III - The spiked chair
I lean against the bars and stare longingly out of the door to the stairs that lead upwards and then back into freedom. Those stairs are my way out of this, but I can't reach them. So close they are and yet so far away.
I wonder, if the farmer or my family already found out what happened to me or if I just disappeared. Steps coming down the stairs and four men and a woman coming around the corner and stop before my cell. So, now it's my time. Fuck. My heart beats insanely hard. "Get her", says the woman and the men open the barred door. I am grabbed by the arms and dragged up on my feet. The woman walks away and the men carry me after her. With every step I take, my fear grows bigger. After another corner I see a big heavy steel door and I know, what is behind. And I am not wrong.
I am in the torture chamber. There are devices of pain and terror in every direction. This room is bigger than my own house and is only made to torture humen. And I am stuck in it now. Now, the other witches in the dungeons will hear my screams. I am going sick with fear. The guards throw my naked body on the filthy floor before the woman. I shiver and don't dare to stand up or even look at her.
"My name is Elizabeth Faron and I am working for the high lords of the Inquisition. For the first time, they allow a female inquisitor to lead a witch process. If I succeed, I may be a a part of the inquisition. That means for me good payment, but also safety of being burned myself. All I need to do is make you confess and I surely will not fail. Do not expect any mercy of me, you whore!" I kneel before Elizabeth, shivering. I do not reply, because I do not know, what I could say. "You are here, because you are accused of witchcraft", she continues in her cold, harsh voice. "I ask you only one time without hurting you. Do you confess your sins?"
"What happens to me, if I do?"
"What do you think, you stupid witch? You will be burned!"
I shiver even more. So, if I confess, I will be burned. If not, I will be hurt. What a terrible situation. Because I don't answer, I am grabbed by my arms and dragged through the torture chamber. I see, how they walk towards a metal chair, that has spikes everywhere. I become sick with the sight. They force me to sit on the chair and the top of the needles pierce into me, especially my ass. I start to move around, to make it more comfortable, but the guards grab me hard and hold me in position. My legs are pressed against the needles and then fixed by a belt that is roughly tied around them. I let out a scream, but that is not helping me, they are not done with me yet. My arms are tied on the chair the same way and so are my hands. But then they do the same with my back and I swear, that is much more intense then anything before. My back being pressed against rusty iron spikes hurt bad. I feel how some drops are running down my body. Am I bleeding? It feels like that. I look around and meet Elizabeth's eye. For the first time I look into her face and I see, that there is really no hope. She is looking at me like as if I am vermin, that need to be destroyed.
Suddenly my feet are getting hot. What is that now? The heat is getting worse and my soles are hurting like hell. Now I understand. They put something hot like coals or even fire beneath my feet. And I cannot move them away, because my legs are tied to this chair. But still I can't fight the urge to move as my poor feet are getting hotter. Without being able to control it, I try moving my legs and start to flinch my body. Due to that, I feel the spikes again and that very painfully. The heat on my feet turns now from a painful hot into a terrible white burning, that becomes unbearable. I start to wail in pain. So far, I was ashamed for myself, because I am nude and helpless in front of several men, but now all those thoughts are away. The only thing that arrives in my head now is this excrucial pain. "Oh God", I yell. "Please, I want this to end, but I am no witch! I am innocent! Isn't there anything I can do?"
From far away, the cold and mercyless voice of Elizabeth arrives in my racing mind. "All of you satanic whores claim to be innocent. But they all confessed. You will die as all of your wicked sisters!"
So, there really was no way that she would let me go. So, I stay seated on iron thorns, crying and suffering. With every second my feet getting hotter and I am sure, that they are on fire by now too. If it feels like that being burned, I will never confess. The torture is horrible, but if I imagine, that my entire body feels like my poor soles do right now, an ice cold shiver runs down my spine. They could make me to a cripple, I would have to stand it then. But never I will agree to be burned alive.
Elizabeth seems to be unsatisfyed with my refusal to talk. She is giving the guards a wink and they get a kind of metal device. When I saw it, I recognize it and I immediatly feel sick. It is the thumbscrew. "Please, don't do this to me", I scream in panic. I can't do anything but hope for mercy.
"Ignore her pathetic beggings", Elizabeth says. "We are supposed to make her scream. Do only stop, when she confess or her fingers break." I try to move my hand away, but of course it is still fixed to the chair. I can only watch how they lay the cold metal around my fingers and start to screw it down, so it gets tighter around my fingers. They screw and screw and my middlefinger and forefinger are pressed together to a critical point.
"Please, have mercy!" But why am I asking for that? I know, that I am begging in vain. My fingers are turning red and then blue. Would they really break them and cripple me? Of course they would. They want to kill me anyway and don't care about me or my body. And so they finally break my fingers. First of all, I hear the terrifying cracking of the bones. Then I look at my hand and see the strange angle in which my fingers are positioned now. I understand, that they are broken and I wonder, why there is no pain coming from my hand. Probably adrenaline or shock. Maybe the pain need a long time to reach my mind. But then suddenly it comes with full force. An explosion takes place in my head with such brutality, that I forget everything else. I forget my burning feet. I forget the spikes everywhere on my body, that cause more bloody wounds as I start to move in the chair. I also forget, that I am in a total helpless situation, that I most likely cannot survive. The undescribable pain coming from my hand erases all that and I start to scream louder then anytime before. I can't stop and I feel as if I am going insane. I hear a very silent female voice speak to me, the voice of Elizabeth. She asks me, if I am ready to confess, but I am not even ready to react to her question. Actually her entire existence is whiped out of my mind in that moment. All I am aware of is that brutal pain, that is so harsh, that it makes me blind and deaf. I scream through the the torture chamber and the dark corridors of this rotten place. The other women in the cells probably hear me now and go sick with fear, as I did myself when I was locked in the dungeon.
It takes an eternity until the pain grows backwards a bit and I come back to my senses. I still sob, but I can recognize my environment again. Suddenly I am lying on the floor, released from the spiked chair. How could I have missed that? Did I faint? No, I know exactly, that I had been awake all the time. But the pain was so intense, that it must have even blacked out the fact, that I was grabbed and thrown on the floor. Breathing for the stinking air of the torture chamber under more tormented screams I start look around. I am lying in front of the chair. My blood is on the floor. My feet are not on fire and they never had been, it just had felt like that. My fingers are clearly broken. Elizabeth and her helpers stand there and look down on me, as I lay naked in the dirt. Now the shame comes back as well.
"Get her! We continue with the next method! Let's see, how much that slut can take until she breaks down!" The guards walking towards me and my panic reaches a new level. I am in the torture chamber since only 20 minutes or so and they already caused me an injury that would cripple me for life. If that has only been the beginning, what else will they do to me?
