by Hadena James
I finished the cigarette and walked back inside. Two cigarettes in thirty minutes was not a good sign. I planted myself against a nightstand, letting it hold most of my weight. I was now across from Lucas. The other men in the room were turning to look at me. However, it was Lucas that needed to really understand what I was saying.
“Why do people torture?” I asked.
“Sexual Sadism, need to control, there are dozens of reasons for someone to torture…”
“Stop,” I interrupted, holding up a hand. “Those are all modern reasons to torture. You keep asking what motivates our killer to use torture. It’s a good question, but is it complete?”
I took a deep breath to give him a second to catch up with me.
“I ask why torture, it’s no longer vogue.” I said after a few seconds had passed.
“Vogue?” Lucas raised an eyebrow. “Lots of killers torture. Torture leads to gratification of some sort, usually sexual, but it doesn’t…”
“Stop again. That’s the hitch. The difference between you and me. We aren’t dealing with a sexual gratification torturer. We are dealing with a craftsman. Our torturer probably has whatever psychological mumbo-jumbo you want to plant on them, but that isn’t the motivation behind the torture. It’s a show. Back in the day, torturers and executioners had different standings than the rest of society. They were reviled, feared and yet, admired. It wasn’t an office job, by any means; you couldn’t go into the office if you didn’t enjoy the work, so torturers enjoyed what they did, but…” I stopped again, letting the thought form completely.
“But what?” Xavier asked.
“But it also wasn’t frowned upon. Torturers were either sanctified or justified in their work, depending on who they worked for. Sanctified torturers worked for the Church. They tortured in the name of God. Justified torturers worked for the crown. They tortured in the name of the law. So, yes, they got something out of it, they couldn’t have done it if they didn’t, but it wasn’t the driving factor behind it. They had either the power of the Church or the Crown behind them. As such, they were masters of their trade. It wasn’t just a position that could be paid to whoever took the job. It required skill, knowledge, and understanding. If the torturer failed to have the necessary skills and knowledge, then their work was pointless. They either killed when they weren’t supposed to or they frucked it up and didn’t get the job done. Remember the horror stories of executioners who required two or three or more swings to behead a human? They weren’t the most sought after executioners; they were the ones that would do in a pinch. The ones that made the most money were the ones that did it with one strike. The same is true of torturers. Looking at more modern history and more common knowledge history, we’ll use the Salem Witch Trials as an example. Very few of the suspected witches were put to death. Most of the discovered witches sentences were commuted or completely negated when the tribunal frucked up. The tribunal accidentally pressed a man to death which ended the hysteria. It wasn’t intentional, but they didn’t know what they were doing and over did the weights. The man’s ribs broke and his chest collapsed. That single event seriously changed the Salem Witch Trials. Now, take that knowledge and go back three or four hundred years. If the Spanish Inquisition had made the same mistakes, it would have changed the course of the Inquisition. The torturers were skilled monks. They were trained in the art of torture. If they hadn’t been trained, if people had died by accident during the process of getting them to confess, the public would have been outraged, just as they had been in Salem. The Inquisition would have died out. It didn’t. It didn’t because the torturers were not just sanctified and righteous, but because they knew what they were doing.”
“You think the motives are more medieval?” Alejandro asked.
“Yes, I do. This isn’t just some guy butchering people because he can. It has control. It has skill. It has knowledge. It has understanding of medieval devices. Whoever this killer is, they would have been a perfect torturer for the Middle Ages. I think that is a key. The mechanisms, even when they are wrong, they are grotesquely wrong. The maidens with their long spikes are a grotesque exaggeration of a real torture method. The Scavenger’s Daughter being used to kill instead of just punish, is a grotesque exaggeration of its purpose. Yet neither are unheard of. The maiden was used to kill, just slowly. The scavenger was used to humiliate, but in extreme cases, could be used to kill, slowly. That is the one thing all of these have in common, they are meant to kill slowly. With the exception of the first one.” I frowned again.
“What do you mean?” Lucas had crossed his arms over his chest.
“Drawing and quartering is quick in comparison to impaling and a maiden, but incredibly painful. I think they used it first because of the sexual assaults they had committed. I think it churned their stomach, so to speak. I think that’s why they made them die quickly. Impaling is much much much slower. Drawing and quartering may take ten minutes, but impaling takes days. Maidens with short spikes take days. The Scavenger’s Daughter would take,” I looked at Xavier.
“If they didn’t die of shock, it would be an hour or more process. Probably the most painful hour they ever experienced.” He confirmed.
“There you go, an hour or more. Slow death. The maidens would have been fast, but not nearly that fast. I reexamined the spikes while I was standing in there. I’m short, five foot, three inches tall. One of the spikes would have gone through my head. But a woman of taller stature, even my cousin Nyleena, wouldn’t have. She’s only three inches taller than me. Three inches is a lot in this situation.”
“All our maiden victims were five foot six inches or taller.” Xavier said.
“Meaning the only spikes to the head were through the face.”
“Yes and none were lethal. I estimate it took about twenty minutes for most of the maiden victims to die. They all died of blood loss. Lots of internal organs were nicked, but the spikes had a tendency to hit bone first.”
“Bad spike positioning or deliberate?” I frowned. “Twenty minutes is a lot faster than the others.”
“But not as fast as the drawing and quartering,” Lucas reminded me.
“Very true and the pain from the maidens would have been excruciating. I rethought the spikes and while they are long, they aren’t very big. If one went through a hand or a leg, it would hurt like hell, but it probably wouldn’t have hit anything vital. The spikes to the body were the important ones.”
“You think it could have taken longer?” Xavier asked.
“No clue, maybe, maybe not, it would depend a lot on the women. Women who are fast clotters would have lasted longer than ones with anemia.” I looked at him finally, “that is your job. Mine is to evaluate and reconsider some of your theories. My conclusion is that modern day psychology applies, but only so much, because our killer is not using modern day thought processes to do their killing. For whatever reason, they believe they are either justified or sanctified by the torture. Hence the implements.”
“Then maybe we need to re-evaluate,” Xavier suggested.
“Actually, I think we need to visit the museum first,” Lucas corrected.
Chapter 26