Chapter 6

Suspended Animation

The rope transmitted the motion of the pulley overhead. It felt like Simone's arms were being pulled from their sockets. Pain coursed across her chest from the constriction of the ropes. She way uncertain whether she could breathe in the trussed-up position, and, combined with that, was the queasy feeling she got from the swinging and twisting of the suspension rope.

With difficulty, Simone stretched her neck to peer toward the floor. Just a few feet below her was the sadistic Hauptmann, lying on his back on the floor, his erect cockmeat waving up at her. The unseen manipulator of the ropes was towering her so that, Simone came down until she was just touching the glans of the Hauptmann. The Hauptmann was moving his hips up and down, pushing the prick up against her widely splayed asscheeks. Simone knew that she had never been so exposed in all of her life. Her entire pubic area was more widely visible than it could be in any other possible position. She had never been so open, so exposed, and so vulnerable. The thought of her body open that way got her so frightened that she almost lost her self-control. But she knew screaming would be of no avail. She recalled Deborah on the scaffold, and knew that anything other than that would be bearable.

The Nazis lifted the helpless girl a few centimeters, then lei her slowly, gently, back down. Her pussy was centered on Hauptmann's fucktool. Simone's cunt was aroused by the feeling of the pulsing glans between her open cuntlips. She had never been fucked by her master the Hauptmann.

Now, the first time, it would be consummated in front of all of these people with her as hog-tied as an insect in a spider's web. She had begun to whimper, and with that sound, she was dropped down hard on the officer's massive cock.

She had not the breath to scream aloud as the heavy meat plunged roughly through her soft pouting membranes and into her dry constricted cuntbarrel.

Whoever was managing the ropes jerked her straight off the cock, her pussy making a slurping sound with the suction. The penetration had been unbelievably deep. Deeper than she thought anybody could ever go inside of her. She had felt the cock stab all the way in to its limit, and she was sure that he had sunk all the way to the far end of her vagina with his cockhead and poked right through the rubbery end of her womb.

The sensation was like nothing she had ever experienced before, although reminiscent of her girlhood experiments with beverage bottles. She had not recalled those childish delights in a long time, and the recollection of the things she had done with the cook's daughter out in the loft brought Simone renewed excitement. As Simone reviewed her memory of that peasant's gangbang in 1938 she realized that it was better to have her cherry taken that way, than by the lecherous soldiers that were periodically arrested on the streets for rape. Many of those girls were killed, she knew, so that the victim could not identify her attacker.

But somehow, in a way, which Simone did not quite understand, the violence of her first sexual union somehow left a taste for the bizarre within her. Sure, the boys at school were fun: and because she had already suffered everything mentionable at the hands of the peasants, she was not shy any longer of the boys. But something had been lacking in their schoolboy love-play that she had not even missed until finding it here again in the prison.

The memory of Simone's first brutal lay made her juices flow copiously. The penetration by the cruel Hauptmann's fierce tool, while he lay supine beneath the contraption rigged of rope and suspended from the ceiling, was greater than the surprise of that first ignominious rape. There would be nothing in her life to ever match that feeling of fullness, Simone knew. The penetration was so unbelievably deep, that she felt his cock go all the way to the very limit, and she was certain that he was deeper than she had ever thought anyone could go inside a woman.

The sensation of fullness made her juices flow, and she was raised up and made to rotate simultaneously so that her cuntbarrel twisted around the upthrust cock. The unseen manipulator of the pulley was jerking her up and down in short swift strokes as she was being turned, so that the Hauptmann, with effort, could time his pumping movements in rhythm with her bouncing asscheeks. Simone thrashed her head in circles as her cuntwalls sucked her master in deeper, impaling herself further than she could ever have imagined. Like a puppet, her German masters were making her gyrate frantically, first one way, then another.

Her voice, distorted with pain was grunting disarticulated syllables of animal passion. She had not expected such a feeling of utter domination; such complete lack of self-control.

Her masters were reaching far into her-to the very core of her femininity. With lancinating effect, the pole of rigid cockmeat bore into her. Far within, she could feel it twitch against her pussywalls, around and around, battering everywhere, incessant upon her slick corrugated cuntbarrel. Every inch of her body had been subjected to degradation and exposure since her capture, but this was the final and most complete invasion of privacy.

Suddenly, Simone was pulled up and away from the probing rod. The complete emptiness caused by the cold absence of cock, made Simone cry out. Her scream was cut short by the startling sensation of hurtling down. Down onto the firm iron cock. Simone was sure that she could feel the cock ripping through her velvety coral membranes, ramming tightly against the very opening of her bruised womb. She made her body rigid to keep the lance out of her.

She tightened her asscheeks in one futile attempt to forestall the entry, to prevent the huge cock from forcing itself through her body, but the shock of blinding pain stopped her, and her membranes opened under the force of gravity.

At the angle of penetration, even a virginal cunt would let a cock sink in right up to the balls. But with Simone's experience, the invasion simply set her body to rocking rhythmically. The depravity of being split like that, hanging with, thighs widespread for such abuse, had taken away Simone's feelings of identity as a person. She now felt she was only a thing used for sexual gratification. Food for animal lust. Somehow the knowledge of her total humiliation made her feel more sensually free than ever before, and she ground her pussy viciously on the cock. Her pussy was so open, so vulnerable. Still an unseen manipulator pulled her up and down.

Eventually, the rope manipulator was holding her still, just above the Hauptmann's thrusting hips. This allowed him to drive upward, by arching his back, and thrust up to barely connect with her mucous membranes and tease her warming lust. The Hauptmann went in all the way, then eased out back to the edge of the sphincter, again and again, until the exploding cock discharged.

Simone could feel the, stiffening of the plunging rod, the rock hardness that seemed to throb momentarily before it began squishing out its load. The Hauptmann must have signaled the man using the pulley, for Simone felt herself drop, to fall onto the exploding cock.

Her excited body rode insanely up and down as the Hauptmann brought himself off. With the angle of penetration, Simone never felt so completely used up, never so completely debased. She was sore and weak, but still the hammering question: "Who were your contacts in the Belgian Students Union?"

Simone heard the pulley overhead squeak, and she was raised to about shoulder height. Her bare ass was slapped painfully. The motion transmitted to the ropes and the pain made her feel queasy again.

She knew that her cunt was open and wet, visible to all. But the cramped position she was in made it impossible to keep her bladder from contracting.

They rained blow after blow upon her, as though the shame of what happened was not sufficient. Behind the sound of urine spattering on the floor at their feet, she heard the sound of the whip, as it buzzed through the air.

She began to scream in anticipation, but the lash on her exposed asscheek cut short her cry.

"Talk now!" The Hauptmann shouted.

"I know nothing."

Buzz; snap. The whip struck her vulnerable flank again.

"We can flay the skin right off you, you understand? Good. Names. We want them and we'll get them from you."

"I tell you I'm not involved in any..."

Snap.

Simone lurched with the pain as it coursed over her. Her splayed hips stung with a burning she could not soothe with her wrists cuffed.

"Next one will be aimed right across your cunt, you understand?"

Simone thought briefly of Alex. Would he betray her under the reverse circumstances? She liked to think that he would not, but would hold out to the death rather than reveal Simone's name. But Simone knew, with a sting of guilt, that she would not hold out that long.

"Yiiieeee!" an agonizing scream filled the room for some moments before her brain connected with the pain across her cuntlips and she realized that it was she who was screaming. When she stopped trembling in her swaying perch, the Hauptmann was fondling her clit with his fingers.

"You understand, we could do the same thing to you we had done to your Jew friend. Arrows. Or just whip handles." To punctuate his statement he rammed the handle of his whip into her open pussy, driving it forward and skewering her mercilessly with it.

Simone clenched her fists, trying hard to hold the growing lust which seemed to bloat her body all out of proportion. As the leather covered metal whiphandle thrust in and out of her pussy, her cuntwalls were being stretched far apart. The thick invader was painfully splitting her tissues.

Each thrust of the handle made Simone's body dangle helplessly on the suspended ropes. The heavy handle made her tingle with the stimulation around her now swollen pussylips.

The passionate response seemed to grow within her like a storm.

Then the storm broke.

Her cunt drooled sloppily as the heavy metallic invader skewered and twisted deep within. Her ass was expanding and contracting in sympathy with the dildo's movements.

Simone surrendered to an intensity of feeling as the handle was twisted in and out, in and out. "Ummmmnnngh!" she grunted; the pole seemed to fill her entire body and leave no room for breath. The Hauptmann's whiphandle gouged her insides viciously, and she was helpless to fight or to withdraw. She started pleading wordlessly; a torrent of incoherent syllables of abject submission to her Nazi tormentor.

But he only poked harder and deeper, as though his purpose was not to gain information, but to impale the bruised girl to death. He was fucking her madly with the handle, ramming it in and out unyieldingly, like an overgrown dildo. The prod was giving her incredible cramps, and she could feel the embossed metal handle abrading her cunt like a hot file.

Involuntarily her pussy muscles squeezed down on it, and that caused her love dew to flow, lubricating the passage of the dildo. The brutal handle continued to fuck in and out of her, and the instrument incited her hot youthful blood. Her cunt was creaming, and the nectar flowed. Simone knew that she would not betray Alex's trust. She would not talk. The fucking bastards could not torture her enough to make her tell them anything.

The Hauptmann must have realized that his brutal torture was but exciting his victim, rather than having its intended effect. Simone's wrists were freed from her ankles and the rope was taken from around her shoulders so that she hung head down. Then the others left the room.

The excitement instilled in her young body had not been allayed. Simone could see how the beating and the whiphandle fucking she received had stimulated her, for her nipples hung long as she swung, upside down.

When she got accustomed to being upside down, she began fondling her breasts. The smooth cones that jutted out were soft and tender to her kneading fingers. Simone rubbed her puffy, bruised tits between her fingertips until she was so sensitive she could not stand it any more. She let her hands slide along her sides, linger at her navel, and then tease gently at her wet cunt. Simone strummed her erect clit and writhed, moving her hips in rhythm with her fingers as they probed and buried themselves deep between her slick cuntlips. Simone was being overpowered with her sensations, and she bucked and swirled her ass so that even her breasts quivered.

"You're horny," she grunted to herself. "You're horny," she whispered as she ground her hand into her cunt like a dildo. Her hot pussy was gyrating under her touch. It was wet and warm and when she sank one finger right up to the knuckle in her tight moist hole of passion, her groin exploded with searing pain. She spread her knees as far apart as she could, and with her hand began massaging her large labia.

Simone inserted another finger into her cunt and wriggled her ass while she pried and probed in the lubricated cuntbarrel.

Her breath was an irregular series of spasmodic gasps, as she fingered her pulpy cunt of trembling tissues, liberally stopped with her love lava. She pulled her hands away, and rubbed her welt-covered asscheeks, trying with all her might to make it last longer. To hold herself back, she squeezed her buttocks tightly, and stared at the mat of her hair pressed down on her pubic ridge.

But she was so excited that it was only a short time when she recognized the signs of her impending orgasm. Surrendering to it, Simone deftly pressed a wet finger into her rear passage, and used her other hand to tear and jerk at her pussy hair. She pumped her whole body furiously, thrashing and screaming as she rooted her cunt with four fingers of one hand.

It came as an inundating wave of electric pleasure, radiating from her gaping cunt, down her spine, and through her arms and legs. For a while she hung there as if in another world, far from the Nazis and the prison. Her body was warm and wet and contented, wet with sweat and pussy juice, contented from long and repeated climaxes.

The prison people were coming back into the room just then; Simone had the strange suspicion that they had been watching her from concealment.

Seconds later she heard the pulley straining and saw that the ropes bearing her were being lowered.

She was quick to sense the security of the cold stone floor. Her bonds were released and she found her stiff limbs would barely move, they were numb with the loss of circulation. Her hands were cuffed together over her head where they were attached to the suspended rope. The rope was made taut, so that Simone had to stand on her tiptoes to relieve the pressure on her shoulder sockets.

At least she was on solid ground and not swaying and swinging crazily, Simone thought. Then she heard the sound of the whip in the air. A whistling buzz. The sharp crack. She looked to see a stout matron, bare from the waist up, flicking a long dark whip toward Simone.

Simone trembled, waiting for the lash.

The Hauptmann signaled the small-breasted woman with stooped shoulders to begin, and the matron raised her whip arm high over her head. Simone saw the first blow descend, almost as in slow motion: There was the expert rotation of the wrist; the long leather coiling with a deadly grace; the whip floating in a wide hateful arc. Then came the bite of the three thongs which dug into her. Simone lost her balance on her toes as the pain shot from her naked ass along her spine. There was a moment, when she thought her arms were being jerked right off.

Simone regained her toes as the matron raised her arm, and again the whip arced harshly. Simone jumped as the flail made contact, straining at her bound wrists to escape the heat of the blow. The matron had more power than the Hauptmann, and now the stout woman began to crack the whip in earnest: Over and over again, until Simone's pain-wracked body was hanging limply from the wrists. Simone could feel the welts caused by the whip, for they were not only hot and searing, but swelling on her belly, her thighs, her breasts, right under her very eyes.

No part of her young body was sacred. No part was safe from the bite of the leather snake. Her entire skin surface was stinging with the burn as the whip descended again and again and again. The fire was permeating Simone's entire body, seeming to numb the outside while the inside got hotter and ached more.

Through slitted eyelids Simone could see the matron standing in front of her, a powerful, muscular, half-nude body gleaming with perspiration: Small breasts heaving on her muscular chest wall as she caught her breath. Unable to hold her head up any longer, Simone's chin fell heavily to her chest. Every square centimeter of her was lurid red, inflamed, and crossed with swelling welts.

"You are getting weak, Heidi," the Hauptmann smiled at the matron. "Let me take over again."

To Simone he barked, "Will you talk, or does pain and death mean nothing to you? You are within a centimeter of your life, you understand? Good. We will capture others. We will capture others who will talk if you do not. But you are still beautiful, a blonde prize within this prison. Compare the relative ease of serving in the Bordello to this," he shouted in frustration as he swung the whip resoundingly.

The Hauptmann, in contrast to the artful slowness of the matron, was quick and vicious, and Simone squealed in ways she had not done under the woman's arm. Less powerful, the Hauptmann struck her more painfully, so that his lashes drew blood, cutting through her tingling welted skin. She trembled as through her eyeslits she saw the Hauptmann aim the whip at her cunt, then at her nipples. She cried weakly as the searing pain inundated her, and then her head dropped heavily forward. Her body continued to writhe under her bound wrists each time the whip descended. With increasing frequency the lash opened her skin and caused the blood to flow. Multiple bloodied ridges of flesh were opening up now, and blood trickled in droplets to the floor beneath Simone's suspended body.

Were she not losing consciousness so rapidly, Simone know that she would talk now. But they were not giving her a chance to talk: The blows were raining incessantly now. Her last recollection was the conviction that she would be dead before she had another chance to talk.

Dreams of misty horrors paraded through her mind for uncounted days. Purple-veined cocks standing erect from paper-skinned corpses, mottled with spider webs of crisscrossing crimson blood vessels and deep whip welts. Glassy eyes stared at Simone from hairless noseless skulls.

When she awakened, she found she had been bathed and rubbed down with oils. She lay naked on her still tender back in a bed. Apparently she was in an infirmary, for glass-doored cabinets with small bottles lined one wall, and drawers, another.

A man dressed in a dirty white lab coat came in eventually, took her pulse and blood pressure, and walked out. A prison trustee brought in a bowl of potato soup and left without speaking to her. Greedily, Simone ate the soup and the dark bread that lay submerged at the bottom of the bowl.

Her mind was confused, but she was certain she had not given out any names. It was, she knew, a matter of survival to hold out as long as possible, for once they had that first name, they would demand others. And when they had enough names, she would be of no use to them-except as soap.

The doctor in the lab coat returned, followed by several others. The others all carried notebooks and appeared to be students. None seemed particularly interested in Simone. It was like grand rounds at any teaching hospital, Simone thought.

The doctor was saying as he entered, "... and the cryogenic labs were as good as anywhere in the nation. Take those five kilo babies and immerse them in icewater until they expire, and we find an average survival time of about fifteen to twenty seconds per kilogram body weight. You see that survival is not a direct function of the number of degrees below core temperature plotted against body weight." He broke off then and gestured toward Simone.

"This patient, a female in the prime of life-you will ignore the cutaneous contusions and lacerations for the moment-is typical. We are going to examine her pelvis digitally. Have gloves been distributed? Fine. You two gentlemen, hold her in the lithotomy position."

Simone was too weak to object when her knees were bent so that her feet rested firmly on the mattress, far apart to open her cunt to them. The doctor was talking all the while, demonstrating with his hands what the students were expected to palpate within her womb.

The first student put clear jelly on his glove and inserted his hand roughly, as though examining meat in a butcher shop. Simone gave a quiet yelp, but everyone ignored her. The student struggled to palpate the bladder and each ovary, and, when he was finished, created a tremendous suction by withdrawing his hand.

Another hand followed. The sensation of having these hands thrust up her cunt made Simone aware of a searing excitement growing in the pit of her abdomen. She was aware, as she looked down at her nudity, that her titbuds were unashamedly hardening, elongating in front of all of the students. The third was now rummaging inside her pussy, and the sensation was so filling that her cuntmuscles involuntarily squeezed down on his invading hand. The fourth was unintentionally pressing her long pink clit with every move of his arm. Simone could feel the juices oozing from out of her now, slimy hot torrents of cream that trickled down her asscrack and over her asscheeks to make a torrid puddle at the base of her spine on the bedsheet.

A fifth hand. This was smaller, and Simone opened her eyes from her reverie to see that it was a girl who was probing her.

The sloshing of slippery fluids was embarrassing Simone, who could feel herself blush hotly with the flatulent sound of the movement of the examiner's hand.

Despite herself, Simone felt her cunt muscles squeezing down on the girl's slender hand, and the girl looked up in surprise. Then a grin crossed her face, but she said nothing. The next hand was greeted by an involuntary pussy contraction which drew it up high into her cuntal passage. The student remarked on it to the doctor, who promptly pulled Simone's hot, pulsing clit into view above the student's gloved hand.

"This is a good opportunity to discuss the autonomic nervous system and the dorsal nerve, the terminal branch of the pudendal nerve. Of course, you see this patient is sexually aroused. Arousal depends entirely upon the autonomic nervous system, as you shall shortly observe. Bring me hemostats, please."

A student turned and began groping through the drawers, finally producing for the professor a long pincer-like instrument. The doctor snorted and flung it down. "A hemostat with flat jaws, not the kind with teeth, stupid."

A short time later the student reported there were none without teeth in that drawer, and the professor cursed.

"Shall I look in the next room?" the girl student was asking.

"Never mind, we'll use these. They'll serve the same purpose," he replied.

Simone winced when the pincer was placed over her swelling lovebutton and the instrument clamped. She could feel a stinging pain arise in her abused cuntflesh and travel around her entire orifice. While the professor twisted and handled the hemostat, he was speaking over her moans of agony, "The miniature penis is comprised of two corpora cavernosa suspended by a suspensory ligament and capped by a glans, as in the male."

The students muttered in low tones for awhile before clamping additional hemostats on her titbuds. Simone recoiled as the pain penetrated her soft white orbs. She must have screamed, for one of the students was placing surgical tape over her mouth. Thus displayed, Simone had never before felt so ashamed. She was being treated like an experimental animal. She was shocked with pain when the doctor began inserting surgical needles into her pinched-white titbuds. Her still sensitive feminine gland trembled as every fiber in her body shuddered. A single drop of blood appeared at either end of the surgical needle in one breast, and the doctor was lecturing in unintelligible medical jargon which held no meaning for Simone. Again the thrust of a needle, this time puncturing her clit. The hemostats were removed, making her genitals and tits ache with a new sting. The doctor belabored his point by tapping on the surgical needles while he spoke, and occasionally the blood would spurt from the wounds.

When leaving the room, the professor absent-mindedly singled out one of the students to retrieve the equipment from their subject. The man roughly jerked the needles from Simone's flesh, and with a cotton swab, sterilized the three peaks of Simone's debased femininity. With an afterthought., he drew his hand back from the surgical tape that covered Simone's mouth and unbuttoned his crisp white trousers. In a moment, this thick fucktool reared from his pants and his hands were busily turning Simone face down, pulling her hands in front of her so that her face rested on the bed. Her body quivered as he brought her ass up with his meaty hands and forced her knees to support her in the knee-chest position. She was aware of the rough, distinctly un-medical hands pawing her slashed and tender assflesh. Her asscheeks were parted, and then she felt the bludgeoning cockhead at the entrance to her cunt. She groaned behind the adhesive tape gag, and struggled from the sharp lancinating pain. Despite Simone's fear, she could feel her pussy dilate with her love lava. The mucus lubricated the skin of her upturned buttocks, and this provided her with a coolness that afforded a certain detachment from her sexual organs. Simone could feel the med student sopping his cock in her freely flowing pussy juices as he rubbed it up between her legs and stroked her crucial membranes to excite her.

The circumference of the cockhead made Simone whimper behind her taped lips, as she felt it slide past the ring of cunny muscles that guarded her vagina. Lustfully, Simone tried to edge back onto the mammoth jerking rod.

"Hold off, baby," the student admonished. "I just want to get it good and juicy.

He was sluicing into her open cunt rapidly, stretching her asscheeks with his hands simultaneously as though to split her wide open. The cockmeat slipped up into her pussy with soft squishy sounds as he grabbed her hipbones to fix her movement as he sent the thick rod of his pole relentlessly high into her unresisting cuntbarrel. She heard him groan with the feeling as he plunged inwards through the wetly yielding walls until his balls rested against the sticky skin of her thighs.

When she felt him retreating from her cunt, her wet suctioning muscles tried to retain his receding prick. The cock came away with a flatulent pop, and Simone felt his blood-engorged tool slide up the narrow crevice between her sleek statuesque buttocks and come to rest at the tiny puckered opening. He pushed the pussy-lubricated cock uncaringly into her little asshole as it spread open helplessly around his ravaging cock.

She shrilled tearfully as she felt the rigid ring of her anus sliced open elastically by the head of his massive shaft. The cock was shoved in hard, pushing apart her protesting sphincter. He gained entry faster than she could have believed, and the working part of Simone's brain told her that he must have greased himself with that jelly he put on the rubber gloves. Her sphincter clutched tightly down on the invading fuckmeat like a glove itself, but his rod was deep within her bowels. Each thundering invasion brought her new pain. Simone had been ass-fucked before, first by the tramp, and then hours after that by her captors in the woods. The humiliation was no longer as great as it had been then. Nonetheless, coming as it did after long subjection to hands in her cunt and needles in her tits, it was debasing enough to make her pray for death.

She did not deserve such treatment. She had done nothing which would merit her being an experimental animal subject to the lust of the prison guards. The medical student continued thrusting, and Simone's ass felt as though it were on fire. She told herself vainly to relax, for she had learned before that while relaxing the pain was lessened. Still, the excruciating pain made it almost impossible to loosen the tension. Her belly was cramped as the fucktool abraded Simone's tiny little back passage. She was grunting from beneath her bandaged lips as the mass of cock thrust in, pulled out to the tip with a wrenching suction, and then thrust viciously in again. Simone's breathing was hissing through her nose as the medical student began a powerful rhythmic fucking that almost drove her crazy.

Under this assault it was impossible to relax. She screwed up her asshole sphincter as each thrust plowed in and out of her. Her stomach was lurching under each penetration of her intestines, but Simone knew that she had suffered plenty of pain in the last weeks and she was still alive. Pain per se, did not cause death. Right now, she could separate the sources of her pain: Her asshole was on fire, her body was stinging from skin lacerations. Her lungs were bursting from the effort to catch her breath with her mouth sealed off.

With this respite of objectively, Simone was able to blot out the pain caused by the plunging fucktool. Lost in the sensations which were coming in waves across her mind, some of the pain faded and pleasure began to dominate. Warm flashes of sexual pleasure surrounded her cunt now, and the cock plunging in and out of her asshole was not as degrading as it was filling. The prick was still sliding in and out of her tight, puckered opening, throbbing powerfully against her rectal membranes.

Simone felt herself coming alive again, with a sensuality totally devoid of any reason. She felt her muscles contracting and quivering ecstatically as her body traveled up and back to meet the invading cock. Her insides seemed to melt, to squeeze and relax in rhythm with the boiling passion and heat that spread from the tool that fucked her rectum.

Then she could feel the med student coming, squirting high up into her entrails, and the feeling made her whole ass circumscribe tight little circles in the air as her own orgasm involuntarily peaked. Her asshole sucked the plundering cock inside as her muscles contracted in an excruciatingly long climax. She still felt his body quivering between her spread knees, as her statuesque thighs weakened and collapsed. She fell on the bed while the throbbing afterglow of orgasm permeated sweaty, exhausted flesh.

With a rude popping sound, the man pulled out of her anus.

He left without, a thank you. Clearly he considered her only an experimental subject, unworthy of notice. Simone was sick to her stomach. She bent over the edge of the bed and ripped the surgical tape painfully off her mouth before she retched.

The soap and the bread. It was as if reverse peristalsis in her anus had traveled all the way up to her mouth, and she felt disgusted. Not only had she been shamed beyond human endurance, but her guts were empty and she had no idea when she might, be fed again.

Spasms of internal pain continued to rip through her body like the horned handle of the whip. Her mouth was dry as though something had built a nest in it, and her tongue was sandy.

Yes, she decided, it was time to talk. The very next chance she got, she would talk.