Dark Fire

            Sabine watched as the captive was dragged into the station, pulled across the step by the short chain strung between rusted manacles.  The revolutionary was bloody; her hands and knees and elbows had been scraped raw on the cobblestones as she was dragged to the station, and the wound above her eye, where Sabine had struck her with the carbine to end the shooting, still issued a stream of steady crimson.  Whoever she was, she’d been pretty once; not a true beauty, but her hair was the color of summer wheat and her eyes glowed like the sea on a cloudless day.  Her face was smooth, her shoulders unbowed and hands uncalloused.  She was an old girl, or a young woman; some spoiled guildsman’s brat, most likely, or a journeyman’s pampered toy.  Sabine, raised a gutter brat, who had fought and bit and scratched for every scrap of food until the Guard took her in, was disgusted. 

            Stefan, who had been like a father to Sabine, who had taken her under his tutelage, who had held secret her sex until she could prove her place, was dead.  The woman’s last shot – that desperate, flailing attack, brushed aside so easily – had struck his throat.  Stefan hadn’t died quickly.  Unable to speak, unable to stop the blood, he had struggled uselessly against his fate while the Guard watched helplessly. 

            “She will be questioned,” Sabine spat through clenched teeth.  “Take her to the back room.  Secure her.”

            The revolutionary tried to gain her feet, intent upon marching with dignity to her torture.  Sabine swung a heavy leather boot around, connecting with the captive’s kneecap with a crunching sound.  The prisoner dropped again with a whimper. 

            “Crawl, slut.  You don’t get to walk in the footsteps of your betters.”

            Despite the tears streaming down her cheeks, the woman looked up into Sabine’s eyes.  “I won’t talk.  You’ll get nothing from me!”

            Sabine stared back a moment; her chin length hair, black as midnight, fell forward to cover her face from all but the prisoner.  A smile curved her full lips, seductive in its cruelty, and hellfire lit her eyes with white flame.  Her voice was half Sabine, and half the demoness who hid within her soul.  “Oh darling,” she breathed softly, “I’m not going to make you talk.  I’m going to make you scream.” 

 

            Almost, when Sabine walked towards the high, windowless chamber in the rear of the guardhouse, almost they stopped her.  She was young; sixteen was barely old enough to accompany patrols, and this was a far more serious thing.  She was a woman; the nest of virtues, of goodness, of redemption.  She was Sabine, like a daughter to them all, or some tomboy sister.  But she was not that.  A look into her eyes and her fellow Guards stepped aside.  Something within her had broken, crumbled away from her soul to fall into the pits of Hell, and something new had appeared as though the demoness within her had drawn back a black curtain to reveal a part of Sabine untouched, unimagined – and truly cruel. 

            At first she merely watched, content to let Guenther perform the role that had so often in the past been his.  He was professional; he was calm, and unmoved.  He tied back his grey hair and rolled up his shirtsleeves, and set to work like a dentist.  His breathing never changed, he never looked away or let his brown-eyed gaze linger too long.  He dispassionately crushed things, and burned them, and tore them apart with iron tongs and dull grey knives.  The captive – Petra – began to talk, despite all her bravado.  She lied, of course.  Guenther listened to it all, making tiny, precise notations in a blood spattered journal, and when the story was complete, he began again, and then again.  Each time, the story changed; details cannot be remembered among the pain and stress, Guenther stated factually.  One simply cannot remember what to say.  The only way to get it right – the only way to end the pain – was to tell the truth. 

            Finally, that was what she did.  Her father was a factor; he knew nothing of her involvement.  Her brother had gotten her into the resistance, which he’d made contact with while attending university.  Names followed; associates, friends, and finally even family: her cousins, her parents, even her younger sisters were implicated.  Most of those were untrue, of course; by that point she would say anything to stop the pain, to keep the fingers and teeth she still retained.  It was, as Guenther stated, almost an alchemical formula: A certain resistance met with so much force yields predictable and scientific results. 

            At first, Sabine watched in paralyzed horror, unable to look away but nauseous from the smell of detached viciousness.  She threw up repeatedly, until nothing was left in her stomach.  Then she was in rapture; as the captive slowly became less and less human, it was…interesting…to watch the things done to her.  New facets of behavior and anatomy, secret and wicked ones, were opened to her.  Finally, however, it was boring; it left her unfulfilled, it left her seething and wanting.  It was too clinical; Guenther performed with the emotion of someone writing out mathematical equations.  Finally he finished wiping down his tools, tucked away the velvet lined cases and rose to leave.  Petra was left tied to a heavy wooden chair in the center of the room. 

            “What will we do with her?” Sabine asked hesitantly.  What do I want done with her?

            Guenther shrugged.  “She broke easily; I have no doubt she’ll survive to swing from the gallows tomorrow.”

            Petra looked up at the words, tears appearing again.  She seemed to cry quite often.  Sabine watched her like a predator.  “And if not?” 

            “The same fate.  No one cares if she’s still wriggling on the line, as long as the people have a corpse to show them justice is done.  Why do you ask?”

            “Can I…”  Sabine licked her lips, and almost gave it up; but the demoness stirred within her, and desire surged.  “Can I play with her?  To learn your techniques, I mean…I need to practice.” 

            This time it was Guenther who was taken aback by words; belatedly, Sabine realized how horrible this duty was for him.  “Play…?  An interesting word.  I don’t think this anger is healthy for you, Sabine.  I think it’s devouring you.  Your eyes…you’re not the same girl we snuck in for drinks last night.”

            “I need…I need to let it out.  The anger, I mean.  She…she killed him, Guenther.  I need to do something.”  She wrung her hands, and watched Petra like a kitten with a mouse, wondering if it would be allowed to pounce.  The captive, for her part, was struggling anew, reeking of fear of a new assault. 

            Guenther paused, and a look of distaste crossed his face.  “Very well.  We’ve promised to teach you everything, after all…and we need another Guard experienced with this.  By dawn you’ll have lost your appetite, and I’d rather you regret this day forever than go out seeking what you think you’ve missed.  This,” he sat down and reopened the case of faded blue velvet to reveal rows of saws, knives and syringes, “is a surgeon’s kit.” 

            Petra began to scream.

 

            Guenther’s instruction was brief, but complete.  He detailed each tool in the kit, and Sabine learned he had once apprenticed as an apothecary.  There were other tools as well, ones no sane surgeon would use; some were clean and crisp enough they hardly seemed worn, others were dotted with rust and dulled from use.  She was told each name and made to memorize them. 

            She learned their uses as well, although most of Guenther’s instruction was thinly veiled instruction in the medical arts: how to draw blood with metal syringe, as large as her two fists held together, and then how to inject a drug; how to amputate a finger, using a large and very sharp curved knife; how to tourniquet a larger limb and cleave it with a saw, severing it in a frenzy of motion lest the writhing make the cut irregular. 

            Petra screamed at first, much louder than before; perhaps it made a difference in the pain, to know the one inflicting it enjoys the game.  Perhaps it was the horror of false hope – of having surrendered to gain peace, only to begin anew.  In any case, she screamed, until finally her voice broke and all she could manage were ragged whimpers. 

            Sabine enjoyed it all.  She smiled with each cut, grinning as her hands and chest and face were sprayed with viscous gore, her eyes shining brighter with each moment.  The smell was intoxicating, the miasma of blood, sweat, and…power.  The pain wouldn’t cure the hurt of losing Stefan, but it balanced it; it found equivalency and the strain of the uneven scales of justice ceased to pull at her heart.  And more: with each motion she gained control, gained domination; the woman beneath her moved as she wished, felt what she wanted, just so, begged like a supplicant and…worshipped her, worshipped Sabine with every word, every scream, every tear as the goddess of her small, horrible world. 

            She learned something, then, that Guenther didn’t teach: the true art of torture.  It was one thing to inflict pain, to see the reaction; it was cold and logical and rational.  But it was the difference between one who paints wall, and one who paints portraits: the colors and tools were the same, application of a certain tincture resulted in a predictable shade, yes, but the artist creates something more: more than the mere sum of the palette, an interwoven mastery that creates something new in the beholder, a more complete and beautiful picture. 

            Sabine was an artist.

            She learned, as she worked, the subtle twists and turns to affect her victim precisely; she learned how to taunt Petra’s mind, not just her body, and how to tear apart her soul though barely touching her flesh.  Finally, she learned to make her victim love her, to make her give her deepest thanks for every new viciousness Sabine inflicted, knowing that it was better than what could have been done.  Perhaps Hell, too, works on equivalency, Sabine thought; and if a part of me has broken away and been cast to the demons, they have paid the bargain with a bit of themselves to take its place. 

 

 

 

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