The Soldier

RACK

"Apparently, you made it through today."

I groan, try to move, but can’t.

As the world spins into existence around me, I shift my head. I am lying, still, on my back - but on a different table. Icy steel. I’m still naked. My arms are stretched hard over my head, my wrists tied tightly together, secured to something beyond my hands. My legs are wide apart, and, as I roll my head, I see that my ankles are bound, with an overkill of rope, to two heavy steel rings welded to the long table’s foot.

I’m suddenly wide awake, and look around this new concrete room, almost identical to my first cell. With gradually mounting dread, I tip my head backwards to look along the line of my own, bare, upstretched arms. My bound wrists are linked, by a half-metre of rope, to a winch at the table’s head, connected by gears to a simple crank. For now, I do not even try to struggle.

Rachel stands over the table, skirt high on her downy thighs, bare arms and shining shoulders beneath the fluorescent lights. She smiles down at me. "Welcome, Kirsten, to the rack."

"Ohhh, God," I groan, wishing I had not heard her.

"This is no ordinary rack. This uses state-of-the-art controlled-torque gearing. This rack could rip a small car to pieces."

"Please, I don’t know anything," I whimper in terror.

As if she has not heard me: "It’s wonderfully simple. I just turn the handle, and you get stretched. It hurts like hell, believe me. It’s incredibly painful. I can keep stretching you until every single joint has been dislocated. And even then, I can keep going. If I stretch you enough, your spine will tear apart, and eventually, you’ll die."

"Oh, God, no, no, please ..." I burst into tears. I hate being so exposed, so vulnerable. Rachel takes hold of the crank, turns it. With a soft click, the winch beyond my hands rolls over a notch, then another, then another. The rope pulls on my wrists: I am dragged fractionally across the table, until my ankles jam against their restraints. Oddly, I am most of all aware of the sound: the very distinctive squeaking and creaking of the rope. I realise I am being tortured, but it seems unreal, like some fairytale kind of torture, and I wonder if I am supposed to be in pain already.

Rachel turns the crank again, a half-turn for every notch, and even though my feet are firmly moored, my wrists are pulled a little closer to the winch: a physical stretching of my body that I can feel all along my limbs, all through my torso. I feel numb.

"You resisted the electric shock torture so well," Rachel explains smoothly. "We were in danger of killing you, you see. This can go a lot longer. Forgive the pun." She tightens the winch again, and my body is stretched. I try to fight it, but every muscle is already taut. This is beyond mere physical strength: it’s machine against tendons and ligaments. I realise with growing nausea that I am going to suffer whatever torment Rachel chooses to inflict upon me, no matter what.

Rachel cranks me two more notches, and as I stretch, I hear my own joints popping loudly. Unexpectedly, the first stabs of pain surge from my shoulders, along my arms. I gasp. My ribcage is lifted by the tension, the ropes biting my wrists and ankles.

"Sleep tight," she chuckles.

"What? Wait! No!" I try to lift my head, realising that Rachel is leaving. "Please!" The cell door booms shut, the lock is turned.

The moment she is gone, I burst into tears. I cry for perhaps twenty minutes, gulping between breaths, lying stretched and exposed. The torque on my body is constant, traction between moored ankles and roped wrists, my bare arms pressing on either side of my head. I am cruelly aware of my nudity in the chill air, the hairs along my arms and thighs standing on end, my naked flanks peppered with gooseflesh, my nipples standing, shivers ravaging my body as I lie on the cold metal.

When my crying ends, it is replaced by sheer panic. There is no way I can be here when Rachel returns! To suffer the torments she has described is unthinkable, so I begin my first earnest attempt to escape. I turn my ankles, tugging on the ropes that bind them to the metal rings, but to my frustration I am too tightly drawn to get any leverage. Next, tipping my head back, I try to twist my hands. My fingers stretch and flutter for the knots about my wrists, and when that fails, I simply try to wrench my hands from their bonds.

I fight the ropes for an hour, but, finally, I surrender to my bondage, and lie, stretched out, bursting into tears once more.

Another hour passes. When, on occasion, I lift my head, it is to see the plain of my ribcage, two dark nipples pointing into the air: my belly beyond, shining in the powerful overhead lights. The stark ridges of my hip bones flank the thick black mat of my pubic bush: my own legs, muscles drawn into definition, stretching to opposite corners of the rack’s base, my feet helplessly sticking up beyond the tight bindings that moor them.

I let my head drop back. My own arms form a tight frame on either side of my face, drawn harshly upwards by the tension on my body.

I close my eyes. Stretched on this rack with the winch locked in place, I’m truly helpless. If nobody ever comes back, I would die of thirst lying here naked, unable to do a thing to save myself.

Four hours.

After a time, my fear begins to wane, replaced by a numb sense of resignation. I am a prisoner, I can do nothing to free myself, nor do I feel any obligation to try, any more. My position on the rack is almost comfortable. I can feel the muscles of my back and legs loosening, the gentle stretching action quite pleasant. Only the chill, and the knowledge that Rachel will soon return, kept me from truly relaxing.

Six or seven hours after Rachel tightened the rack, however, things begin to change.

Turning my head to regard the pale horizon of my own tautly-upstretched arm, I see the bristling of tiny hairs, the coarse texture of goosebumps, as the cold penetrates deep into my muscles. I’m beginning to shiver, the cold air biting into my lifted ribcage, invading the intimacy between my legs, my open armpits. As my muscles contract with cold, the stretching action of the rack seems to grow. It begins to hurt.

"Somebody? Please?" I call towards the door, but nobody comes.

I lie, shivering. A dull ache has settled through my limbs, but I’m incapable of movement, and have no way of easing the discomfort.

I try again, after perhaps eight hours, to free myself: managing to angle my head back between my upstretched arms, flexing my fingers for the knots at my wrists. But they are utterly beyond reach, and even if they weren’t, I would never be able to unpick them. I give a single whimper of frustration.

Twelve endless hours after she left, Rachel returns. By now, the cold has invaded every centimetre of my drawn and naked body, leaving me in slow, painful spasms of shivering. Rachel seems delighted to see me in such discomfort, and slowly circles the rack.

"How was your night? Have you thought about our little talk last night?"

I try to lift my head to see her, but it brings sharp pain to my shoulders, and I have to look at the ceiling. "There is nothing I can say," I shiver. There is frost on my breath.

"That’s hardly the attitude, now, is it? Perhaps I can jog your memory, a little?"

Rachel turns the crank handle. The roller shifts, I am stretched, and pain, savage and raw, explodes along my arms and legs. I never imagined it would hurt like this! My head rocks back, my mouth opens wide. "Oh, god!!"

"I told you it would hurt," Rachel tells me smugly. "Now. Tell me all you know."

Even breathing is difficult. I’m desperate for some easement, relief from the burning strain in my arms and shoulders. "I don’t know anything!"

"Yes, you do." Rachel turns the handle. My feet remain anchored, my fists creep to the winch, and the most incredible pain explodes through my arms, all down my sides. This time I scream, it hurts so much.

"Oh, oh god! My arms! My arms! My arms!" I shriek, barely aware of what I’m crying, but desperate for the pain to stop. I had no idea that I could sweat so much: it beads on every centimetre of my naked body, streaking my ribcage, droplets over my belly and limbs. I gasp and cry with the terrible pain in my wrenched limbs.

"Tell me," Rachel orders, and again turns the crank: I am stretched a little further. The pain doubles, fire engulfing my arms and legs, and my cries dissolve into a wordless scream as my body creaks.

"Now, I suggest you consider the benefits of telling me what I need to know. Because it gets worse than this; much, much worse, and the next time I see you, I’m going to stretch you so hard your arms rip out of their sockets. So think."

I barely notice that she has gone. There is nothing but the pain, awful, unending, unrelenting pain. Stretched cruelly, my body is on fire. Every nerve is ravaged, my joints under terrible strain, limbs drawn to breaking point. I have no choice but to gasp and groan, though every breath, every shallow movement of my inflated ribcage causes heightened pain all down my spine, through my shoulders, my strained abdomen. Tears wet my face. Sweat runs. The ropes anchoring my ankles grind hard against bone: those on my wrists creak, holding the terrible tension. This is so much worse than the electric shocks: at least then there had been moments of relief, nor had the pain been so all-engulfing, so overwhelming

Three hours I am left to suffer.

I cannot regulate my breathing, I cannot stay silent: I moan and whimper, my muscles shaking, my body horribly strained. I can feel damage being done, but I can not find any relief, not even the slightest easing of the tension.

By the time Rachel returns, I am exhausted, my limbs weak, but the pain is no less than when the roller first started to stretch me. Every joint hurts with sharp, biting fire, every muscle feels as if it has been sliced. My fingers, curled and useless beyond the tight ropes, can grasp nothing that might ease my suffering. My toes flex helplessly in the chill air.

When I see her, free and beautiful, my misery wells up in a sobbed plea: "I beg you, I beg you, please, stop the pain, please ..."

Rachel draws close, bends over to whisper into my ear. "You want it to stop it?"

"Stop it now," I babble, high-pitched and desperate. "Stop, stop, stop it now!"

"You want the pain to stop?" She puts her hand to a release lever at the rack’s head.

"Oh, God, yes! Please!" My swollen fingers curl uselessly around the rope that runs from my wrists to the winch. "Loosen it!"

"Tell me where your troops are stationed."

"Yes! Anything! Just release me!"

Rachel slowly shakes her head. "Wrong answer, gorgeous girl."

"No!" I shriek. "Oh, god, no! I’ll do anything! Please! Anything at all! Oh, please! You can do anything to me, but don’t stretch me!"

"Then tell me what I want to know."

"I can’t think! I can’t remember! Please -"

Rachel gives the crank a turn. The rope hauls on my wrists, and pain rips the breath from my lungs. Every joint seems to shatter, every muscle lanced with pure, white-hot agony. My scream is loud, a cry of pure, animal agony that overloads every rational thought. The savagery fills my eyes with sparks. I’m aware of liquid fire down my sides and back, roaring through my hips and all down my legs. I can hear it, over the groaning of the rope: my own body, creaking like stressed leather. My ribcage can scarcely shift, and I’m panting for breath. Sweat covers me like water, streaks my ribs and belly, soaks my hair, shines on my arms and legs. My muscles are defined by the sheer strain, tendons as hard as steel cables.

"Where are your troops stationed?"

"I don’t know," I gasp. "Oh, God! I don’t know, I can’t take any more, I can’t!"

"I think you can take a little more," Rachel says. "Let’s try." She turns the crank again. The winch shifts, my own limbs crack! as the tension grows. The pain is terrible. My voice rises in pitch as if I were a guitar-string being tuned. My eyes are wide: I hear the squeaking of abdominal muscles lengthening, ligaments stretching. I can barely breathe. A dribble of urine escapes between my thighs. Then, somehow, I find the air to scream again. My eyes shut, I howl at the ceiling, wordless yells of agony, decaying into wails and breathless gulps for air.

"Tell me what I want to know," Rachel demands.

"I can’t," I sob.

"I’m going to stretch you again ..."

"No! No, no, no, please, oh, please have mercy, don’t hurt me more ..." Through unfocusing, tear-filled eyes, I see Rachel wind the handle again. There is a sickening tearing sound from both my shoulders. The pain seems to slam into my head with a flash like sheet lightning, and I start shrieking in new agony as my arms crack! from their sockets. Everything I have experienced thus far pales to nothing against this new torment. I lose all awareness of who I am, where I am, my entire being focused only as a white hot fireball. I lie, stretched between mooring ropes and winch, shrieking and howling, white hot fire raging the length of my disjointed arms, searing my upper back and chest, focused with fury beyond all comprehension in my broken shoulders.

Rachel gives a laugh of triumph. "Now we’re getting somewhere!"

Creaks and groans fill the tiny cell. Nothing could possibly be worse than the pain that rages in my dislocated arms, sending waves of sweat over my body, drawing long, agonised groans from my throat. I just want to die, but Rachel asks again: "Where are your troops?"

I don’t know, I mouth weakly.

Then, Rachel cranks the handle again. New agony fills my ruined shoulders: but is suddenly joined by an absolutely unbearable pain in my hips. I feel my eyes widening, my mouth opening in an airless roar as white-hot fire more intense than a nuclear blast explodes from my groin. With a double crack, crack! like distant gunfire, my hips pop in quick succession from their sockets.

I find myself screaming.

My voice is shrill, harsh, shrieks and yells that tear my throat, my mouth wide. My hands and feet, beyond the ropes, are purple with strangled circulation. My body, naked, drawn in an upturned ‘Y,’ is held motionless on the rack: the unbelievable pain of bones sitting out of joint, all the strain borne by the ligaments. Every muscle is strained by the tension. Tendons are near breaking point. Every nerve warns of the damage in a flood of pain that overwhelms me. My scream becomes a squeal, my breath stolen as my ribcage lifts to the point of inflexibility.

"Think carefully, Kirsten Smart," Rachel says softly. My wide eyes slowly roll back, until I regard her beyond my own wrecked arms. "Your body is nearing its limit. I am literally breaking you. One or two more notches, and your elbows will break, then your knees. A couple more notches, and your spine will be just about ready to snap - if your diaphragm hasn’t torn by then, in which case you will suffocate.

"I suggest you think hard about telling me what you know, before I return."

And with that, she leaves me.

I know that I can’t survive for long, like this. Glistening, my belly rocks violently as I fight for breath, my body not releasing its hold on life, though I wish it with every burning fibre of my being. I pray that my hands or feet might tear off, so that the terrible strain eases.

Gradually, I feel a numb, tingling sensation in my extremities. Though it does nothing to ease the fire in my dislocated joints, I recognise the lack of oxygen, and squeeze my eyes shut, praying for the process to hasten. Despite myself, I kept fighting to breathe. But blackness gradually closes in from the edge of my vision, and I feel myself fade from consciousness.

Seventeen hours.

A lifetime since I was secured on the rack, six of those hours in extreme agony. My shoulders and hips are dislocated, the muscles in my forearms, upper arms, back, pelvis, thighs and lower legs are torn, tendons strained, ligaments ripped, causing excruciating pain in every part of my body. The ropes at my wrists and ankles have drawn me some twenty centimetres longer than I should be,.

I’m fading in and out of consciousness, brutally torn awake by the pain in my broken body to wail and groan, until the severity overloads my brain, and I black out. Even my eyes refuse to function, my fluttering eyelids strobing a blurred view of the ceiling, sweat like condensation over my cruelly stretched body.

I become aware of Rachel standing over me, though whether she has just arrived, or has been standing there for some while, I do not know. I try to clear my vision, try to focus on her swimming form. She stands with hands on hips.

"Well?" Her voice sounds a thousand kilometres away. "Are you ready to talk?"

I move my lips, but no sound will come. I don’t have the information she wants. I would have told her long before now. Even so, Rachel puts a hand to the lever. "I’m going to torture you some more," she says. I begin to wail in terror.

When the roller moves, it reawakens agony beyond belief. Fresh fire explodes into my arms and legs with a fury that tears a wild scream from my lungs, my head tipping back, my tongue flat. My whole body creaks, swollen muscles violated by still more tension. New sweat chases the old from my bare skin, droplets appearing, glossing my naked body like oil.

Rachel waits, watches while I scream, helpless to the excruciating savagery of being rent apart by slow force. For perhaps fifteen minutes she lets me lie, until my screams die to weak whimpers, the adrenalin breaking down, leaving me a dazed wreck.

"No more," I moan. "No more, please, no more ..."

"You don’t get it, do you?" Rachel says. "You are expendable. If you die under torture, so be it, but I’m not going to stop until I get the information I want from you."

"Please, have mercy on me," I weep.

Rachel shrugs, and cranks the handle. A shock of violent agony explodes through me, and I scream anew, my feet anchored, my wrists hauled another centimetre towards the winch with the most terrible sound, like ripping out deep-rooted grass. Liquid fire flashes the length of my arms, down my back, engulfing my forearms and hands. I scream endlessly, drawing ragged breaths to scream again. Over five terrible minutes, my elbows break apart, the agony overwhelming: bones separate, cartilage tears, and my arms gradually lengthen another centimetre. Rachel adjusts the winch as I lengthen, maintaining the tension, and I feel the unbelievable pain of ligaments breaking anchorage in my hips and shoulders, fibre by fibre. My ribcage has been forced upwards so cruelly that my jutting nipples point towards the wall behind me: only my stomach has freedom of movement, heaving with every frantic breath.

I feel myself spinning, merciful blackness creeping in from the edges of my vision.

So Rachel slaps me, hard, across the face, shocking me back to awareness. My eyes refuse to lock on her, won’t focus, I am panting and wailing.

"Start talking," she orders.

I don’t know, I mouth, unable to speak, and watch in helpless anguish as Rachel puts her hand to the crank, gives it another turn. The rack stretches me, and full awareness returns, my high-pitched yell evolving into a long, drawn-out scream. My arms, pressed to my head, creak and crack loudly, and popping sounds from my spine seem to fracture my very being, piercing me with agony beyond anything I have yet endured.

I want to die. I can’t stop screaming. It feels as if I have been set alight, there is not a centimetre of me not filled with agony. Worse still is that I can’t move, I am held stretched so tightly, my arms and legs wrenched out of their sockets, muscles and ligaments slowly ripping, and Rachel, the one person with the power to stop my pain, is watching with delight, planning to hurt me more.

I beg, "oh, please, please, enough, please ..."

"Where are your troops stationed?"

"I have no idea," I squeak, the tears mixing with sweat. I am aware of my face framed by my taut arms, my ribcage stark, my belly hollowed, my limbs drawn.

"Then suffer."

Rachel cranks the handle. Another centimetre of rope is wound in, and my knees begin to break with the screeching of detaching cartilage. The pain is indescribable, far beyond my capacity to endure, and yet I have no choice. I piss in agony, I scream and scream in pain, spinning with the absolute horror of feeling my own body being broken by brute force.

Rachel leaves me screaming. After ten minutes, my voice, already hoarse, suddenly fails. I am still trying to scream, drawing ragged breathes, my mouth wide, tears pouring from my eyes, but only croaks escape my throat, now. I can think of nothing, the existence of anything but pain is beyond my comprehension. I feel neither misery or fear, I am capable only of physical suffering, of feeling pain, of crying my anguish.

After half an hour, Rachel comes back. She stands, for a while, and looks at me: my body shining, muscles pulled stark and sinewy, my ribcage harsh, belly hollowed, the tangled hair in my armpits and the forest of my pubes standing like bushes on a stark and shining landscape of pale skin. My hands and feet are purple, beyond the ropes.

Finally, Rachel bends to whisper to me: "Tell me, baby. Tell me where they are."

I give no response. I an unable to even acknowledge that she has spoken. I can show no reaction, even as her hand closes again on the crank. When she turns it, explosions of pain flash in my elbows, shoulders, hips, knees, but are suddenly feeble against the savage roar of pain that engulfs my spine. I cannot scream, but I give a long, thin wail of agony as the connective ligaments of my vertebrae begin to separate. My spine cracks and snaps loudly, each sound a new shockwave of agony that registers as blinding flashes in my head, setting my limbs tingling furiously.

Rachel winds the crank-handle, the machine stretches me, my spine rending further, and fury engulfs my back. Now, she is no longer torturing me for information. She is torturing me for fun. She wants nothing more than the power to inflict pain on me, and I cannot defy her that, nor can I hide my suffering from her. I groan in agony. I can barely breathe, hearing muscles tear all along my spinal column, the squeaks of gases escaping between my vertebrae, the cracking of ligaments loosening their hold on bone. The sweat is incredible, droplets like dewdrops clustering over my body, as my nipples rise with each desperate breath. My abdominal muscles are tearing with earthy groans. The pain is immense.

I cough, blood flecks my lips. The ropes are creaking and squealing.

"That looks like it hurts," Rachel noted. "Feel like talking?"

I can give no response.

Through the all-engulfing, roaring, devastating pain, I feel disbelief as Rachel turns the crank once more. I hear the winch turn, I feel my body stretch, and somehow the pain worsens again. I try to scream, but I don’t even have breath. Although the torment in my body is beyond all description, the pain of ripped muscles, torn ligaments, dislocated joints worse than being burned alive, my ruined chest no longer has elasticity enough to breathe. I can hear the creaking of tissue as my body’s framework continues to tear apart, a constant battering of agonies, but I can’t scream, can’t plead for death. I have no air.

Rachel is watching me.

"You’re dying, Kirsten," she tells me. "How does it feel?"

I can’t move at all. I can’t form words, my eyes losing focus but staring at the ceiling. I’m aware of steam curling from my wet and ruined body, my skin tighter than a drum. I have been stretched some thirty centimetres, the length again of my own forearm.

This time, as blackness floods me, nothing can stop it. I have not breathed for over a minute, and as I fade from consciousness, the pain grows to a roaring magnitude that drowns my soul, engulfs me in white-hot agony, the world spinning beyond my reach.