Troy's Amulet

Chapter 2: Tortured To No End

"Ten'million gold pieces." The Guard Darwin snorted like a pig stuck in thick mud, spitting a spew of black juice out of his mouth and to the dirt beside me. I watched the juice seep into the cracks between the particles of the dirt floor, becoming conjoint with the earth. "Incase y'ur parents wanna pay y'ur bail." My guard grinned, wide and snaggle-toothed, grim and dark. I said nothing. A sarcastic remark would've resulted in god knows what kind of punishment, yet an agreeing remark would've been taken as "smartass" and would have a synonymous outcome. I simply stared up at the single, rusty silver loop descending from the middle of the crooked, wooden ceiling of the county jail's dungeon with mixed emotions.

The Guard Darwin faced a wooden table, his eyes tracing over all the tools that lay freshly sanitized from that mornings session of "questioning" on other victims--prisoners--. His freshly washed hands grazed over an object that looked like a question mark with a coffee black handle and a slick, curved blade. Shaking his head, he placed it back on the leaning table to join it's comrades.

Gulping, I gaped at the array of devices on the table. Which one was he about to use on me? Then, I solemly wished that The Bill Of Rights hadn't been abolished upon my birthyear.

"Isn't this a questioning?" I heard myself spit forward. For almost three hours now, everytime I attempted to push words forth from my throat, my esophagus would close up and leave the words neglected and cracked, irreversibly. I would choke on my speech as it rose in my throat like vomit for fear of what was to come.

The Guard Darwin had made the sentence very clear--torture--and with him that meant anything from quartering to pulling teeth, both guresome thoughts that brought back my speech vomit. I tried mercilessly, to no avail, to stop these thoughts from racing around in my head, but it seemed like everytime I began a knew unit of thought, it always related to the old units similar to the school learning structure.

My knees shook, barely, unnoticeably, but I stood my ground as if I were proud, waiting for an answer from my guard. My first mistake was always talking.

"Yes'm." He grunted, finally making up his mind and grabbing a long, tightly coiled rope from the disheveled table, dropping my dignity as he picked up my suffering in his hands. "Get up." He ordered and suddenly I scolded myself for having said something to make the questioning go quicker. 

The fear in the air sat palpably on top of us two. I breathed it in with every swig of oxygen I took from the half-empty cup called the world. The room was isolated, but felt like people were packed tightly in it, giving off full body heat, causing my pores to expel a few drops of sweat. It suddenly occured to me that this wasn't hot sweat it was nervous sweat.

The Guard Darwin slung one frailed end of the rope through the circle hook coming down from the ceiling, pulling the string halfway through the loop before tying a tight, firm knot. My stomach tightened, bile rising up into my throat, sickeningly. Then, the husky, always drunk looking man narrowed his mud brown eyes on me.

"C'mere." He cawed, as if it was far too much trouble on his part to separate the two words and say them above a whisper.

Slowly, I inched upwards from my slumped demure on the germ abundant jail floor. With every step I reluctantly stole, a sharp pain slithered through my head behind a quickly moving vain. My blood was in a race with my heart for time as I took in every inch of the rope, visibly, hearing the screams I would soon be making. The strings intertwined to make the rope were so splintered it made my ears sore.

The Guard Darwin snatched my left arm by the wrist, tautly binding the twine around my wrist, then repeating the same step for my right. Then, he slithered to the back of the room and hoisted the rope upward, pulling my hands towards heaven with a great heave before tying the coil down on a metal bar attatcked to the wall. Swiftly walking over to me, the man ripped the back material from my shirt clean off, exposing my back.