The Soldier

SUSPENSION

When the cell door opens, I am curled on the cold concrete floor, naked, my arms and elbows still painfully roped behind my back. I flex my toes, slowly lift my head as people enter.

"Take off her blindfold."

The cloth is loosened from around my head. I look up at two soldiers, and a woman. Probably around forty, slender, muscular, in a crisp khaki sleeveless blouse, a short khaki skirt. Her dark hair is drawn back and fastened in a sensible ponytail, defining a lean face.

Quite calmly, Rachel kneels alongside me, fastening a fist in my hair, and wrenches me half-upright. I gasp with the pain, my arms still roped and twisted behind me. Her brown eyes shoot fire into me. "Well, bitch? Are you ready to talk?"

"I don’t have the information you want," I say weakly.

Rachel lets me drop, stands, glances at her guards. "Hoist her."

One guard kneels alongside me. Carefully, he picks open the ropes that so painfully pin my elbows against each other behind my back, then frees my wrists. The other guard has a four-metre rope, the end of which he tosses through a steel ring bolted to the ceiling. My hands are brought in front of me, and tied again, the coarse-weave rope biting my wrist-bones.

Then the ceiling rope’s end is passed between my pinned wrists, secured with two knots. On Rachel’s instruction, the guards take hold of the rope’s free end. "Go."

They haul. Quite suddenly, my bound wrists are yanked above my head, dragging me half off the floor. I yelp in pain and dismay, finding my feet. Another tug, and I’m standing, my roped hands level with my nose.

"What are you doing?" I ask fearfully. Another tug: my arms are jerked above my head, rendering me vulnerable. I’m suddenly aware of my breasts and belly and groin all exposed, my arms lifted and out of the way. They pull the rope until my arms are drawn taut above my head, and I am held on tip-toes. The weight on my wrists is uncomfortable. "Please," I whimper.

They pull again. By my roped wrists, I’m lifted clean off the floor. I give a cry, kicking my feet desperately for anchorage, suddenly hanging by my arms. "Hey! Let me down!"

"Suffer," Rachel spits. I hear the guards, behind me, securing the rope’s free end. My face flushes bright red. In panic, I kick and thrash, swinging on the end of the rope, my own upstretched arms clamping either side of my head. My wrists burn in their bonds, my body’s weight suspended by them, my toes easily ten centimetres off the concrete below.

I have never been so humiliated. The woman before me steps back to regard me: my breasts and pubic thatch are bared to her view. She is free, I am degraded and helpless, swinging from this ring. "Let me down - please! Let me down!"

"I suggest you think about talking," she advises. Finally, with an amused glance over my drawn body, she led her guards out of the cell. The door bangs shut, the key turning.

"Bastards!" Naked, I continue to kick my bare toes for the floor, twisting and turning, grunting in my desperation to find some anchorage for my feet. But my bare soles encounter only cool air: my toes search in vain. Hanging by my wrists, I can do nothing to help myself. I hope that Rachel and the guards might be back at any moment to set me down, but still I struggle, trying to free my hands, trying to twist my body about, but without leverage, it’s futile. Sweat begins to gloss my naked breasts and belly, wetting each armpit. As the pain of the ropes on my wrists grows, so does the slow ache in the pits of my shoulders, the gradual torment of my body’s weight on my arms.

I thrash and twist from the rope for a full ten minutes.

"Let me down!" I finally shriek at the locked door in pain and despair. "... Please!!"

Nothing.

I let my head fall forward, feeling the cool air dry the sweat on the nape of my neck. I feel myself slowly swinging back and forth, my arms stretched hard above my head, the rope tight on my wrists. My spine and ribcage feel taut and elongated, my belly drawn, my legs extended to their full length, toes pointed, but feet still well above the floor.

I hang, by my wrists, from the ring. The rope creaks grassily as it shifts with my slowly swaying weight. My arms really begin to ache: I can feel my elbow and shoulder joints stretching fractionally.

Gritting my teeth, I tip my head back, regarding my bonds. My own arms stretch up above my head, pale, landscaped by muscle, fuzzed by tiny blonde hairs; then the ropes, wound about my wrists, grinding into the bones. Beyond, my hands, curled into useless fists, already turning purple, and the rope, taut, creaking, stretching another ten centimetres to the ring above. I give a grunt of despair: craning back sends fresh pains through my shoulders, all down my sides, so I let my head fall forward again.

For a long time, I hang motionless, hearing only the slowing creak of the rope. Tears crawl from my eyes as my hands grow numb. I can feel the strength draining from my arms as the muscles stretch, joints loosen. The pain is slowly, but surely worsening - even as my fingers grow cold, my burning wrists start to tingle with strangled circulation. I know, now, that this new restraint is easily as effective as the old: left dangling, I’m here until my captors choose to let me down.

I hang, feeling the sweat slowly cool on my bare skin, hoping desperately with every painful second that Rachel might return, lower me from this humiliating and unbearable elevation. It seems unfair that such restraint can be so effective, that a single rope can so easily hold me aloft and helpless.

Time creeps.

Perhaps half an hour has passed when I flex my toes, swirling my dangling feet briefly, in the vague hope that the rope has stretched, that somehow I have missed some point of contact with the floor. No such luck: I’m hanging still.

I am aware of my collarbone pressed to my jaw, my shoulders hugging my ears, my own arms pressed to either side of my head, stressed and taut, bearing the full weight of my dangling body, the strain telling in my shoulder and elbow joints. Casting my eyes down, I see the twin points of my nipples jutting like thimbles into the chill air, my breasts stretched out of existence. My ribcage is in sharp relief, and, below, my own bare toes, swinging slightly, well above the floor.

An hour.

The ache in my strained arms is worsening. I can’t believe that they have let me hang like this for so long. My roped wrists hurt madly, I can’t even feel my hands. I’m cold, slung naked in the air like a carcass. The muscles of my arms and all down my sides are threatening to cramp against the unceasing weight. I groan aloud, pedal my feet briefly: the movement sets me swinging, the rope creaking and moaning above my head. I let myself dangle limply again, resigned to the constant weight on my arms.

Two hours.

Hanging by my wrists, stretched taut, even breathing is an effort. Sweat occasionally runs in a cold trickle from one underarm or the other, meandering slowly over my ribcage. I have always assumed that people strung up like this would somehow black out, that the time would pass in an instant - fade-out, change of scenes. I haven’t figured on the slow torture it turns out to be: the telling strain on my arms now a constant burning deep in my shoulders, my wrists aching madly, my hands cold and useless above their tight bindings. My body feels unbearably heavy, suspended like a lead pendulum, legs dangling, toes in mid-air. I am fully aware of every passing moment, the silence of my cell, the unending pain.

This is true torture, calculated, relying on time alone to work its effect. I begin to lose track of how long I have been suspended here, my mind flitting from the pain in my strained arms and joints to the cold air encircling my naked body, the dull ache of a full bladder, the humiliation of being so helpless and vulnerable.

I know that Rachel and her goons could have beaten me with bats, whipped me with wire, or put a blowtorch to my skin: I would have no choice but to hang and take it. But Rachel obviously wants me free of scars, which automatically eliminates most of the available methods of persuasion. I consider myself lucky.

It is a mistake.

After maybe four, maybe five hours, the true viciousness of the torture has taken effect. My arms, forced to take so much weight for so long, hurt badly. My shoulders feel as if they have been dislocated. They have no strength whatsoever, and I hang limply, head down in the chill air. My bladder loosens even without me realising, hot urine snaking down the insides of my legs, spattering to the floor below my dangling toes. I squeeze my eyes shut, gritting my teeth, groaning in despair and misery.

Time crawls, I hang motionless.

The pain grows worse, until it is all I can think about. Sweat glosses my whole body. I’m exhausted, my muscles stressed, joints strained. I remain conscious, but begin to float in and out of true lucidity - sometimes losing all awareness of my roped hands, convinced that I am suspended in a vacuum, with no points of reference, no contacts with the real world: isolated within my helplessness.

After six or seven hours, I jerk to full awareness, still covered in sweat, realising that tears are slowly dripping from my face to my expanded chest, salty rivulets tickling their way towards my navel, their path guided by the nap of downy hairs. My wrists burn as though encircled in red-hot steel, my arms feel ready to tear right out of their sockets, a savage, indescribable tingling sensation raging through my elbows and forearms. I gasp, give a cry of pain, my voice oddly strangled. I swish my feet briefly, but that only sets me slowly twisting, sending fresh lances of agony down my arms and into my shoulders, drawing another groan.

New sweat forms over my body, my bare skin greasy with a sheen of wet. My lips are dry, my teeth clenched, all my strength gone. I call, briefly, for mercy from my absent tormentors: but nobody comes.

Slowly, my head sinks forward onto my aching chest. I hang.

Every hour is endless. The pain sometimes grows so severe that I groan aloud, shifting my head, begging in a weak voice for someone to let me down. After I have been left to hang by my wrists for twelve hours, my arms feel like they have been broken, the bones shattered with hammers, the joints split apart with iron nails. My own body is an instrument of torture, its weight sending constant agony up through my shoulders and all the way to my roped wrists. Sweat continues to creep over me, stale now: with my nose so close to my armpits, I can smell myself.

The merciful unconsciousness for which I had once hoped will not come: the pain in my stretched arms makes sure of that. Instead, it is an endless ordeal of which I, strung by my hands from the ring with no means of loosening the rope or finding anchorage for my swinging feet, am a helpless victim.

When the cell door is opened and unlocked, it seems as if in a dream. I react, but by the time my eyes are open and my head lifted, Rachel is already standing before me. Her dark eyes flick up and down my drawn body.

"Well. Still hanging around, I see," she remarks.

"Please ..." My voice is a whisper, and I have to force it through a fog of pain and weariness, my body paralysed after so long in suspension. "Please, let me down ..."

Rachel puts a cool hand to my hip, gives me a shove. The action sends me slowly swinging, twisting, the rope creaking and groaning, and it sends pain through my drawn and stretched arms. I clench my teeth, but a long moan escapes, and I tip my head back, willing the torment to stop.

"Are you ready to talk, yet?"

"Yes," I answer at once. "Yes, I’ll talk, just tell me what to say!"

Rachel circles me slowly. "Tell me the positions of your troops."

"I don’t know," I groan.

"Talk!" Rachel erupts, and, from behind, grabs my hips, wrenching me down, twisting me hard in the air. The action makes my shoulders crack! loudly, all but ripping them out of joint, and I howl at the pain. Tears flow down my cheeks as I twist and swing helplessly from the rope, and Rachel stalks to the door.

"Drop the temperature another five degrees," she tells a guard, then glares at me. "We’ll see how you do after another day of this."

"No! Please!" I call after her. But the door slams shut.

I continue to swing, slowing, but the pain in my stretched arms is now unbearable, burning, my body creaking back and forth in the icy air. I gasp and cry, but I have no strength nor leverage to fight the pendulum movement.

It takes ten long, unendurable minutes for my body to stop swinging. When I finally hang still, the sweat is running from my naked body, my torso shining, perspiration cooling on my bare back, prickling between my buttocks. My head droops onto my chest, my arms rage with pain, drawn and strained from the unceasing weight and stresses inflicted upon them.

Time creeps, every passing minute an endless ordeal of torment to which I am helpless. After an hour, the air becomes colder, until my nipples are stones on my chest, hurting. I shiver, but that only brings new waves of pain through my arms, the white vapour on my breath telling me that it is barely warmer than a refrigerator in this cell now.

Fourteen hours I have been hanging from this rope, without water or food, only torment: and there is no sign of mercy. My head droops to my chest, my body limp and drained, dangling.