Chapter 77 Torment and Terror in The Whipping Pit
As he pushed the cart over to where his three henchmen were ogling
Ming-tsu's suspended body, Chiang Chan once again silently congratulated his
father on his exquisite taste in sexual partners. Damp and dripping, Ming-tsu
glared at him like a wounded tigress, her dark eyes proud, her posture defiant,
as he walked around her, inspecting her superb figure while she wriggled
futilely in her bondage. The flickering torchlight caused the moisture on her
nude body to glimmer like the surface of a moonlit bay. Dao had left her
panties at half-staff, rolled a little more than halfway down the inviting
cleavage of her delicious buttocks; it was strange, Chiang Chan thought, as he
felt his manhood swell with a lust he was all too anxious to satisfy, how the
partial nudity of a beautiful woman was often more tantalizing than nakedness
itself.
As he displayed the arsenal of weaponry to his leering comrades, he told
them, "Boys, we are going play a little game with Ming-tsu. We're going to
teach this slut to keep her accusing mouth shut when she doesn't know what she's
talking about!"
"'Yeah! Now you're talking, boss!" Dao growled as he pictured himself
spreading Ming-tsu's semi-nude bottom-cheeks and thrusting his rock-hard cock
into her ass-crevice until she begged for mercy.
"Choose your weapons, my friends," Chiang Chan urged his three henchmen as
they gathered around the cart containing the various implements, each selecting
one of the light, flexible whips that Chiang had stacked on top.
"Now, this is how we are going to proceed. We are going to ..." and the
young squadron leader stopped abruptly in mid-sentence as he realized that his
father and uncle had slipped silently into the dungeon through the door at the
foot of the staircase.
Richard Chan folded his silver-robed arms across his chest and crossed the
room, staring admiringly at Ming-tsu's trembling body, his dark, brooding eyes
taking in the perfection of her nearly nude form. The graceful, well-toned legs
which rose from the floor of the whipping pit, the impeccably trimmed triangle
between her honeyed thighs, the gentle, feminine curves of her torso and
abdomen, and the almost arrogant thrust of her breasts. Drops of moisture
still clung lovingly to Ming-tsu's mahogany-tipped nipples. Bold, provocative
nipples which had been burnished a tempting bronze by the tantalizing
torchlight.
"She is indeed magnificent, my brother," Richard Chan intoned softly. "I
can see why you have prized her so highly." He slowly approached the nude body
hanging from the hook. "It is such a pity that she has tried to betray us."
George returned his brother's sardonic glance; the word 'pity' was as
foreign to the lips of Richard Chan as the word 'celibacy' would have been to
one of his Scorpion thugs.
The elder Chan extended a long fingernail and drew an inward-curving arc
around the lovely curve of Ming-tsu's moist and glistening left breast.
"Nephew," Richard Chan went on, "tell me. Has she disclosed what she has
done with the jewels? Or told us where we might lay our hands on Luk Yee, with
whom you found her consorting this morning?"
Ming-tsu hurriedly interjected, "But I wa..."
"SILENCE!! You dare to interrupt a conversation between two members of the
Chan family? George, I should have thought you had trained her better." A
sinister smile crept over Richard Chan's features. "You need humility, young
woman," Richard sneered. "And you shall have it."
Ming-tsu's heart sank as she studied his face; the cruelty in his features
seemed to have been carved in rock as hard as that of the great stone Buddha of
Leshan.
"What has she told you, nephew?" Richard Chan repeated.
"Actually nothing, so far, honored uncle. As you can see," Chiang Chan
gestured toward his whip-wielding minions, "we were just about to begin."
Richard Chan gave his young kinsman a critical, "What have you been doing
down here for the last hour," sort of glance, but said nothing, as he continued
to circumscribe the perfect roundness of Ming-tsu's breast with the nail of his
index finger.
Ming-tsu stared into the thin slits of Richard Chan's eyes, hoping to find
an opening with which she could make some kind of human or erotic connection.
"Sire -- I have told you again and again -- I know nothing of the jewels."
The Lord of the Black Pagoda nodded his head thoughtfully for a moment as
he pondered how he might extract the truth from his stubborn prisoner.
"George," Richard turned to his brother, "have you told your son all the
secrets of the Whipping Pit?"
"No, my brother -- in fact, I am not sure that I know them all myself."
"Ming-tsu," Richard's gaze was steely as he looked directly into her
flashing brown eyes. "You can save us much time, and I assure you that you will
be saving yourself a great deal of distress, if you abandon this strategy of
feigned ignorance." His voice lowered to no more than a whisper. "Where is
Mai-Lee's necklace? Her earrings?"
"Sire, I beg of ...."
Richard Chan slapped his brother's concubine sharply across the face.
"The time for discussion is over! Now it is time for action! It is too late now
for begging, woman. Much too late. Chiang Chan!"
"Yes, uncle?"
"Undo her hands!"
"But ... uncle?"
"Do as I say!" Richard Chan's voice was not loud, but his clipped words
were spoken with a stern intensity that sent chills through Ming-tsu's beautiful
body. "When your hands are untied, Ming-tsu, you are to grasp those leather
rings above your head. Do you see them?"
"Y-yes, sire."
"Dao! -- prepare the brazier!"
"Please ... I ....," Ming-tsu floundered, completely at a loss as to what
she might say to the Chans that might dissuade them from their fell purpose.
"Aye - right away, your excellency." The bare-chested thug hurried over to
the same brazier that he had lit on the Night of the Tiger, and used a torch and
the scraps of his partially incinerated shirt to ignite the coals.
Meanwhile Chiang Chan had undone the ropes around Ming-tsu's wrists. She
was free, momentarily, but, being surrounded by six men, her chances of escape
were infinitesimal. Conceding defeat, she reached up submissively and grasped
the heavy leather rings which, like the hook, were suspended at arm's length
above her head.
"Be sure to put the Scorpion iron on the hottest part of the fire, Dao --
and if our prisoner releases those rings before I give her leave to do so, you
are to leave our emblem on each of her splendid breasts. Do I make myself
clear, woman?"
Ming-tsu's body shuddered with fear at the thought of the red-hot irons
branding her love-globes with their scalding kiss. "No, sire ... please ... I
will not release them ... I swear to you."
"Do not forget your promise, Ming-tsu," Richard Chan whispered with a
sibilant hiss. The Lord of the Black Pagoda took a step back away from the nude
body of the lovely concubine, and gestured for the Scorpions to do likewise.
His manner reminded Chiang Chan of a diabolical tour guide conducting an
excursion through the depths of hell, as he admonished his thuggish underlings,
"Gentlemen, it is rude to crowd too closely upon a such a beautiful guest."
Dao and Zheng exchanged mystified glances. Ming-tsu had been compelled to
extend her arms fully to grasp the rings, and the taut lines of her body were as
graceful as those of a forest nymph. Dao's testicles were swollen with desire;
he ached to avenge the burns on his chest by slashing the knotted thongs of the
whip he had selected into the lovely curves of George Chan's concubine.
Chiang Chan, no less puzzled than his comrades, watched as his uncle
glanced downward to make sure that his feet were clear of the recessed metal
grating on which Ming-tsu was posed so gracefully.
"Ming-tsu, perhaps you have heard us refer to this corner of the dungeon as
the "Whipping Pit"?
"Y-yes, sire. A short time ago."
"The 'whipping' in that name is no doubt self-explanatory, is it not?"
Ming-tsu swallowed with difficulty, as her beautiful brown eyes glanced
from one Scorpion to the other, each of whom seemed to be caressing his whip
expectantly. Lin wiped a dab of lecherous spittle from his lip as his
eyebrow-less eyes fired a seried of staccato glances at her body. His restless
gaze lit briefly on her moist, opulent breasts, and then moved on to her belly,
to her damp, mossy triangle, to her supple thighs and then back to her tempting
love-globes as quickly as a hummingbird might move from one nectared blossom to
the next.
While the Drooler's glance was nervous and shifty-eyed, Zheng stared at her
love-gourds with firm, unwavering resolve. As the Ox ogled her splendidly
uptilted breasts, the giant stroked his fearful strap as he would have his huge
cock, his huge, ham-fisted hand sliding up and down its length lovingly;
Ming-tsu fearfully surmised that the giant was imagining, in his dim-witted way,
the the loud popping sound the punishing strap would make when it fell upon her
nude breasts. The thought of the behemoth using the strap on her tender flesh
gave Ming-tsu a tremor that shook the very ramparts of her courage.
Facing the long mirror, Ming-tsu could see that the reflected image of the
gaptoothed Scorpion behind her. Dao's malevolent eyes were feasting on the
lush curves of her buttocks which spilled over her pulled-down panties. The
ugly, bare-chested thug seemed to be trying to widen her bottom cleft with the
intensity of his stare. Her derriere twitched involuntarily, but sensuously, in
response to his rapacious gaze.
Ming-tzu's throat was parched, dry, almost voiceless with fear as she at
last answered Richard Chan's question. He had been exactly right. "Whipping"
surely needed no further explanation. "Y-y-yes, sire."
"But why do you think we call it a 'pit'?"
Ming-tsu looked around her wildly. What was the meaning of this strange
line of questioning? "I- I don't know -- the floor is lower here, but ..."
"It is time you found out, wench. Do you have a firm grasp on the rings?
I assure you that you will thank me for reminding you."
Utterly confused, Ming-tsu adjusted her grip on the twin rings high above
her head. "Y-yes."
"Nephew!"
"Yes, uncle?"
"Do you see the lever on the wall to your right?"
Chiang Chan glanced to his right. Almost hidden in the gloomy shadows was
a bar of iron that projected outward from the shackle-studded wall of the
dungeon. The lever was wedged into the uppermost of a series of gears in what
was clearly a complicated mechanism. A few feet from the lever, half-embedded
in the wall in the corner of the dungeon, was a device that resembled the
capstan of a sailing ship.
"Yes."
"Lower the lever one notch."
Chiang Chan pushed downward on the bar with one hand, but it refused to
budge.
"It will require quite a bit of force, Chiang Chan. It has been some time
since that lever has been used."
Changing his stance, Chiang Chan positioned both hands on the lever, and
glanced across at the delicious nudity of Ming-tsu before pressing firmly
downward. As he did so he was greeted by the loud grinding sound of metal
against rusty metal, and then ...
"Aaaahhhh!!" Ming-tsu's sudden cry of fear and surprise tore through the
dungeon like a lightning bolt through a summer sky. When Chiang Chan had
depressed the lever, the circular metal grating beneath her feet had given way
slightly, collapsing inward, funnel-like, from the now-visible hinges which
lined its circumference. The beautiful concubine's bare feet clawed for
purchase at the outer parts of the grating. There was now a narrow circular
opening in the grating directly beneath her which led downward into inky
blackness.
"W-w-what?? Help me!" Ming-tsu begged desperately.
"Now, are you not glad that I beseeched you to hold tightly to the rings,
wench?"
"Yes ... yes, but please ... help me!" Ming-tsu cried as her legs flailed
around trying to find a foothold on the inclined grating. The sudden jolt when
the grating had fallen away had put an immediate strain on her shoulders, one
which grew worse with each passing second.
Richard watched Ming-tsu's athletic contortions with an appreciative eye.
"George, would you say that our perfidious thief is in good physical condition?"
"She is indeed," said George, smiling, proud of his concubine despite her
predicament. "Her energy is magnificent and and her," he paused, searching for
the right word, "stamina is quite remarkable."
"It is well," the elder Chan replied with a sinister scowl. "She will need
every ounce of her stamina today."
********
Richard Chan watched Ming-tsu struggle for a moment before continuing. "My
brother has spoken of your excellent physical condition, Ming-tsu. Surely you
can maintain your grip on the rings while I tell you more about the Whipping
Pit?"
"Please ... please..." Ming-tsu's voice was frantic. And why not -- the
narrow opening beneath her seemed as bottomless as it was frightful.
The Scorpions looked on salaciously as Ming-tsu's shapely legs searched for
a stable resting place on the iron grating. Her efforts caused the silken
panties to slide another inch down her ripe-rounded buttocks in back and to
reveal the rest of her raven-thatched pubic hair.
"Now, perhaps you see why I call this area the Whipping Pit. It is quite a
long way down, Ming-tsu." Chan reached and removed a torch from a sconce in a
nearby pillar and held it above the opening. Ming-tsu, fighting to keep her
grip on the rings, glanced downward. Even with the the added light supplied by
the torch, all was blackness below.
"Boy, give me something I can drop to demonstrate the depth of the Pit to
our guest," Richard Chan barked in an imperious voice, as he returned the torch
to its place on the pillarr. "Quickly! Our guest can not wait all night."
Lin gave his squadron leader a questioning glance. Chiang Chan's mind raced
-- he didn't want to lose this beauty to the abyss. And then he had an
inspiration: "The rat, Lin -- bring one of the rats Zheng killed."
"Hurry ... hurry ... please" Ming-tsu begged, as she tried to re-grip the
rings. Her well-toned triceps muscles ached from supporting her weight.
While Lin raced off on his errand -- and raced he did, not wanting to miss
a moment of Ming-tsu's sensual gyrations, Dao and Zheng feasted on the delicious
banquet of girl-flesh who dangled so tantalizingly before their eyes. With her
arms out-stretched directly overhead, Ming-tsu's dark-nippled breasts rose high
on her chest, and her compact derriere twitched deliciously as she struggled to
maintain her grip.
The fleet-footed Lin the Drooler returned less than half a minute later,
holding a dead rat at arm's length. Richard Chan fastidiously took a silken
scarf from his robe, grasped the dead rodent gingerly and stepped to the edge of
the collapsed grating.
Out of the corner of her eye Ming-tsu saw him release the bloody carcass
downward through the gap in the grating, and then an endless second passed
before she heard the sound of a distant splash.
"Hold on tightly, Ming-tsu," Richard Chan whispered with an evil grin.
"It is a long way down."
Ming-tsu shuddered at the sound of the splash, as she struggled to maintain
her grip on the swaying rings. The splash reminded her of the distant dripping
sounds she had heard far below her after her brief shower. It was not so much
the fall or the splash she feared. It was the darkness, the unknown.
Within a second or two of the splash, the dark-haired courtesan heard an
odd fluttering noise rising up from the murky abyss below. It began not much
louder than a whisper, but it soon mushrooomed into a strangely chilling flurry
of sound far below her, sounds of brief surges of excited motion such as she had
never heard before. The noise was not unlike the sudden rush of sound given off
by a covey of quail taking to flight all at once, yet it was somehow different,
too.
"Nephew! Lower the lever another notch!"
Chiang Chan muscled the iron bar lower, and again Ming-tsu heard the
dreadful grinding noise as the grating opened wider still.
"Aaiiiiiiihhh!!" she cried out again as she clawed for a foothold on the
receding metal platform.
"Perhaps you'd like me to measure the depth again, wench? The cat, boy!
Bring me the cat."
Lin quickly dashed off in pursuit of the evil-eyed black cat who was still
reclining on the framework of the breast crusher, only a few yards away.
By now, Ming-tsu's arms and shoulders were burning from the strain, and she
could sense, even in the cool dungeon, ever-widening rivulets of perspiraton
trickling down the alluring curves of her body.
In her near hysteria, and in the macabre torchlight, Richard Chan seemed to
have taken on the visage of the Scowling Mask of her dream. "Did you hear that
splash far below, wench? My father, no doubt inspired by Kublai Khan's Xanadu,
built the Black Pagoda above an underground river, mindful of the sacred river
Alph of the Great Khan. Ah! Here is the ugly beast."
Richard Chan gently took the somnolent-looking black cat from the arms of
Lin the Drooler, and held it at arms length over the opening in the center of
the grating. The animal, as if sensing some unknown calamity, pricked up its
ears alertly for a moment and stared at Ming-tsu with iridescent eyes that
seemed to cast a malediction upon her, a moment before Richard Chan released the
unlucky feline into the dark emptiness.
As soon as it left the warm and comforting grasp of Richard Chan's hands
the cat began to wail, and its cries of feline distress mounted as it fell. But
no sooner had Ming-tsu heard the unmistakable splash of the cat hitting the
river far below, than she heard the fluttering sounds of motion again, but this
time much louder, and then the cat erupted in an ear-splitting cacophony of
dreadful sound, wailing, screaming, caterwauling, as the fluttering sounds she
had heard before turned into horrible thrashing sounds. The cat's ghastly cries
of agony continued for perhaps twenty seconds, and then the thrashing began to
subside and all was once again quiet below.
As she pondered the meaning of the cat's hideous wails, Ming-tsu's pretty
legs continued to kick out attractively, occasionally managing to find a
precarious foothold for a moment, just long enough to release some of the
dreadful pressure on her shoulders. But then the swaying of the rings would
cause her body to drift away from the foothold, thus sending her long, supple
legs into a frantic and erotic air-dance as she sought another stance.
"Another notch, nephew!" Richard Chan directed, and again Chiang Chan moved
the stubborn lever down a notch, opening the yawning maw of the grating a bit
more.
"Ohhh .... please ... agghhh ... I can't hang on...." Ming-tsu murmured.
She would not have believed it possible that her arms and shoulders could hurt
so badly.
"Ahhhh, but you will hang on, Ming-tsu. You will, that is, if you do not
wish to join the flesh-eating fish who made short work of that unfortunat beast.
I first heard of them during an excursion to a remote part of New Guinea; my
researches seem to indicate that they are distant cousins of the piranhas who
make certain stretches of the Amazon rather inhospitable to bathers."
Richard Chan paused a moment as if listening for the death-rattle of the
unfortunate feline, then nodded wisely. "Now that they have fed twice, they
will not be quite so hungry, if more food should come their way." Richard Chan
eyed Ming-tsu's body as if it were bait wriggling on a hook. "They will take
much, much longer on their next meal. The next creature to fall into the pit
would suffer a far more protacted and horrible death than that cat, I should
imagine," the Lord of the Pagoda whispered in a voice that seemed to Ming-tsu to
issue up from the depths of hell.
The mere thought of such a fate had Ming-tsu's nervous stomach doing
somersaults that the most proficient of Chinese acrobats would have envied.
"Please ..." Ming-tsu's arms and shoulders were bathed in an inferno of pain
from the strain of hanging on to the swaying leather rings.
"Chiang Chan -- give the capstan three full turns. Quickly!"
Puzzled, Chiang Chan moved down the wall toward the spool-shaped cylinder.
On shipboard, he knew, one used a capstan to raise and lower an anchor by
turning a wheel. But there was no anchor here, just masses of coiled nautical
rope which seemed to feed into the wall itself. But when he turned the capstan,
he felt considerable resistance, as if the cleverly contrived wheel was somehow
pulling some unseen weight. As he cranked the capstan's wheel Chiang Chan
thought he heard a faint noise far below, in the depths of the abyss, but he
could see nothing.
Richard Chan did not bother to explain the purpose of his order. When
Chiang Chan had completed the three turns, his uncle gave the dungeon clock an
inquiring glance and then said, "Nephew, your father and I are expecting a
guest, and must leave you." As his thin-slitted eyes inspected the whips each
man held, the Dark Lord of the Scorpions nodded with satisfaction. "I trust
that you will see to it that our guest's stay here is as unpleasant as possible.
May I?" he inquired, gesturing toward Chiang Chan's whip.
"Of course, uncle," Chiang replied, extending the long single-tail.
"Hold on tightly, Ming-tsu," the Lord of the Pagoda snarled softly. "We
should hate to lose you." Then his silver-robed arm drew the lash back before
launching it forward, where it detonated with a loud pop! high on Ming-tsu's
perfect buttocks, even as the tip of the whip curled around to sting her pubic
mound.
"Aaaaaghh!" the startled concubine groaned in pain, as she fought to hold
on to the rings which were all that kept her from the dreadful pit below.
"Richard, General Wang will be waiting ... we must go, " George Chan
muttered softly to his brother, as the latter returned the black single-tail to
Chiang Chan.
George Chan gave the wriggling, writhing body of the concubine who had
given him so many days and nights of sexual pleasure, with whom he had explored
countless caverns of forbidden sin, a final, somewhat rueful glance, and joined
his brother as they walked in silence toward the door that led to the circular
staircase.
