Dez
Assistant executioner
Antara’s Return
She squinted in the brilliant blaze of sunlight down the stony trail towards the entrance of the mining facility. The burning heat scorched the rocks creating a haze strong enough to make the sparse vegetation shimmer. The landscape danced like fire under the torrid atmosphere.
Antara looked up at the Overseer as the prisoner transfer was completed. He towered above her. The humanoid looking creature was thick with muscle, bare chested and clothed only in leather briefs. His hairless body an olive hue; orange eyes reptilian in nature. A belt hung around his waist which held an enormous Kukri like blade and the coiled length of a vicious looking whip.
Antara had spent eleven days confined in the correctional facility where she endured almost continuous torture as punishment for an escape attempt. Her body was subjected to electrical shock treatment as a result of her failure. Her pain was unimaginable.
During her time there her hair was once again cropped short with no regard for tidiness. What passed for her shirt was removed and never returned. All she wore was a cord around her hips that supported a ragged, threadbare cloth which hung unrestricted half way to her knees covering her intimate area.
She had been wearing automatic fitting restraints on her journey back to the mine, but on arrival she was shackled in hard iron manacles about her wrists and ankles, with chains far too heavy for someone of her physical stature. A thick iron collar was fastened around her neck. The length of chain linked to the collar’s ring under her chin was firmly in the grasp of the overseer.
With the transfer complete the overseer gave the collar chain a slight tug as an indication to follow, and proceeded down the trail. The hot ground burnt Antara’s bare feet, stumbling here and there as she was half dragged towards the familiar destination of her previous drudgery and affliction.
By the time the mismatched pair reached the mining facility’s entrance Antara was limping. Her right foot leaving a bloody print in the scalding stones. Her entire body slippery with sweat.
The entrance was a hive of activity. Huge carts filled with blocks and slabs of granite were being pushed along on tracks, and overseers made sure the slave workers never faltered, never tired.
The two stopped short of arrival. Antara began to walk forward only to be halted by her iron leash. She looked up silently questioning the alien giant. He gestured towards an area to their right. Realising what was meant for her, she tried despairingly to pull away from him. The overseer drew her closer as she struggled against the chain. When she was within range he grabbed the girl by the head, with one hand. She wrestled his immovable grasp in vain, grimacing, clutching at his massive forearm in impetuous, fervid desperation.
Unable to relinquish the overseer’s vice like hand that threatened to crush her skull, she was marched over to a huge boulder neighbouring a tall cracked granite pillar.
Antara knew the site well. Both boulder and pillar were fitted with thick chains and manacles. A large ring was embedded high up on each where the chains passed through, trailing back to the ground. Near the bases of the restraining rocks were iron bars designed to lock off the links of the chains.
The powerful wordless beast released it’s prey, throwing her to the ground.
Before she could pick herself up he seized her by the left arm and dragged her to the chained manacle dangling from the granite pillar. Upon removing the cuffs encircling her wrists he secured first her left then her right wrist to the corresponding manacles. Each chain clanked as they were pulled through the rings. Antara’s arms began to splay out as they were raised above her head. The sound ceased and the chains were locked into place. She stood in the void between the towering rocks on the balls of her feet. She could only think of the amount of time she had spent in this position over the last eleven days.
The overseer walked around to face her. She stared up at him, sweat streaming down her face, her hair dripping wet.
He reached for the collar chain. He pulled her toward him with brutish cruelty, knowing full well the pain he caused by wrenching her immutable shoulders. He unclipped the whip from his belt. Holding it in front of her face, knuckles cracking as he gripped the handle. The sinews in his arm like cables. He released her, shoving her backwards. Shoulders tortured. She looked to the sky gasping for breath.
The coiled whip was shaken out behind her. He studied the naked flesh before him; alien eyes tracing the horrendous scars that laced her back and sides from previous encounters under the lash, and the countless rivers of sweat that weaved their way, aimlessly down every part of her exposed muscular body.
The whip cracked like a gunshot. Antara reeled from the impact, crying out in pain.
A second lash split her open across both shoulder blades, it’s lightning tongue striking her with a mist of perspiration.
A third, fourth and fifth. Antara screamed out her agony, the recoil of her pain racked her body. Streams of blood flowed down her back; rivers of torture.
Another lash struck. Slicing through muscle below her ribs. Blood rose instantly, running freely down her right hip.
Her body tensed rigid on delivery of the burning laceration that stripped a line of skin from her lower back. Another landed diagonally across the middle of her ravaged back, and another above the previous.
Every lash licked her with devastating ferocity, and for the union of sweat and blood, left her body in a spray of crimson. The order of her stripes were laid across her back in a random mess of overlapping wounds.
Again and again the whip hammered through her skin, cutting her to ribbons. Screaming for death, droplets of sweat flying from her soaked hair as her head jerks back in dreadful anguish.
The overseer come torturer flogged the girl without tiring and without mercy until she hung from her wrists; her back almost entirely excoriated. Her sides so lacerated that her ribs were laid bare in places, and the blood from her back wet her legs down to her feet.
Her bringer of inhuman suffering returned to face her. He used the dripping wet cloth between her legs to wipe her blood from his whip. He clenched at her hair, raising her head to meet his gaze. Barely conscious she stared defiantly into his eyes before looking down. Her back was so torn open that any movement was unbearable.
He let her head drop and left her hanging by her wrists in the blistering heat.
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