The Fine Art of Torture (Slave of the Aristocracy Book 3)

by Ashley Zacharias

  “We can have a lot more fun than this,” the professor said. “I didn’t put the electrodes in willy-nilly. I inserted them in the order that they were mounted in the foam. The electrodes from one edge were inserted into the center of her nipple and I worked outward toward the edge of her areola. This lever stimulates the ranks of electrodes in order.” The professor flipped another switch and the outer edge of Irene’s areola burned with invisible fire. As he moved the lever slowly, the ring of fire contracted to the base of her nipple, climbed the sides, and then burned in the tip.

  She screamed in a most satisfactory way.

  He moved the lever slowly back and the ring of fire expanded again. He repeated that action several times, listening to the change of pitch in her screams as the pain flowed from the less-sensitive outer areola to the most sensitive tip of her nipple.

  The pain subsided when he flipped the switch off again.

  She was left gasping for breath.

  “Would you like to play for a while, Moe?” the professor asked.

  The bald man nodded. “I would.” He looked at Al. “I think she could take a little more pain without damage. Do you have more current available?”

  “I sure do,” Al replied.

  “God, no!” Irene’s voice was already hoarse from screaming but her words were clear enough.

  The men laughed at her.

  Their afternoon had barely begun.

  “Let’s try another fifty percent increase in the current, just to make sure that we’re stimulating every nerve.” Al watched the dial as he adjusted the knob.

  “Please,” she croaked. “Mercy, plea–“

  Moe hit the switch and her nipple flared with the worst pain that she had ever felt.

  The walls echoed with her screams.

  She didn’t know how long Moe left the current flowing, but it felt like an eternity. Her voice broke and she could scream no more. She was reduced to incoherent sobbing.

  She never stopped struggling against the leather straps that bound her. She wasn’t aware that she was doing it. She was aware of nothing but the agony in her nipple. Her single little nipple.

  Moe flipped the current off and then, with barely a pause, flipped the next switch and began working the lever back and forth, driving concentric waves of pain from the perimeter of her areole inward to the base of her nipple, then up the sides to the tip where the pain was most intense and then back out to the perimeter.

  It took him a long time to tire of that game.

  When he finally turned away from the machine, the professor said, “Well, we’ve certainly given that nipple a workout.” He turned to Irene and said, “Please, my dear, tell us how that felt.”

  “It hurt.” Her voice was little more than a croak.

  “I’m sure it did. But I was hoping that you could be a little more descriptive. What did the pain feel like?”

  “Burning. Not quite burning, but something like it. Not crushing or cutting. Most like burning. It was the purest pain that I’ve ever felt.” It hurt to speak, but she knew that the longer she spoke, the longer she was delaying the onset of the next round of pain. She wanted to keep talking all afternoon but she could think of no more to say.

  “Pure pain. How wonderful.” He gazed at her nipple for a long moment. She was breathing hard and her chest was heaving, making the wires slowly rise and fall. “Does the pain stop immediately when we turn it off?”

  “No. It mostly goes away, except for the pain of all the needles in my breasts. That’s constant. But my nerves keep jumping from the abuse, sending random little bolts of pain through my chest every couple of seconds after the current stops.

  “Are you feeling that now?”

  “Yes.”

  The professor turned to his guests. “Would you like to join me in a cup of tea? I’d like to let Irene rest for a few minutes before we begin again.”

  She watched the four men drift away, chatting lightly.

  When she was alone she slumped limp in her bonds and basked in her misery. Her nipple ached terribly. Each bolt of residual pain caught her by surprise and made her twitch and gasp.

  This was just the first round of torture. The professor had spent a long time meticulously placing each of the ninety-six pairs of electrodes. He wasn’t going to remove them until he had his fill.

  She suspected that the professor didn’t bore easily when he was torturing a woman.

  She was facing a long, agonizing afternoon. Or maybe longer than that. Maybe the professor would break for dinner and spend the evening continuing to torture her. Maybe he would keep going all night long.

  Maybe tomorrow he would implant the electrodes in her right nipple and do this all over again.

  Or maybe in her clit. That would bring her to a whole new level of agony.

  The minutes flew by. Long before she was ready to suffer more torture, she heard the door open and the four gentlemen come back into the room. They were laughing at some witticism as they crossed the floor.

  The professor addressed her. “My dear, are you still feeling the random bolts of pain that you described after the first session?”

  “No. They’ve pretty much faded away. I just feel the dull ache of all the needles.”

  “Carl,” the professor said, “I believe that it’s your turn. Please enjoy yourself for a while.”

  The handsome younger man smiled and nodded. “Would you mind if I blindfolded the woman?”

  It stuck Irene as odd that he referred to her as the woman rather than as the slave. Technically, he was wrong. A woman was a person and she was not. When she had sold herself into slavery, she had become property.

  “Not at all.”

  Carl was familiar with the studio. He walked over to the wall and opened a cabinet to reveal an array of objects neatly arranged on a pegboard. The professor’s studio was well stocked with the tools of the torturer.

  He returned with a blindfold that was like an oversized sleep mask but made of soft leather rather than fabric. When he buckled it over Irene’s eyes, she could see nothing, not even a hint of light around the edges.

  The four men were silent, waiting.

  Nothing seemed to happen for a long time; then suddenly her nipple was burning in agony. She jerked against her bonds and shrieked.

  As suddenly as the pain started, it stopped, leaving her gasping for breath. Before she could regain herself, her nipple was hit by another sharp shock that elicited another shriek. This one stopped just as quickly.

  Carl kept delivering these brief sudden shocks for a long time. There was no pattern that Irene could discern. Sometimes they were separated by more than a minute and sometimes by less than a second.

  With the blindfold on, she couldn’t see when he was reaching for the switch.

  After every shock, she mentally braced herself, trying to steel her mind against the next one. But every one took her by surprise and made her jump against the straps and shriek. She felt like a puppet with a madman jerking her strings.

  “When I shock her, her breast jumps,” Carl said. “Why is that?” He hit her with another couple of shocks in succession and watched her breast bounce.

  “Her pectoral muscle underneath is spasming,” Moe said. “Is the shock penetrating all the way through the breast?”

  “No,” Al replied. “It couldn’t possibly penetrate that deeply. The current is strictly confined to the electrode array. We have to keep the current away from her heart. I think that the muscle flexing is a behavioral event. Purely voluntary.”

  “That could be,” Moe replied. “People instinctively contract their muscles to counteract pain. The sensation of the contracted muscle helps takes attention away from the pain.”

  “If it’s voluntary, then she should be able to control it,” Carl replied.

  “My dear,” the professor said, “do you think that you’d be able to keep your muscles relaxed when you get shocked?”

  “I can try,” Irene replied. Maybe they would show s
ome mercy if she cooperated.

  Fat chance.

  She concentrated on relaxing her muscles. When she was hanging limp in the straps, Carl hit the switch.

  She bounced and shrieked.

  “That didn’t work,” Moe said.

  “I was surprised,” Irene replied. “Try giving me some warning next time.”

  “Okay,” Carl replied. “Tell me when you’re ready.”

  She hung limp again. “Okay.”

  “Three … two … one …” He flicked the switch on and off.

  “I think she bounced less,” Moe said.

  “Considerably less, I think,” Carl said. “Let’s try getting more cognitive about it. Go limp and try telling yourself that you don’t care any more. You just don’t care what we do to you.”

  “Okay.” She relaxed in her bonds, lolled her head back against the padded platform and thought, So what? They’re going to do what they want. They’re not causing any real damage. I can’t stop it so I may as well ignore it.

  “Three … two … one …” He toggled the switch.

  “See? She’s still as limp as a rag doll. No bounce at all. Good job, slave. Good job.”

  Yeah, great, Irene thought. I’m really doing well at being tortured. That’s some accomplishment. Aloud, she said, “It still hurts.”

  “It’s supposed to hurt,” the professor said.

  Carl hit her with the juice a few more times while Irene concentrated on not caring. When she wasn’t bouncing every time, he quickly grew bored. “Does anyone else want a turn?”

  “Al?” the professor asked. “It’s your machine. You want to play with her for a while.”

  “Sure.”

  “Blindfold on or off?” the professor asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. May as well leave it on.”

  Al began a new game. He turned the pain on and left it on. Then he played with the intensity knob.

  Irene felt the pain in her nipple decrease to merely painful, then surge to agonizing, then decrease to painful again. Her moans ebbed and flowed in synchrony with the pain.

  After playing around with that for a while, he set the pain level at about halfway between the two extremes – a level that she would label as severe but not debilitating – and left it there.

  “Shall we look at the effect of prolonged stimulation?” he asked.

  “Lets do that,” the professor replied.

  “My feet are beginning to ache,” Moe said.

  “This concrete floor is hard on the feet. We should retire to the study,” the professor said. “I have a single malt that’s worth savoring.”

  The four men left Irene strapped down, blindfolded, the current flowing, her nipple burning.

  She was beyond screaming. Now she just wept constantly. The leather blindfold was soon soaked with her tears and overflowed. They flowed down her cheeks, over her jaw, and around her breasts.

  She couldn’t tell how much time passed but it must have been an hour at least. And she suffered for every second of that hour.

  She could think of nothing but her poor nipple. She could not form a coherent thought to distract herself.

  A single nipple was her entire universe.

  When the men returned, she thought, at first, that she was hallucinating.

  “How are you feeling, my dear?” the professor asked.

  “Pain,” was the only word that she could choke out between her sobs.

  “Has the pain decreased at all or is it still as intense as when we left?” Al asked.

  “Same.”

  “Excellent,” Al said. “No habituation. No nerve damage. I count this experiment as a success.”

  The four men congratulated each other.

  They left the current running through Irene’s nipple as they chatted about how wonderful the experience had been and thanked the professor for the entertainment.

  Irene sobbed in pain in the background.

  Carl removed the blindfold. “This thing is soaking wet. I don’t think she stopped crying all afternoon.”

  Carl and Moe congratulated Al and the professor all over again.

  Irene’s tears continued to flow.

  She barely noticed when Al finally flipped the switch and the current died. Her nipple continued to burn and throb.

  “Is that better?” The professor looked into her red, blurry eyes.

  She shook her head. “No. It still hurts.”

  “With the same intensity?” Moe asked.

  She nodded. “It feels the same.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “I think we might have sensitized the nociceptors to the point that the needles alone are making them fire at a maximum level.”

  Carl shrugged. “Or it might be a higher level cortical response. It might be a learned association with the presence of the needles.”

  “It sounds like further research is required.” The professor chuckled.

  “No, please,” Irene said.

  Carl’s hand shot out and he flicked the power on.

  Irene shrieked and her body jerked.

  The men laughed.

  He flipped the power back off. “She might think she’s feeling the same intensity when the power’s off, but clearly she’s not.”

  “We could keep playing at this for hours,” the professor said.

  Irene shuddered in her bonds.

  The professor continued, “But I’m afraid that I have to get dinner started and it’s going to take a while to get these electrodes out.”

  The other three men thanked him for his hospitality and left the building, chatting among themselves.

  The professor repositioned the magnifying glass in front of Irene’s breast and used the tweezers to pull the first pair of electrodes from the edge of her areola. It took a slight tug to free the shaft. She felt it, but any pain was masked by the constant burning and throbbing in her badly abused flesh.

  It took nearly half an hour for the professor to remove each pair of electrodes and carefully insert them back into the foam container in the right order.

  When he was finished, Irene’s left nipple was noticeably more swollen than her right. The swelling pushed most of the wrinkles out.

  The professor noticed where she was looking. “The needle electrodes were small but they broke innumerable capillaries so that blood infused your tissue. The fluid will be reabsorbed in a day or so and the swelling will go down. There may be some discoloration from the bruising for a while. But soon enough, you’ll be as good as new.”

  He put his finger on the nipple.

  She winced.

  “Tender?”

  “Very.”

  “I’m not surprised. It was subjected to a considerable ordeal.”

  He unstrapped her from the near-vertical service and offered his hand so that she could steady herself when she stepped down to the floor.

  “Dinner will be ready in about an hour,” he said. “You can clean yourself up and rest. I’ll find you when it’s time to eat. Don’t forget, we dress for meals.”

  * * *

  The slight pressure of the green dress and camisole against her throbbing left nipple made Irene constantly aware of it throughout the dinner.

  The professor served spicy meatloaf, mashed potatoes, sautéed sugar snap peas, and cole slaw. It was simple food, but every bite tasted delicious.

  “I’ll be at the university teaching for most of the day tomorrow, so you’ll be on your own. Feel free to eat whatever you find in the kitchen. I ask only that you clean up after yourself. I’m a bit particular about having a clean house.”

  Irene made a mental note to keep the house spotless. The professor could induce so much agony in a single nipple that she felt as though she were losing her mind. She was terrified of how much she might be made to suffer if he decided to punish her deliberately.

  “I trust that you have realized by now that you will become a connoisseur of pain after living with me for a while.”

  “I will never learn to like
pain,” she replied.

  “No, you will not. You will always hate it. But you don’t have to like something to become a connoisseur. That’s not what the word means. It comes from the French word meaning ‘one who knows.’ It means that you will accumulate enough experience to become expert in distinguishing the fine nuances of different kinds of pain. You will recognize the difference in quality between strain on a muscle and strain on a ligament. The difference between burning and cold. Between constriction and crushing. And, of course, the fine distinction between a great variety of whips, floggers, and canes.”

  She had been caned once and would bear a half-dozen delicate scars on her backside for the rest of her life. She looked at him with wide eyes.

  His eyes twinkled. “I noticed the scars from a caning. I’m guessing that was about eight months ago?”

  “More like four and a half.”

  “Excellent. You heal quickly. That’s good to know.”

  She looked at him with misgiving.

  “You aren’t badly scarred. I wouldn’t worry about it. It gives you an aspect of wildness. Of being in the hands of a man who was slightly out of control. It was a man who caned you, was it not?”

  “Yes. My first owner. I think it was the first time that he ever caned anyone. He was in a rage.”

  “Then you are lucky that he did not do worse.”

  He was right. Irene had seen slaves whose backs and buttocks had been badly disfigured by vicious canings. “I do consider myself lucky.” But she considered herself lucky only in not having been scarred. To have been acquired by a sadistic owner was not so lucky.

  “I can promise you that you will never be scarred by a cane in my hands. I never lose my temper. I have excellent control with a cane. I can inflict as much pain as I wish without breaking the skin.”

  “Thank you,” seemed like an oddly appropriate response.

  He laughed. “You’re welcome.”

  She paused for a moment to appreciate the throbbing in her nipple. Though it was swollen and tender, she had to admit that the professor had administered excruciating pain without doing any permanent damage. There was a certain art in that.

  The professor continued to speak in the style of a lecture. “As I was saying, you will become a connoisseur of pain. I encourage you to pay close attention to your suffering so that, as much as you hate the experience at a visceral level, you will come to appreciate it intellectually. That will help you to endure what I will do to you.” He ignored her baleful stare. “In fact, I would like you to be more than a connoisseur. I would like you to become a student of pain. I would like you to engage in a deep study of the subject. I believe that you are a highly intelligent woman and will be able to master the topic. The men you met today each has his own perspective. Alfred Alfredson is an engineer and has a mechanical view of torture. Morley Goldman is a medical doctor who runs a clinic at the university and lectures in the medical school. He understands the physiology of torture. Carl Esterhill is a professor in the Psychology Department who has, at a young age, already made substantial contributions to the study of animal behavior. And I teach art appreciation and art history. Each of us can benefit from your insights as the tortured woman.”