. She and Amara talk as they hang there dying, and Maia learns something of Amara's story, how she was kidnapped by slavers and ended up as a prostitute in a Roman brothel. She murdered one of her customers last night, and this morning she was crucified.

And Amara is amazed at the way Maia climaxes on the cross, in the midst of so much pain.

In the meantime, Joe and Doc watch cat as she struggles on her cross in the dungeon, her naked body twisting and writhing sensuously. It's enough to affect everyone there, male and female, and Doc's wife Sarah tells him that she's going to require some of his attention sooner rather than later.

It's at this point that the funniest scene in the story occurs. Liz, the only single woman in the group, hits on Joe, letting him know that she's available and ready to help him get through the hard times until cat is able to take care of him again. Joe plays along, enjoying her advances, but she's almost too much for him. And in the end, Doc's assessment of the situation is enough to make Joe blow beer out of his nose laughing.

Enjoy, and as I keep saying, feedback would be appreciated.
 
Maia
“Please... some water?” I heard the black girl call out to the bored guard who was lounging in the afternoon shade cast by the city wall. He eventually stirred himself, picked up the pot with the long handle of the sponge sticking out of it and moved our way.

“I thought you people were used to the heat, black skin and all,” he said as he raised the dripping sponge to her mouth. “You sweat like a pig!”

She sucked greedily. He soaked the sponge a second and third time before she seemed to have had enough, slowly sinking down, avoiding her sedile to hang by her wrists.

She groaned when her wrists took her weight and pulled against the nails once again. Her hips were pushed forward by the sedile behind her, her outthrust knees spread apart by the way our feet were nailed to the rounded posts of our crosses.

I had learned that her name was Amara, an Aethiopian girl who had been captured by Nubian slavers, traded to Aegyptian slavers and eventually to Roman slavers who had loaded her into the crowded hold of a ship to cross a sea she had never seen to be sold into a brothel in Rome.

Forced to service the men who lined up to try her exotic dark beauty, the day came when the pugio of a particularly cruel and drunken customer had come to Amara’s hand and she stabbed him to death, sliced off his privates and stuffed them in his mouth. That was last night.

And this morning, she was crucified.

“Better to die on a cross than live like that,” she had told me.

She had been amazed the first time I had an orgasm on the cross.

“How can you do that when you’re in all this pain just like me?” She asked, confusion and maybe a little fear in her voice.

“I… I’m different,” I replied, a bit embarrassed now that I was talking about it. I steeled myself against the agony, then pushed myself up on the nails in my feet to catch my breath and to make it easier to speak loudly enough for her to hear me.

“The pain… it excites me,” I continued. “Not all pain, not the nails, they just hurt! And the sedile hurts too, but somehow… that pain, the feel of it in me, it… well, it feels good, too. And it makes me wet, and I get the feelings up inside of me, like…”

“Yes, I know those feelings,” Amara said, “but long time since I had them. Not here, not with the grunting pigs they forced me to lie with. Not ever again now.”

“For me, those feelings, when I climax, are the strongest I’ve ever had,” I said. “I get them when I’m whipped, too. My body is different. I think it always has been!”

Amara hung with her head down, her body limp. I thought she had fainted again; both of us had several times during the long hours since we had been hung on these crosses to die.

I looked at the lengthening shadows, the sun low in the sky. It was going to be night soon. They crucified us just after sunrise; it must be nine hours later now, at least.


Joe
“She’s been up there for three hours,” Doc said. We were all sitting around in lawn chairs watching cat by this time. It was a little cooler, but still hot enough that we were all dripping with sweat or from the cool showers we’d just gone out and had.

“She still looks strong,” I said.

“Yeah, she does…” Doc said.

“But what? I can hear it in your voice. You sound like you’re still not sure.”

“Well, it’s still just those odd cycles, pain, cardio, everything up and down. It’s like her mind is driving her body based on its perception of reality rather than her actual activity level. I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“But you don’t think she’s in any danger?” I asked, anxious.

“Nothing I can see! Her oxygen saturation is still high. Heart and respiration are elevated but not excessively so for her. But there’s more going on than we’re seeing. But hell, we know that! We’re going to have to monitor her closely.”

cat groaned loudly just then as she began to raise herself on the cross. The nails had to be hurting her, but there was no bleeding.

She pushed herself upward until her head was a little above the crossbar. Her chest rose and fell rhythmically as she drank in deep breaths of air, breasts quivering. Her legs trembled with the effort of holding herself up, and probably from fighting the agony of the Roman nails she visualized to be in her feet.

After a few minutes, cat began to slip lower, the strength in her legs running out. As she slipped lower, she had to spread her legs wider to avoid the wooden spikes projecting to either side of the sedile. Eventually, she slid down until its point touched her pussy.

After a few hours on the cross, she had learned that there was only one way to ride the sedile and what that meant. I saw her press her ass back against the cross so she could get its point in front of her pussy, then try to ease herself down onto it. She groaned as it wedged her pussy lips apart and pushed itself up into her.

“I wonder how many other men here get a hard-on watching her do that?” I said, staring at cat on her cross.

“God almighty, yes, there’s at least one other man that does!” Doc said, without taking his eyes off of her.

“And girls that get wet watching her too!” Doc’s wife Sarah chimed in. “Just so you know, I’m going to need some of your attention sooner rather than later,” she said, smiling at Doc.

Both of us chuckled at that. In my case, it would be weeks before I’d have any female attention. It would take at least that long for cat to recover from this, even if everything went ok. But we both knew that going in.

I felt fingers brush the back of my neck lightly, up into my hair, looked to see who it was and as if by magic, Liz appeared, standing next to me in her wet, transparent thong panties. She was wearing little more than a smile, as they say, and the smile was for me. She stepped around so she was facing me with her hips just below my eye level and paused to give me a long look at her pussy. Then she bent gracefully from the waist so her breasts hung in front of my face, perfect pink nipples swaying from side to side, hypnotic, forcing my eyes to follow. I licked my lips, spellbound. Then she whispered in my ear.

“Joe,” she said my name breathily, sounding for all the world like she was channeling Marilyn Monroe. I’d have had to have been dumb as a post not to see what was coming next! “Seeing cat like this, naked, twisting and writhing like that on the cross, well… it’s easy to see that’s really, really arousing for a man like you!”

“Damn, Liz I-I can’t help it, and I can’t hide it, either!” I shrugged my shoulders, playing along, wanting to hear this. There was no way to hide the rock-hard erections that would briefly go down only to rise again as I watched cat struggle.

“And cat, well, she won’t be able to… take care of you for a long time, not after all this!

“I… well, I guess… I hadn’t really thought…” Hell, of course I’d thought about it, but I was enjoying this and I wanted to string her along and see what else she’d do. Here it comes, I thought.

Liz trailed her fingers down the back of my neck, along my shoulder. I have to admit that the erotic sensation from that, having a beautiful, naked woman dangling her boobs in my face, her long blonde hair brushing my cheek, the intoxicating smell of her sweat mixed with a little perfume, was diverting the blood from my brain straight down between my legs! I don’t know how my cock could have gotten any harder, and I swear I could feel my balls stirring, my scrotum contracting!

I shivered, shifted in my chair. This was getting damn hard for me to take! I wondered if I’d gotten myself into something I couldn’t get out of.

“A man like you, Joe… well, you have needs that have to be taken care of…”

“Really big needs, Liz, think long and hard about that!” I heard Doc snort, trying to contain himself. I knew he couldn’t help but hear all this. Apparently, that didn’t bother Liz, who was focused on her mission.

“And I just wanted to let you know… well, make it absolutely clear to you…” She shifted from one leg to the other, dropped on her heel to make her boobs jiggle in my face. “That you can call me anytime, day or night, and I’ll come to you or… you can just show up at my door… Joe, I know how to do things that will… well… I’ll take very good care of you!

Oh… my… God! I thought. She really had me going. I thought I was going to come in my shorts right there, just hearing her talk about it!

“Uh… Ok, Liz, uh… Damn, you’re beautiful, and sexy, and… well, let me say that’s really tempting. But Liz, I… well, I guess I’ve never actually told her, but… I really care about cat. Actually, I love cat. Yes, she’s my slave, but beyond that, and beyond this,” I nodded toward cat on her cross, “I think I might want to stay with her for… well, for the rest of my life. And I don’t think I can do that unless… well, I need to be true to her. If I can. If I’m man enough to do that.”

“I can appreciate that, Joe,” Liz whispered, “but it’s going to be… hard these next several weeks. It doesn’t have to be. Don’t forget that I’m here, and… ready to help.”

“I won’t Liz, don’t worry about that!” Shit, I thought I was going to melt and drip through the lacings in that lawn chair! I could hardly catch my breath! My cock was screaming at me to let it do what it wanted right now, but the part of my brain that still had blood enough left to think was fighting to keep it from bursting out of my shorts.

Liz straightened up, and there was her pussy again, right on my eye level. She shifted her hips to emphasize it, then slid her feet apart, spreading her legs enough that I could clearly see it all, her pink inner lips a bit swollen. I’d bet that if I touched her there, she’d have been soaking wet.

Liz smiled down at me again, then turned and left, her bare ass swaying seductively. I took a long draw on my beer as I watched.

“Well, that was really something!” Doc said. “You know, that girl could probably suck a golf ball through a garden hose!”

The image came to me instantly of Liz naked and on her knees, sucking as hard as she could on a length of bright green garden hose and going cross-eyed. Beer exploded out of my nose and then I was coughing and choking and Doc was pounding me on the back. Somebody handed me a towel and I buried my face in that, trying to disguise my laughter as more coughing.

I finally got control of myself, both laughter and my throbbing cock, which was just killing me. I needed a cold shower, and I needed it now! And there was nothing to do except stand up and walk out to the showers in my current state of arousal. I could have hung that towel on my cock and carried it, no problem, no danger at all of it slipping off. I wiped my watering eyes, looked up and told everyone I was all right, then endured the titters of laughter as I stood up and walked out.

God almighty, Liz! No matter what my intentions, it would always be hard to forget that experience.

And cat would be ready to sink her claws into Liz when she heard about it. And she definitely would hear the story, one way or another. I had to be sure I was the first to tell her.
 
"it’s going to be… hard ." Liz has a fine command of meaning.
Doc has a good turn of phrase too - "suck a golf ball through a garden hose." Very vivid.
It seems that just as London taxi drivers have enlarged amygdala, BDSM enthusiasts have enhanced command of language. Probably all that time hanging on crosses etc with nothing to do but think and feel.
Liz is a very sexy creation. I don't envy her when cat is fit again.
 
I wonder if cat actually needs to be on a cross to transfer to ancient Rome? Now she's been there, could she return less painfully? I can picture her with Liz in the arena, first fighting wild animals together, then having to fight each other. All taking place in cat's mind. Who would win? And why do scars seem to appear on her body after a 'dream'?
 
"it’s going to be… hard ." Liz has a fine command of meaning.
Doc has a good turn of phrase too - "suck a golf ball through a garden hose." Very vivid.
It seems that just as London taxi drivers have enlarged amygdala, BDSM enthusiasts have enhanced command of language. Probably all that time hanging on crosses etc with nothing to do but think and feel.
Liz is a very sexy creation. I don't envy her when cat is fit again.

I owe that golf ball line to a friend of mine, a Viet Nam veteran and an honest man who I could always count on, who passed away about twenty years ago. I miss him. He had a couple of other similar lines that I also remembered but that didn't have the same impact as the one I used. The others were:
She could suck the sides in on an apple crate! - You have to know what a wooden apple crate looked like. Haven't seen one of those for many years now.
She could pull a vacuum on an onion sack! - Again, you have to know what an onion sack looks like or looked like, just a net bag.​

Yes, no way to mistake what Liz is after! :devil:
 
I wonder if cat actually needs to be on a cross to transfer to ancient Rome? Now she's been there, could she return less painfully? I can picture her with Liz in the arena, first fighting wild animals together, then having to fight each other. All taking place in cat's mind. Who would win? And why do scars seem to appear on her body after a 'dream'?

Could she return less painfully? Good point. There are some hints about that at the end of the story - and does it really all take place in cat's mind? That's something we may find out too.
 
There was a an important clue between the end of Maia's narrative and the beginning of Joe's in that last post that I thought someone might notice and say, hey, wait a minute! ;) Kind of surprised that no one noticed.
 
There was a an important clue between the end of Maia's narrative and the beginning of Joe's in that last post that I thought someone might notice and say, hey, wait a minute! ;) Kind of surprised that no one noticed.
Hmm ... three hours in the fall-out shelter, nine on the execution site. Time out.
So eight hours in the shelter will mean morning in Rome where twenty-four hours have passed but it does not end.
 
Hmm ... three hours in the fall-out shelter, nine on the execution site. Time out.
So eight hours in the shelter will mean morning in Rome where twenty-four hours have passed but it does not end.

Yep, time appears to be out of sync between reality and cat's altered state of consciousness. Joe alluded to that earlier when he said "But as things turned out, we really didn’t know how to measure time at all."

Of course more will unfold about that as the story goes on. This takes us up to page 74 of 106; obviously this is a big stretch for a lot of non-native English speakers, but I hope people are enjoying this story.
 
Really hot storytelling, and the parallel tracks of Cat's experience and the watchers monitoring her is extremely effective. The use of the MRI enhances the sense that we're feeling what she's feeling, but also heightens the sense of difference between Joe and Doc's reality and the Roman execution grounds that Cat sees.
 
In the darkness of their first night on the cross, Maia and Amara talk when they can spare enough breath for words. Amara prays to her Aethiopian gods for an early and merciful death. Maia doesn't tell Amara, but if she were to pray for anything, it would be for two more days on the cross. Because despite all of her agony, she wants to feel it all.

As dawn comes, Maia automatically sings the song her tribe has always sung to greet the returning sun, but the words are only in her mind. And a full twenty-four hours has passed since Maia was crucified, but only eight hours for cat on her cross in the dungeon.

Meanwhile, Joe and Doc continue to puzzle out what is actually going on.
 
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