Church of Chains

by Sean O'Kane

There was a door leading out from one of the rooms in which Paula had endured a day’s contemplation. She was taken through this and down some steps into a maze of cellars. At the door of the farthest one the two brothers who held her tore off the gown in which she had danced and pushed her in naked. It was nearly pitch black and there was only straw on the stone floor. But they weren’t finished yet. One of the men switched on a dim light and Paula saw the other lift a metal grating in the floor. She began to scream and beg but only received another blow to the face. They lifted her easily down through the hole and let her hang at the full extent of her arms, holding her only by her wrists. And then they let her drop. She fell only a foot or so but it might as well have been a mile. The grating was closed above her and she heard a padlock clamped into place. Then they left her and turned out the light in the room above as they went.

  Once her eyes became accustomed to the dark, she realised it wasn’t total. There was a small, filthy little window set in the wall of the cellar above her and this let in just enough light for her to be able to make out her surroundings. She was in a pit barely big enough for her to lie down in. There was some old, stale straw in one corner and down one side of her prison ran a shallow gutter, presumably for her waste. A word came back to her from history lessons at school, ‘oubliette’, a pit into which prisoners were thrown to be forgotten about until they starved to death. Were parts of the monastery old enough for this to be a real one? It did the job even if it wasn’t authentic. And would they leave her? No, she was sure that the Patriarch would want to get out of her all the information he could. She shuddered at the implacable willpower she had sensed in him. She had no information to give him. But she knew that the Church had members in the police and she was sure that even now Maria’s story was being checked and her own identity established. Besides the girls in her group would confirm that they all thought she was different in some way. And Brother Davis would remember his first misgivings about her. She sank down miserably in a corner and tried to curl up on the straw to keep warm. At last she fell into an exhausted sleep.

  She was woken by the light being turned on in the cellar above her and the grate being unlocked and lifted. Paula blinked in the light and saw a ladder being lowered; Father Burton’s voice told her to climb it. She emerged into the cellar and saw the brothers preparing it for her. New chains were being attached to old rings set in the walls and their strengths tested. Already some hung from the ceiling and all Paula’s terror returned. Father Burton smiled as he saw her look about her.

  “You are right to be terrified. We know quite well who you really are and all that remains is to know who you were to report to, and how. The Patriarch himself intends to get the information from you.”

  Paula could only drop to her knees, “Please Master! I am not a spy!” she begged.

  Father Burton’s only response was to gesture irritably to the brothers that they should begin. Her wrists were fastened together behind her and at the same time a chain was clipped to the catches on her restraints. The chain ran through a ring in the ceiling and two of the brothers simply hauled her up by it. Paula screamed as she never had before. It felt as if her shoulders were being torn from her body as her arms were pulled up behind her and her whole bodyweight came against them. They pulled her up until she was hanging some four feet off the floor. Through her tears and screams she became aware that the Patriarch stood in front of her.

  “Paula Cheever. In the words of an older and more crude movement than mine. I am going to put you to the question. And I will go on asking it until I think I have arrived at the truth. Who were you to report to and how were you to contact them?”

  Paula could hardly speak from pain; all she could do was scream out again that she wasn’t a spy. Again and again he asked her the question and she shrieked out her denial until merciful darkness claimed her.

  When she came to, she was lying on the cellar floor exactly where they had let her fall, her arms still tied behind her. One of the brothers stood over her and glanced down impassively as she stirred and moaned. She heard him leave and slowly managed to lever herself into a sitting position by using the wall. Her shoulders ached savagely and she was nearly sick with fear of what they would do next. She cried until they came for her again.

  The Patriarch watched while she was laid on the floor and chains attached to her ankles this time. She begged them for mercy but they ignored her and pulled her up so that her legs were raised and spread, only her upper back remaining on the floor. The Patriarch came to stand beside her and she looked up into his implacable face. The bitterness of having the man she wanted to serve believe her to be a traitor was unbearable. She glanced up the length of her body and saw the brother who stood beyond her wide-spread thighs, and she saw his whip. She groaned.

  The Patriarch repeated the question. Paula gulped and braced herself before repeating her denial. Immediately she heard the Swish! of the whip and it lashed into her wide-open sex. It was a heavy, many-thonged whip and its impact drove all breath out of her. It seemed to crush the tender flesh between her legs and its weight on her stomach almost winded her. The Patriarch waited patiently until she had got enough breath back after screaming, and then asked her again. She sobbed out her denial and then bucked and twisted in her chains as she was whipped again. As when Father Burton had condemned her to the cane, her fear outweighed any pleasure.

  How she would have loved to have been able to tell the truth and be believed. Then she would have welcomed this pain at the hands of the Patriarch. But as it was all she could cling to was the hope that if she kept up her denials they might be forced to believe her.

  Again the question and again the denial. Swish Smack! Her left inner thigh blazed with pain this time and she arched frantically until only the back of her neck touched the floor.

  Swish Smack! Her right thigh this time and she screamed again.

  Slowly it ground on. She passed out and they gave her time to recover before starting in again. The question, the denial; Swish Smack!

  Despite the cold she was sweating with pain and hoarse with screaming. Her sex had been pounded into a kind of total white-hot agony which was all she could see or feel. She shook and trembled but croaked out her denials, stubbornly clinging to the truth. She was no spy.

  The brother who was whipping her came to stand at her head. Now the lashes bit into the crease between her buttocks and made her anus sting and blaze. But still she denied and still the dreadful whipping went on until all she could do was shake her head dumbly in denial and then moan as the whip smacked home again, her body too exhausted to even writhe anymore.

  At long last the Patriarch stopped it and ordered her to be lowered and released. She lay with her legs spread as they fell from the chains, sobbing brokenly. She felt the Patriarch’s shoe dig contemptuously at her ribs.

  “If anyone wants this slut, help yourselves.”

  At this final devastating cruelty Paula’s spirit nearly broke. What really hurt, even above the scarlet agony which consumed her body, was his anger with her. Her Master believed she was his enemy and she had no way of demonstrating her willing submission to him. Everything would be misinterpreted as stubborn loyalty to some other cause.

  She had no time to dwell on her misery however. The time they had spent whipping her wide-open sex had inflamed the brothers. One of them dragged her over to the pile of straw and lowered himself onto her while she lay on her back. Her body arched and she managed one more shriek as he thrust in between her tortured lips. The channel of her vagina was dry and it was some time before he was able to get full penetration, but once he did, her body reacted on its own. And while she lay groaning under his weight he took his pleasure with her, reaming her out and then spurting his seed into her in the casual way she so loved. The second one turned her over and raised her haunches before ramming into her back passage. Again she shrieked as the tortured flesh was stretched but then she had to moan once more in helpless pleasure as the inner membrane
s were stimulated and then flooded with his spend.

  She lay motionless for a long time after they went. But eventually the door opened and Caroline came to kneel beside her. She brought a bowl with cold wet flannels in it and pressed them gently to Paula’s weals. She brought food and water as well and she urged her to make a confession. She knew Paula was no spy, she said, she could have saved herself that terrible caning if she had told Father Burton that it was she, Caroline who had started the fight. Paula knew the trick—hard and then soft—wear them down. But she couldn’t explain the truth to Caroline either, it would seem like a partial confession and they would come after the rest of it just as hard. And Caroline left her with a pitying look. The brothers returned and lowered her back into her prison.

  She had no real way of measuring time in the dark. They left her a blanket and she slept, curled protectively around her throbbing sex. At some point food came and was lowered in a bucket which was hauled up again when she had eaten the bread and drunk the water. She slept again, food arrived again, and so it went on until her pit stank and she itched constantly from whatever was in her straw.

  She began to sink into a stupor, she ate what she was given, she used the wretched gutter and she dozed. Time ceased to exist, the dark, the stench and the cold were the only realities. It was only much later that she learned she was down there for a week before being brought up again. She could hardly climb the ladder and sank down exhausted at the top. She noticed the men shrink from her and knew she must stink of her own filth. They only stayed long enough to ask whether she was ready to confess, listen to her refusal and say she was to be kept up here until her next appearance before the Patriarch, an appearance which would be made much more pleasant if she would stop being so stubborn. She shook her head and crawled over to the wall, to which her wrists were chained, when they told her to, and then they left. Caroline appeared again with warm water this time and sluiced off most of the filth. She told her they had something special lined up for her next time, but Paula could only shake her head again and she left, angry at Paula’s stupidity.

  Whatever they had lined up for her, she thought, they wanted her in reasonable condition for it now that deprivation had failed to break her. She got real food regularly and Caroline gradually combed out and washed her hair each day. She gave up trying to get Paula to confess and gave her the news instead.

  The Patriarch was staying on to deal with Paula himself and some new women had joined the monastery. They were volunteers she said, not rescued sluts like the others, but women who wanted to join the Church. They served of their own free will and were housed separately. They went out of the monastery to work for the Patriarch, but served like the other girls when they were in it.

  When she was taken out for questioning for the last time, Brother Davis came for her. As he knelt beside her to unchain her wrists she realised there was some pity in the way he looked at her. That scared her; this was the man who had first trained her, whose arrogant cruelty had excited her. She had never seen him look at any of the slaves with pity before, no matter how savagely they were being treated.

  “It would be better if you confessed now. The Patriarch has sent the volunteers out to work for the day; he says they are not ready to see what he intends to do to you.”

  Paula felt her legs tremble and her mouth went dry. What was left that they could possibly do? But whatever it was she had no choice but to take it.

  Chapter 23

  Naked and led by a chain clipped to the rings at her belly, Paula was led into the courtyard. Brother Davis allowed her to stand for a moment and blink owlishly until her eyes became accustomed to the daylight. It was an overcast day but to Paula it felt like brilliant sunshine which hurt her eyes. But eventually she was able to see what was in store for her.

  “The Patriarch wants to make quite certain you haven’t got any accomplices here,” Brother Davis whispered.

  She saw that the whole monastery had been gathered to watch, presumably in the hope of flushing out an accomplice by the severity of the treatment which was to be handed out to her. Even in her terror she felt the familiar comfort of her admiration for the brutal logic.

  There was a scaffold. It must have been built specially and stood where the whipping post normally did. It had a platform and above the platform rose a post. From the post a short beam protruded at right angles which was braced so that it would hold her weight and from this beam hung a simple rope. All the girls and the staff were lined up in two rows in front of it, but they had been kept well back.

  Brother Davis tugged her forward by her leash. She followed on legs which would hardly support her. By the time he led her up the steps and onto the platform where the Patriarch waited, she could hardly see through her tears.

  “Who were you to report to and how?” he asked immediately.

  She sank to her knees, “Please Master! Believe me, I am no spy!” she begged one last time.

  “How can you be anything else?” he asked.

  Paula could only shake her head once again.

  “Take her up,” he ordered calmly.

  Sweating and shaking in terror Paula watched while her normal wrist restraints were removed and long ones, almost the length of her forearms were buckled on. Steel loops ran down the insides of them and through these the end of the rope was first threaded, down one arm, up the other and then securely knotted back on itself. Brother Davis and Brother Harris hauled on the other end of the rope until Paula hung by her wrists, well clear of the platform, and then they tied it off. She swung helplessly and as her body turned on the end of the rope she saw the horses.

  Four of them were lined up at the far end of the huge courtyard, they were each ridden by a brother, and each brother held a horsewhip.

  Paula began to scream. The Patriarch climbed down from the platform and stood in front of it with one arm raised. He glanced up at Paula, his face expressionless, and then he dropped his arm. The first rider put his heels to his mount and over Paula’s despairing wail, there was the sound of hooves beginning to pound.

  Paula closed her eyes but still heard the hooves closing in on her and then with a rush of wind and the horse’s breath snorting just below, it was on her. And so was its rider’s whip. A lightning bolt of blinding pain struck across her stretched breasts and a thunderous Crack! half deafened her. Her body spun helplessly at the end of its rope and shock made her open her eyes wide. As the scene around her revolved crazily she heard hooves again, this time she craned her neck desperately to see where the horse was but it was too late. It was on her and its rider’s whip cracked across her buttocks. The force of it made her body sway as well as spin this time. She put her head back and screamed as a pain so sharp as to be almost numbing engulfed her. She screamed again and was still screaming when another thunderous Crack! exploded across her lower stomach. Her legs bicycled wildly in mid air trying to stabilise her body. The courtyard and its surrounding buildings blurred past her eyes as she spun and then the fourth horseman arrived. Whether it was one of the more openly sadistic brothers or whether his aim was just poor, Paula had no way of telling but his whip snapped around her thighs and wrapped itself tight. She screamed as a band of white fire engulfed her legs and then she choked on the scream as her legs were pulled after the rider for a second, which nearly wrenched her arms from their sockets. And when the whip did fall away, her body swung like a pendulum and spun at the same time.

  The four horsemen were now gathered at the opposite end of the courtyard to the one from which they had started. They came back. But because her body was now moving so much, as she herself frantically squirmed, Paula suffered lashes to virtually any and every part of her body. Of the next batch of four, one landed fully across her middle back and left her gasping for breath and again set her swinging madly, one caught her round the waist and spun her, one hit her breasts again. The last one, as her legs splayed and struggled in mid air, struck round one thigh and bit deep into the soft flesh at the top. It
robbed Paula of any remaining breath and the onlookers saw her gape helplessly in agony and then they saw her cruelly wrenched by one leg in the wake of the horse.

  When two batches of four lashes each had been delivered and the horses were back where they had started, Paula was taken down. She lay on the platform, sobbing and heaving for breath. Her whole body a sea of agony from wrists to ankles.

  The Patriarch came to stand over her. He asked her his question and she gave the denial which by now was the one thing she had left to cling to. He knelt beside her and held her chin so that he could look into her eyes. She blinked away some tears and tried to look back. His face was troubled, it seemed to Paula that the light of self-belief which had seemed to stream from him before was being dimmed by a cloud of doubt and she hated the thought that she was the cause.

  “It must go on!” he spoke quietly to her, grinding out the words, but she knew he meant them as much for himself as for her.

  Of course it had to go on. He had to be seen to be in control. Paula herself wouldn’t have it any other way. If she could only think of a means to convince him of the truth and save them both from this impasse...

  “I understand Master,” she said at last.

  His fierce eyes held hers. A small smile touched his lips briefly and set a fire raging in Paula’s body more bright than any pain from a whip.

  “We will talk again later,” he said quietly and then stood up and gave the order to take her up again.

  Although it felt as if her arms were being held by red-hot pincers and she faced another savage flogging, Paula’s heart rejoiced. Somehow she would convince him of the truth, and in the meantime she knew that the show had to go on, otherwise the whole edifice he had created would crumble.

  Joyfully she prepared to play her part, and when the next lash struck the pain which ripped across her buttocks and hip joined in the molten eruption her master’s smile had started in her belly. Her body’s spinning meant the next lash cut across her pubis and the cry she gave in response was one of wild abandon. She was being whipped again, but for her master’s sake this time; and there was only one way she would respond to that.