Fate of a Murderess

Part 1: A Nasty Business

Jennifer DeMoeira was now a widow. By marriage, she had become a member of one of the wealthier aristocratic families. Though their title meant little and had never had a corresponding seat in the House of Lords, their hereditary land holdings and in more recent years wise investment of their finances had meant that in the modern age they probably had more influence than any of those who still sat there.

The DeMoeiras were a close-knit extended family, and tended to marry only those of similar breeding to themselves. When the young Daniel DeMoeira had returned from university with a commoner in tow as his chosen love, it had caused a stir but the family lived in the modern age, and it was by doing so that they remained successful. Therefore, before long the union of Jennifer and Daniel DeMoeira was agreed and the two 22-year-old newly-weds had enjoyed a honeymoon of splendour the likes of which Jennifer had never imagined seeing for herself before then.

That was just over three years ago, and the tragic death of Daniel had in fact taken place during a holiday to celebrate their anniversary. Jennifer and Daniel had shared a love of outdoor activities, including rock-climbing and were both very fit. During a climb, however, a mooring had come loose and Daniel subsequently slipped and fell to his death. The verdict had come back, "accidental death".

The truth was, that Jennifer had had enough of being tied to the DeMoeira clan, whom she knew had never fully accepted her into their high society. She had tried to fit in at first, but eventually she just started to fall in with the rich "jet set" crowd, with whom the DeMoeiras would do business as the new world order required them to do, but whom they regarded as being somewhat crass and brash. Jennifer, the poor girl come good, was closer in spirit to the fast-living style anyway, determined to enjoy it while it lasted.

Finally, she had decided that, since Daniel's share of the family fortune was quite substantial enough for her to live on it for the rest of her life in the manner to which she was accustomed, and given that Daniel had promised that he had left it all to her in his will, she should do away with him and depart to America where (she was sure) her accent and money would make her far more respected and welcome than she was in the European set.

She was good-looking, too. Her regular exercise kept her figure trim and, though her breasts were not that big, they were well proportioned compared with the rest of her body and had plenty to get hold of. Her blonde hair she could style any way she wanted, for she had made a point of learning all she could about such things while she had access to the beauty therapists whose prices only such families as the DeMoeiras could afford. She had supported herself through university with a part-time hairdressing job, and so it might be said that she had a professional interest. Certainly her in-laws had commented, non-too-kindly, "Once a hairdresser, always a hairdresser!" She would win herself a man whose background was closer to her own, and embark on a brand new life, unimaginable when she had been just five years younger.

Now was the big leap. Her private jet was ready for the transatlantic flight, all the paperwork for her transferral to US citizenship was in place, and now all she had to do was board the plane, and she would be free of the DeMoeiras forever.

Jennifer placed all her trust in flying to the people who looked after the aircraft and to her pilot, but she rarely bothered them when they were doing their job. Thus, she never noticed that her regular pilot had been replaced by another. She simply settled herself in to pass the time between take-off and landing. As it happened, that time seemed to pass more quickly than she had expected, for not long after the aircraft reached cruising altitude, something in the cabin's air made her feel dizzy, shortly before she passed out altogether.

* * * * *

Jennifer awoke to find herself in darkness. She was seated naked on a leather chair, and restrained, she discovered from the feel of it, by broad leather straps. Her first instinct was a natural one.

"Help!" She called into the featureless blackness, "Anyone? Help me!"

The sound at least revealed that she was not in some vast chamber, but quite a small room. There was absolutely no source of light, and presumably the walls, floor and ceiling would be coloured black also, giving her eyes no chance of focussing on anything, and giving her no way of judging by sight where she was or what was around her. But the acoustics were unmistakable. The only other reality besides her voice and the occasional creak of the leather as she flexed her muscles against it, was the feel of the leather against her bare skin. Her feet did not touch the floor, but the leather upholstery continued down the back of her legs so that her heels were resting against it. Her hands were strapped down to the armrests so that she could not move her fingers to explore the shape of the rests, nor the material used to make the chair itself, beneath the leather. Across her forehead another band of leather made sure that she could not move her head forwards, backwards, left or right – nor could she turn her face more than a few degrees. The only things she could feel were leather and cold air. The only things she could hear were the leather, her own voice and breath, and the beat of her heart. She could feel panic coursing through her, and her heartbeat faster and louder all the time.

"Please, somebody! Help me!" she tried again, but only the dry sound of the room around her, too small to echo as such, but returning the sound to her ears as soon as she had released it from her mouth.

"Can anyone hear me?" she cried, the subtle change in her attitude revealed – no longer did she believe that help would come, but now she was asking of it could come. The panic was taking hold in her mind, as the ways in which she had prepared herself for years to defend herself were rendered worthless, and she was the captive of somebody who wanted her afraid, naked and powerless. There was no escape, but that did not stop the primeval fight-or-flight instinct from starting, adrenaline racing to her heart and urging it faster, sweat springing from her pores with the scent of fear in it, her body preparing to relieve itself of waste if need be. There was no object of her fear, only the continued silence of the room and the creaks as her panicking body pulled and twisted in the relentless bonds. Jennifer started to cry, tears flowing down her cheeks and dripping from her chin onto her shoulders and the tops of her breasts. Deep inside, she was angry and humiliated by this, for she had always seen herself as a strong woman, always in control of herself and her emotions. But now, she had no control over anything and could only wait, weeping in the lonely darkness of her tight cell. Her sobbing lasted for several minutes, though she had no knowledge of how time was passing beyond the walls that caged her.

* * * * *

A door opened behind her, almost silent but in the silence of the cell, Jennifer's ears still heard it. Footsteps of someone entering. Her struggles and her tears had stopped, and she felt exhausted as the adrenaline was flushed out of her system. Light flooded in from whatever lay beyond the door, and Jennifer saw that the wall in front of her was dark red, before the door closed and total darkness returned. She heard more footsteps as the mystery person positioned himself behind her (the sound of the footfalls suggested a man, not a woman or a child, Jennifer was sure).

"You are hereby charged with the cold-blooded murder of Daniel DeMoeira, with the motive of inheriting a share of the wealth of the DeMoeira family. You have the right to remain silent, because there is nothing that you can say that we do not know about your crime, and there are no words that can induce mercy or a respite from your punishment." The voice that intoned these words was distorted using effects, but Jennifer had a feeling that she recognised it.

"We will not bother with extracting a confession, because we already know that you did it, how, and with what motive. Your means, motive and opportunity are known and indisputably proven. Though the law and its oh-so-thorough investigators concluded that Daniel's death was an accident, we have discovered what you did to make it appear so, and so justice will be done without the law."

There was a soft click.

"Besides, you silly bitch, you wrote the whole sick plan in your diary. No further evidence is needed to convict!" The distortion had been turned off, and the owner of the voice was revealed as he insulted the hapless Jennifer. It was the pater familias of the DeMoeiras, Daniel's uncle James Edward DeMoeira, who was always called by both his Christian names, as there were other Jameses close in the DeMoeira family tree. The lights suddenly came on, and the dark red room was filled with brightness. The colour of the walls seemed to have been chosen to match the worn leather of the chair to which Jennifer had been strapped. James Edward tossed something into Jennifer's lap. It was the incriminating diary. For a brief moment, Jennifer was more shocked that anyone had had the temerity to abuse that most hallowed of documents, sacrosanct since she had begun writing it at the age of 13, than she was at the knowledge that she had been caught and would be punished by the family of her victim. For a moment, she was about to respond with, "How dare you read my diary?" as though she were still a teenager and her parents had used it as evidence of her losing her virginity at fifteen. Instead, she addressed her response to a more immediately concerning issue.

"What are you going to do to me?"

"Let me explain something about the DeMoeira family history. Our wealth, beyond what came from our hereditary status, was first based upon the slave trade in the 18th century and we made a great deal also from fashioning ways of controlling unruly slaves. Before that, there were DeMoeiras involved with every witchfinding enterprise in the 17th century. As slavery was abolished, we found that there were still areas where these specialities were valued. At present, the DeMoeira business family is responsible for many of the techniques used by totalitarian regimes on people who have been 'disappeared'. One way or another, for at least four centuries we have been at the heart of the torture and interrogation industries, and related businesses. In the last four decades, we have gained a reputation amongst those who know, for inventive and ingenious devices to punish or extract information from those whom a state considers beyond the pale. With the growth of so-called 'alternative lifestyles', we have found that toned-down versions of some of our products have a market in the general public as well, though generally they go to the more hardcore of the clubs that cater for such people.

"Your husband was an idealistic young man, and we were never going to bring him in on these aspects of our business empire. He knew, of course, where the money originally came from for the building of the empire, but he could never have accepted it if he had discovered that it still formed a major part of our activities. Maybe that is why he found it possible, even necessary, to marry below himself.

"And so we come to you. DeMoeiras have killed their spouses in the past, or each other, but always for matters of the heart – wounded pride, jealousy, that type of thing. Even when it was a blood relative killed by his or her partner, if we saw that a wrong had originally been done to the murderer by the victim, then we stood by them, and often agreed beforehand to support the crime. And always, the murderer wanted to remain with the family, even if they had killed to marry elsewhere. But you! You killed for that most petty of reasons, money. Profit. And you would have turned your back on us, like a traitor returning to her true allegiance. Daniel, perhaps, got what he deserved after all for marrying below himself. Be that as it may, the heads of the DeMoeira family and our closest allies have determined that a deed of such black hearted, treacherous greed cannot go unpunished.

"We have used all the resources of our key industry to prepare for you something special, though if it works as we plan, it may become a new premium service in our portfolio."

Jennifer felt as though liquid nitrogen had been substituted for her blood and her bowels had turned to slack rubber. Her bladder also seemed to be on the verge of giving way. A part of her wanted to believe that this was all some sort of elaborate prank, but her diary, open to the incriminating entry, lay on her lap and she was restrained in a device that must surely have been designed with torture in mind. The decor made perfect sense, too. It would hide the blood perfectly. She concentrated desperately on not soiling herself in front of James Edward, her fingers digging as much as possible given her restraints into the leather arm of the chair.

She almost let go completely when James Edward placed his hand on her arm. But he was not going to torture her here, and not yet. Instead, his hands worked expertly to release her arm from the straps that held it in place. Even if Jennifer had had the awareness at that moment to struggle, the uncle whom she had once regarded as a friendly middle-aged man was far too strong. He twisted Jennifer's arm behind her back where he fastened a handcuff tightly around her wrist. Then he repeated the process with her other arm so that her wrists were linked behind her back.

Methodically, and with little thought for Jennifer's comfort, he proceeded to undo all the straps, and Jennifer was sure that he had lingered around the straps across her waist and lap, looking maybe not at what he was doing but at Jennifer's naked snatch. If that was true, it did not last for long and soon Jennifer was freed from the chair except for her wrists fastened behind her. James Edward went to them and operated some form of catch, which released the handcuffs from the back of the chair. At the same time he made sure that he had a firm hold of them himself.

"Come on, bitch, we're going to meet the Doctor," he said grimly, and taking a hold on Jennifer's shoulders he lifted her up and put her on her feet, "Oh, and by the way, if you try to run then we will have to give you a taste of our regular wares before we move on to your planned punishment, and that would not be pleasant for you. It would also delay the moment of truth, but believe me when I say it would not be worth it. Walk ahead of me, and follow my instructions."

Beyond the dark-red room the corridors were a cream colour, much like most corridors anywhere, and could indeed have been in a hospital, or an office block if it wasn't for the way in which Jennifer had found herself treated here. Feeling cowed and beaten, and terrified, Jennifer did not have the will left to try to escape, but simply did as she was told.

Their destination proved to be what was apparently a fully equipped operating theatre, although there were features that, in conjunction with James Edward's speech earlier, suggested it might have other purposes as its main intent. The theatre was not empty, and of the three people there Jennifer recognised two: Joel and Francis were close cousins (though by a different branch of the family tree than James Edward's) of her departed husband, and presumably members of the DeMoeira dynasty who were much better versed in their family's lines of business. The third was obviously "the Doctor", if only because of his dress. However, he appeared to be dressed not for operating but for research, with a long white coat reminiscent of scientists in the movies. Although he wore no facemask, he did wear a head covering that contained his hair, which would otherwise (it seemed) have spilled out into a great shock of black hair. He was slightly shorter than the DeMoeiras, but also athletically built, with obvious wiry strength. He was studying Jennifer with small, dark eyes set in a face that seemed open but at once gave away nothing about what was inside the man's head. It made the naked captive shiver as he looked at her. James Edward held Jennifer firmly by her shoulders, standing behind her and discouraging any rash moves.

"So, this is the special lady whose crime I am to punish!" he remarked, and Jennifer caught a hint of some exotic accent in his voice.

"It is indeed," replied James Edward, "Jennifer, meet Doctor Lucas Brava, a close and loyal employee of the DeMoeira family for many years, and one of our most effective developers and demonstrators of products. He is highly skilled in many medical disciplines, and having been given the specifics of our requirements has devised the punishments that you will undergo.

"Now, Dr. Brava, I will leave the young woman in your capable hands. I trust that you have enough assistance with these two fine young men?"

With that, the two cousins (dressed in jeans and checked shirts, almost like cattle handlers in the Wild West) moved to take hold of Jennifer by the upper arms. James Edward departed while the men began to muscle Jennifer towards the operating table. Jennifer finally seemed to realise her predicament, for whatever was going to happen to her here, it would be terrible and horrific, and she did not want to let it happen. It was futile, however. With her wrists already handcuffed, she could do little against the strength of the muscular men who held her.

Unceremoniously, Jennifer found herself forced onto the table, where finally she might kick at her assailants – but it was no good; Francis held her chest down while Joel easily contained her legs in his grasp, effectively tucking them tightly under one arm. Swiftly, he found a leather strap attached to the table and Jennifer's ankles were trapped under it, and she was helpless once again. Now, he helped his cousin by holding down Jennifer while Francis adjusted his hold on her, moving behind her and now pushing down on Jennifer's shoulders. Joel backed away as Dr. Brava activated a control on the wall of the theatre. Jennifer's view was blocked by the arms of her cousin, but she could feel motors working beneath her in the operating table.

Joel came forwards again, and Francis forced Jennifer into a sitting position. Joel took a firm hold on the woman while Francis produced a key from his pocket and undid the handcuffs, for what reason, Jennifer had no idea at that point.

All became apparent when the two cousins each seized an arm and dragged them wide, forcing Jennifer onto her back once more. Now the motors' work was revealed, for Jennifer found her arms stretched along extensions on either side of the table. She was sure now that Joel and Francis had practised this many times and knew each step of the procedure through which they would put their errant in-law. Indeed, with practised skill they applied further leather straps, first around the wrists, then the lower and upper arms so that Jennifer was utterly secured to the smooth surface beneath her.

This, it appeared, was not enough for the doctor's purpose, for the pair continued with further straps across the legs and across the waist of the victim. Francis, the job of immobilising Jennifer complete, was eager for some fun. The unmistakable bulge in his jeans needed no emphasis, but he was already working his belt and fly. Although her legs were fastened together, Jennifer knew that this only meant that it would be tighter and hurt more. She tried to brace herself for the imminent rape.

"No, no, no!" insisted the doctor, "We do not take our fun until the business is complete! We must remain focused or the whole punishment may be compromised. If she should experience even the slightest physical arousal from your actions, it might turn pain into pleasure and then the entire effect is lost. No, now go and bring me my operating instruments!"

Jennifer expected to see perhaps implements of torture, or just possibly genuine scalpels and the like. What she saw were a hammer and several of the thickest nails she could have imagined.

"What are you going to do to me?" she wailed, pathetically, feeling ashamed at how she sounded but unable to find any greater strength for her voice.

"We are going to punish you, dear," said Doctor Brava, "Many times over. I will not spoil the surprise if you have not already guessed the nature of this operation – anyway, the moment is almost upon you!" So saying, he took up one of the nails and a hammer.

"Joel, gag her, then hold her head. She should watch every moment of this, and it would be a shame if she should accidentally harm her tongue during the process." The doctor approached Jennifer's right hand on its platform, while a ball-gag was forced between her teeth by Joel: apparently, it had been on a second layer of the trolley with the hammer and nails. Then, as the doctor had instructed, Joel placed his hands on either side of the patient's head and forced her to gaze at her vulnerable hand as the doctor carefully placed the tip of the nail into the hollow of her palm. She could see that the nail was at least a centimetre wide, and 15 centimetres long. Doctor Brava poised himself for the first blow, and Jennifer winced but did not dare to close her eyes, which would anger the doctor further.

Metal struck metal, pierced flesh, wrung a scream from Jennifer's lungs, impotent behind Joel's gag. Jennifer did not know it, but Dr. Lucas Brava had planned this well. Beneath her hand was a gap in the meal of the table placed perfectly to take the nail. In that gap was a form of putty that would not seriously impede the nail's progress, but would slow it enough that there would be several blows needed to drive its full length through the victim's hand so that the head rested in her palm. The tip of the nail had already reached the putty, tearing muscles and twisting bone. Jennifer watched with terror and impotence as each subsequent strike brought further damage in her hand and she screamed into the gag with each one as the pain of it seemed greater than the one before. In all, it took seven blows of the hammer before the nail was completely driven home.

"I have broken, I think, two bones in your hand with this operation," Doctor Brava commented to his patient, "But that is unimportant now. Slightly more significant is that you will also have lost any use of your middle two fingers as a result of the procedure. However, given your future prospects, I think that this will prove to be unimportant to you. And now, I shall perform the operation on your other hand."

Joel twisted Jennifer's head so that she faced her left hand and the doctor carefully selected his nail before delicately positioning it exactly as he wanted over her palm. This time, the fear in Jennifer's eyes was the anticipation of a known horror, and in it Dr. Lucas Brava found his greatest delight. He paused a long moment, drinking in the terror of his 'guest', before once more lifting his arm high and driving the cruel spike into the defenceless tissue of Jennifer's trapped hand.

Jennifer found herself beyond screaming, and just gurgled behind the gag as the pain multiplied again and her left hand was left with the same damage as her right. More securely than any straps could hold her, she was pinned to the specially designed table, in agony and impotence caught naked beneath the stares of the men who had done this to her.

"By now, you will be thinking, 'They are crucifying me!' But it is not so, yet. No, this is just the preliminary stage, for the beauty of what I have devised is that we will be able to crucify you over and over again, and it will never end. Each day that your in-laws feel the lack of Daniel, they will be able to put you to a punishment deemed fit for murderers and robbers, in days long ago, and you will come close to death but be forced back to life, to face the same agonising near-death the next day, and the next, forever. This is the fate that I have devised for you!" The doctor laughed at Jennifer's wild, staring, uncomprehending eyes, filled with a conviction of her captors' insanity and the knowledge of her helplessness within it.

Joel and Francis came down the table and began undoing the straps that held Jennifer's legs to the table. Each time, however, they simply looped a strap around her so that her legs were still securely fastened together but no longer held flat against the table. When her ankles were finally freed, Jennifer tried hard to kick her way loose, but it was hopeless. She would have tried harder, but found that her fighting caused her arms to pull on the nails still holding her hands firmly to the table and the stabs of pain quickly forced her to stop. It was hardly as if she could have broken free anyway while the two men were so unyieldingly holding her.

Joel and Francis quickly repositioned Jennifer's feet so that her soles were pressed onto the table, and used their strength to hold her in that posture, with her knees raised into the air. Jennifer couldn't see, but a similar arrangement as that for the nails in her hands had been set up in the table for her feet, and it was to these that the men placed them. Once more, the putty would absorb some of the force of the hammer blows so that the effect would be prolonged. The fact that her legs now blocked her view at least meant that she could not be forced to watch the pitiless metal being driven through her feet.

Doctor Brava was just as precise with his placing of the third nail on Jennifer's right foot, but this time he did not raise his hand as high with the hammer. Consequently, Jennifer did not see his actions as they were hidden behind her knees. The first she knew of the impending blow was when the nail was thrust into her foot.

In shock, Jennifer jerked with the sudden pain, wrenching her hands on the spikes already driven home. She moaned: a long, low, drawn-out wail behind her gag. A low chuckle emerged from the three men.

This was not the smooth transfixing made by the nails in her hands: the nail was not struck with as much force, and also the bones in the foot were proving less easy to prise apart. Every aspect of the process was slower and more painful than it had been with the hands. All the extremities are highly concentrated with nerve-endings, for it is with hands and feet that a person will most often feel their way through a situation where vision and hearing prove ineffective as guides. This sensitivity was now the weapon used against Jennifer.

She showed more control with the subsequent hammer blows, and no longer caused herself greater pain by tugging on her hands, but she could not avoid making the helpless sounds of anguish that so amused the men around her. The nail ground against the bones in her foot, forcing them out of the way and tearing asunder the muscles and sinews that lay in its path. It took at least a dozen strikes before the doctor was satisfied with his handiwork, and repeated the process on Jennifer's left foot.

Now the cousins were making lewd comments, that these were surely not the only pricks that would impale her, and other such comments, and they timed their remarks to coincide with the hammer blows so that humiliation was swiftly followed by suffering. This at last brought tears to Jennifer's eyes: not the pain of being tortured, but the suggestive and lascivious words of her in-laws, and the thought of things that they implied would happen to her.

The doctor finished hammering home the last of the nails.

"Now we come to the really clever part," he informed Jennifer, "Because when we remove the nails, something miraculous happens!"

Francis revealed on a second trolley another tool, resembling a great claw hammerhead, but obviously only used for the claw characteristics. Jennifer could neither imagine what would happen now, nor what they could possibly gain in terms of a "special punishment" by nailing her to the operating table and then immediately prising her free. But that was what they appeared to be doing, Joel taking charge of the process.

The claw crushed against the side of her hand, turning her little finger numb in the process, but the nail pulled free – or did it? Jennifer could see clearly a nail in Joel's hand, which he placed into a metal surgical dish with a clang. But she could also see and feel metal in her hand, and she was still pinned to the table. The same curious effect was found with her other hand.

Joel used Jennifer's toes as a fulcrum for the claw in removing the nails in her toes, crushing them until she was sure that bones had been broken (not that it mattered compared to what had happened to the innards of her feet already). Yet, again, she could still feel the cold metal in her and she was still pinned to the table. What could the doctor have done? Because of his approach to the rest of the operation, Jennifer thought that he would have explained it at this point, but he simply gave further orders to the cousins, that Jennifer's arms should once more be strapped down.

Once the cousins had carried out the command, he operated a control on the wall. It seemed to Jennifer as though the table where the nails had been driven in had melted. She did not have much freedom, but where she had been pinned securely, she now had a little bit of movement. In actual fact, a solution that dissolved the putty had been released from small reservoirs in the table.

"Turn her over!" instructed the doctor, and Jennifer was unstrapped again, and the strong men, giving no hope of struggling, did as they were bidden. The doctor himself lifted Jennifer's legs (which were still bound tightly together) and held them straight out so that kicking was unavailable as an option. In no time at all, Jennifer found herself lying on her chest, arms stretched out and strapped as before, but her palms were now facing downwards. From somewhere, Joel produced a chinrest that forced Jennifer's face to point in one direction only, towards the wall and away from any inspection of her own condition. Behind her, she caught a faint roar like a gas fire coming to life, and then presumably at the command of another wall-mounted control, a large panel slid to one side in front of her to reveal a mirror.

Jennifer first registered that a blue gas flame was emerging from the torch in the doctor's hand. Her bladder released its contents as a terror unlike anything she had ever experienced, even during her already horrific ordeal at the hands of her in-laws, gripped her. Seeing it happen, the cousins laughed out loud in utter derision. Though it did not register for some time, the urine did not pool upon the table, but a well-placed opening drained it away.

The second thing that registered was that although the nails appeared still to be pointing upwards from Jennifer's hands, they had lost their spikes and seemed to be flat on the end. Compared to the rapidly approaching torch flame, this seemed an irrelevant detail but afterwards it was something that Jennifer recalled with vivid clarity.

The third thing that registered was the act that by now, both cousins had huge erections barely concealed in their jeans.

Then the flame approached Jennifer's left hand.

"This will burn, but not directly," the doctor said, "But I must cut down to size, and soften, the metal so that it can be made a secure anchor on the back of your hand. Having it slip out would be most unfortunate, for you as well as us."

He was as good as his word and expertly turned the torch onto the 12cm or so that still protruded. He cut very close to Jennifer's skin, but the flame never came close to touching her. But metal conducts heat extremely well, and the metal was melting as it was cut and softened. Jennifer's hand felt the rapidly swelling burning, and her flesh against the metal still in her hand was seared and burned also. The levels of pain had been taken to yet another level, and Jennifer could not make more sounds but was reduced to stretching her face around her gag in an effort to express her anguish. Her eyes were blinded by tears that expressed no emotion but were simply a reaction to a stimulus for which her body was never designed.

Through the pain, she became aware of a change in the doctor's actions. The fire that still raged in her hand numbed it to anything else that happened, but she could still feel the impact as the doctor now used a small ball hammer to beat the red, soft metal into a cap that pressed firmly against the back of Jennifer's hand, searing the flesh beneath it and causing a new timbre in the wall of pain that emanated from her limb.

"Now we must let it cool gradually: a quick cooling could be disastrous!" the doctor declaimed to all in the room. Jennifer did not know if this was true, but knew well enough that it meant that the burning would not cease in her hand for some time.

The doctor moved with a flourish to Jennifer's feet, where he efficiently went about the same process as he had done on Jennifer's hand. Each nail emerging from the hollow in the middle of her foot, the flame was brought even closer to her skin, but the doctor was clearly an expert with all manner of tools and never once went wrong.

The pain in hand and foot had by now driven Jennifer into a state akin perhaps to hypnosis: she was aware of her surroundings and of the pain inflicted upon her, but its meaning and any response to it was deadened, her mind having temporarily departed in order to protect itself from the storm of unprecedented and extreme sensation. The doctor was aware of this fact, but continued anyway until all four limbs had been treated the same way.

The two cousins briefly left the room, and returned wheeling in a trolley on which rested a sarcophagus. There was no strength left in Jennifer, and her mind was still unable to deal with the suffering that she had suffered, so she did not resist when the doctor first blindfolded her, and then turned her over. Deftly, he fastened a strap around her chest, just under her bosom, and to it he tied her weak and pathetic wrists, positioning her in a parody of the ancient Egyptian mummies.

With ease, the cousins lifted Jennifer into the coffin-like bed, whose dimensions had been carefully tailored to match those of its intended occupant. To the catatonic Jennifer, it was as if she floated through darkness into a world of soft cushions. The sarcophagus was there to enable her to recover for the next phase of her punishment; its soft lining was no sign of mercy on the part of the DeMoeiras, but a means to an end. The doctor looked at the naked woman whom he had mutilated so cunningly and produced one final instrument, a long, thick, shining metal dildo that he forced home into her pliant pussy.

"That should help waken her," he suggested to the cameras recording every moment of the operation, and then closed the lid. He had detected just the slightest of movements as he had inserted the cruel shaft, and so he waved at the tiny transparent eyes of the sarcophagus before allowing Francis and Joel to push the trolley to the next stage.

Part 2: The First Time

Jennifer's mind struggled back from the empty valleys where it had strayed, trying to lose the pain inflicted from without. She could see nothing, her eyes covered by black cloth. She could hear nothing, sound deadened by her environment. There was nothing to smell or taste. She could feel only softness on all sides, caressing her and yet at the same time translated as sinister by her unconscious mind: not the primordial loving warmth of the pre-birth womb, but something closing in and surrounding her, holding her captive.

Then shock, and the terrible recollection of all that had just taken place: for there was a hard metal object piercing her: between her legs, in her most intimate cavity, a harsh invader like those that still had left parts of themselves in her hands and feet. But not painfully driven through her flesh, but nestled within. Cold and uncomfortable, unwelcome and hateful, she wished it gone.

But she could not move her arms or legs, for the softness that imprisoned her was unrelenting and held her immobile except for small tremors of her muscles. Her legs pressed together might have formed a barrier to inserting it, but they equally made it harder to expel now it was in her. All the same, it was something that she could do to change her situation, positive action, and she would attempt it only because it implied regaining her will.

The muscles of Jennifer's vaginal walls would be the route to her freedom. Pushing, she felt proud when she discovered that she could by strength of will start to remove the unwelcome implement from her passage. She could feel more of it resting outside of her body now, and maybe she would finally push it all the way out, and feel it on her legs instead. Perhaps it would be just as uncomfortable, but it would be symbol of her willpower and determination to resist.

Then the sarcophagus lid opened. Jennifer did not hear it, her ears deafened by the lining just as its designer intended. But she felt the fresh air on her body, and slightly more freedom for her limbs. She thought of kicking, but the action was curtailed as a hand slapped on the end of the partly extruded metal shaft, driving it violently back into her. Almost immediately, the shaft was whipped out just as quickly and taken away. Then hands lifted Jennifer into a sitting position.

When the blindfold was removed, Jennifer saw that she was once again in the care of James Edward DeMoeira. Her wrists were still held against her chest and her legs, though now awarded some vertical movement, were still held rigidly against lateral movement by the shape of the sarcophagus. She was in some sort of anteroom, it seemed, and a long mirror faced Jennifer as she blinked to accustom her eyes to the light. It seemed to her as though she belonged in some sort of horror movie, rising up from the coffin like some pornographic bride of Dracula, the thick bands that held her arms in place hiding from her angle of view the vile handiwork of Doctor Brava.

James Edward spoke: "As you are now attired, and postured, you are to walk to the next point in the proceedings. It is time for you to meet the rest of the family, and I think that they would appreciate more a dignified, even proud, showing from you. If you resist, I can of course utilise some of our other products, such as an exquisitely designed electric prod that has received rave reviews from professionals. But why should you want that? It only makes your suffering even more omnipresent. Will you act rationally, or do I have to make even more of a show of you?"

"What's going to happen?" Jennifer asked meekly of James Edward.

"Your punishment is going to be long and entertaining, but the first night, as it were, is going to be a special occasion and the family have gathered from across the globe to witness your first time. That is what is going to happen, and it will happen either with you entering as a star or with you entering as a slave. The rest of the event, of course, will have you as abject criminal being punished, but nothing you can do will change that fact."

Jennifer looked from James Edward to the mirror and back, studying his face and her own. So soon after the triumph, minute as it may have been, that she had felt in driving out the dildo from her pussy, Jennifer was confronted again with her helplessness in this situation. Strength of will would mean nothing when she was being driven by electric shocks and surrounded by DeMoeiras all of whom wanted to see her suffer for her crime. The thought of having to surrender willingly to whatever her in-laws had devised was equally hateful to her, but she knew that she would have to do so and the thought was bringing her close to tears.

With a deep, shaking, intake of breath, she stared at her image in the mirror.

"I'll do it," she said, "I'll make a good entrance."

"Good girl, Jennifer." With that he bent down and used a variation on a fireman's lift to hoist Jennifer out of the coffin and then to stand her on the floor. It was the only way one man alone could possibly do it, and Jennifer realised that she also had to help with shifting her body weight. But it was effective and soon she was standing on her feet again.

Jennifer discovered then how helpless she really was: Doctor Brava was not only a diabolically gifted surgeon, but also an excellent smithy, it seemed. His working of the metal had perhaps given Jennifer more scope than could otherwise have been expected, for with less skilled handling, the uneven metal might well have made any use of her feet impossible. Standing, it felt as though she was wearing shoes that had quite large, flat, round pebbles in them, positioned just a little forward of the highest point of the arch of her foot. Balancing was hard, too, because her toes would no longer respond to the instinctive commands sent by her brain. The flexibility of the front part of the foot is so much taken for granted by those who have learned to walk, using these capabilities to maintain their balance, that the loss of it was a serious handicap. The metal shafts had destroyed much of the muscle and bone that controlled the movements, so now the instinctive twitching only resulted in crippling sharp pains in the feet as further damage was inflicted on what remained of those muscles. She wanted to look down and see what she was doing, as she was going to have to learn to walk all over again, it seemed. However, James Edward used one hand to hold her chin up so that she had to gaze into his eyes, his other hand providing support in case she should totter and fall over. The brilliance of her tormentors was revealed again: either Jennifer would walk with pride and dignity, and thereby give them their delicious moments of anticipation of whatever torture was due next, or she would try, and fail, wobbling, stumbling and eventually crawling for fear of James Edward's electric prod, or she would simply be driven by that prod as she tried to resist and hold back. Escape was truly impossible: even if she would not be surrounded by her enemies, running was out of the question and, with her wrists tied, so was fighting. Jennifer darted her eyes fearfully, desperately, around the room as James Edward held her chin steady: she could see when her focus returned to his face, that he was savouring every moment of her distress.

"Are you ready to meet your public?" he asked her, the bitter humour of his voice highlighting the macabre notion that Jennifer would be a "star" of the occasion.

"No!" she whimpered, and now a tear trickled down her face as she realised that the moment had come when she must voluntarily or by coercion walk into further ordeal by her aggrieved and vengeful relatives.

"But you realise that you have no say in the matter. Now you must go." James Edward produced from a small, hidden cupboard the prod with which he had threatened Jennifer. He pointed to a double door, and Jennifer responded without his speaking another word. She stumbled almost immediately as the broken bones in her foot grated agonisingly, but somehow managed to regain her balance, and looking at the doors she saw that there was a pressure pad that would open them automatically. She stepped forwards carefully, and this time kept her balance. Behind her, James Edward laid his weapon to one side. The doors opened.

Outside was blazing hot sun and a sandy landscape. Jennifer saw that she was not, as she had originally believed, at one of the DeMoeira establishments in England, but in a large complex that was probably (though she couldn't swear to it) situated in Africa. The sun was beating down on a courtyard surrounded on all sides by low one or two storey buildings. Two shaded grandstands had been set up, and it looked as though around one hundred DeMoeiras had turned up, and in addition there were maybe two- or three-dozen men in various military uniforms. This was to be a showcase for the new techniques soon to be on sale to the world's worst regimes, as well as a private matter of revenge for the clan.

A ramp led up from the double doors to a platform where two of the most important DeMoeiras were waiting for Jennifer. These were James Edward's daughter Eleanore and her husband (usually known among the family only by his initials P.L.), who was the son of one of the generals waiting to see the show (and thereby automatically awarded the rank of colonel). Jennifer had never before connected the pleasant young man (or his father) with the evil doings of the dictatorship, assuming that they were not directly involved in that sort of thing – otherwise why would Eleanore have married him? She realised now that it was precisely through Eleanore and P.L.'s mutual involvement with torture methods that the couple had met and fallen in love. As Jennifer limped her way up the ramp, each step reminding her of the irreparable damage done to her foot bones, James Edward followed closely behind to keep her from faltering or falling, and she fixed her eyes on the pair of lovers whose relationship had changed in an instant in her mind from pure and redeeming to dark and debased.

And then she was on the platform itself, and James Edward turned her to face the audience before he stepped forwards to a microphone, to take on the role of MC.

"Ladies and gentlemen, family members and guests," he began, "We are today going to witness a new variation on a very old punishment." Behind her, Jennifer could hear the sounds of heavy lifting as several members of a choreographed team were lifting something onto the stage that had been hidden from her view as she approached. It was still hidden now, because she dared not turn to look.

"The old style had the weakness that it could really only be carried out once, at least, in its purest form. I like to think that we have retained much more of the spirit of the old way, while at the same time making the experience repeatable for the prisoner. This is the first time that this has been tested, but our very own Doctor Lucas Brava, whose genius you have all come to know, assures me that this will be a spectacular event.

"Without further ado, I give you: Jennifer DeMoeira, née Derby, in her first of many crucifixions!"

Eleanore and P.L. moved swiftly into action. Jennifer had just enough time to take sharp intake of breath before they were on her. The first thing they did was to unfasten Jennifer's wrists and remove the band around her chest. Jennifer started to struggle, but the husband and wife team were too strong and simply took one arm each and dragged Jennifer to the great wooden cross that was the thing that Jennifer had heard being moved. This cross was formed of two great beams of varnished oak or some such wood, each one almost as broad as Jennifer's hips and the vertical beam perhaps two or three times as tall as Jennifer. Meanwhile, James Edward was giving a running commentary.

"Of course, we are not counting the manner of the original operation, which you watched on video before taking your seats here, as a true crucifixion - although the prisoner was spread into a cross shape and nailed down. Because that state only lasted a very short time, and she was never hoisted to a vertical position, it did not share all the characteristics of the classical crucifixion. That operation was merely a preparation for the many that are to follow."

One of the helpers with the cross stepped up to the platform and was helping P.L. hold down Jennifer's arms along the arms of the cross. The sweet and pretty Eleanore (who had always struck Jennifer as perfectly matching the description of Snow White: hair as black as ebony, lips as red as blood and the rest of it) was gleefully collecting a hammer and nails (which had quite big heads, Jennifer noticed) from another of the assistants. Jennifer was trembling uncontrollably now, as fear coursed through her veins. Her best guess had been that she would be attached to the cross using powerful magnets to attract the metal in her hands and feet, but the addition of more nails had to imply a greater threat even than that.

"And now we come to the clever part. The two-part nails used in the operation have left a perfect metal-cased hole that lets you nail the hand to a piece of wood as many times as you like without doing further damage – unless you miss the nail's head, of course!" A smattering of laughter from the crowd. They were enjoying the pater familias' presentation as much as the prospect of Jennifer's suffering. As if to emphasise the point, Eleanore chose that moment to bring her heavy hammer down hard onto the first nail. And she accidentally struck only a glancing blow before the hammer's head slid off the nail and onto Jennifer's fingers. Jennifer screamed. The crowd cheered and laughed cruelly. The hammer fell a second time, and this time the long nail went cleanly into the wood. Jennifer spoke quietly and desperately to Eleanore, "Please stop! This is inhuman!" The mesmerising stare of James Edward was not on her, and the immediacy of the situation had stirred her tongue. But it was too late, if indeed there had ever been a time since Daniel's death when she could have deflected the full malice of the DeMoeiras seeking revenge. Besides which, Eleanore was one of the few DeMoeiras who had retained her sisterly love of Daniel even when his ideals led him further from the fold, so of all those present she would have least mercy for his murderer. The hammer slipped again, this time deliberately.

Then Jennifer was silent as Eleanore swiftly finished her job on the first hand. She opened her mouth to plead once more as Eleanore was stepping across to the other outstretched arm, but as she did so, Eleanore gave her a satanic look and brandished the hammer with the words, "Do you want a few more accidents, murderer?"

James Edward had stepped aside so that the crowd could watch the work going on, but he had moved the microphone closer and directed it towards the kneeling torturers and their prone victim. Eleanore's words were picked up by the PA and also brought a ripple of laughter from the gathering.

As Eleanore busied herself with hammering in the second nail, and P.L. made sure that Jennifer didn't pull her hand away until the nail was safely embedded in the wood, Jennifer herself was left with nothing to do but weep helpless, bitter tears at the end to which she had been brought. Sweat now coated her naked body and she could see that the others on the platform would need a change of clothes due to the heat. Nobody noticed the extra droplets that sprang from her eyes, but it seemed that they stung far more than the salty water already covering her. Apart from the silently flowing tears, and the rhythmic banging of the hammer on the nails, it was as if an expectant hush had fallen in the courtyard. When the hammering stopped, a new level would be reached.

Finally, Eleanore stood back. The nails were in as far as they would go, the heads of the nails protruding slightly beyond the splayed ends of the metal tubes in which they rested, and held slightly above the victim's hands by those same spread flanges. The backs of her hands were also slightly raised by the flanges that had been so expertly created by the metalworking of Doctor Brava. Jennifer's arms were at full stretch, held inflexible by the spikes driven deep into the wood behind them.

James Edward reclaimed the microphone, "Now, the senior members of our great dynasty have decided that there should be a ritual defilement of the felon. Five have been chosen to take that pleasure, who have been greatly involved in the work that brought her to this point. The Doctor's able assistants, Francis and Joel, obviously deserve a turn. The two who are on stage now have also done much work behind the scenes to get to this point, so they also can participate. Alas, my eldest son William cannot be here, as he is finishing off the sad tale for public consumption of Daniel and Jennifer DeMoeira, so I have selected at random one of the guests who are here to see our new innovations. Step forward, General Hervez!"

From the beginning of the statement, Jennifer had watched James Edward, transfixed by horror at his statement. Only when he stopped speaking did she respond to the implication, and could not stop shaking her head and whispering over and over again, "No, no, no, please no!" Joel and Francis were approaching from the same double doors as Jennifer had used. P.L. was already stripping off, while his wife busied herself with a strap-on, and gloating over the distraught Jennifer with such comments as, "I'm lucky – I don't even need to get my kit off to screw you!"

Within a couple of minutes, four naked men and one dildo-equipped woman surrounded Jennifer.

P.L. and Joel each grabbed one of Jennifer's legs and pulled them apart as Francis prepared himself for the entry. He had been anticipating this moment since he first set eyes on Jennifer's naked body in the operating theatre, and had subsequently been brought to heel by the Doctor. As soon as the strong-arm work of lifting the cross onto the stage had been completed, he had been allowing his erection to build as he studied Jennifer's smooth curves. He liked them with bigger tits in general, but this was a special occasion. He eagerly straddled the defenceless woman and leaned in to the attack.

Jennifer bit her lip to avoid making any further futile comments, but she was never going to keep still when the entry came. It was violent and brutish, while she was utterly dry, and so she screamed. And screamed again, every time the young man withdrew and pushed in again, battering away at her with rapid strokes. Fortunately for Jennifer, his lack of discipline as demonstrated in the operating theatre meant that he finished quickly, spurting his semen deep in her passageway. He and Joel swapped places, and Joel eased his cock into Jennifer's hole, which now was slightly more lubricated thanks to its previous occupant, and also the fact that she was beginning to secrete her own fluid in amongst. There was no arousal, however: only horror filled Jennifer's mind, but the human body does what it can to protect itself, and now her vagina was in grave danger of serious assault if it did not soothe the way a little.

Joel decided that he wanted a kiss from his cousin-in-law, and with his shaft deep inside her, he lay across her and sought her lips. Jennifer tried to turn her head away from him, but Eleanore was there and held her tightly while Joel forced his tongue into her mouth. The grip that Eleanore took on Jennifer's hair warned her that she should kiss back or suffer that bitchy form of punishment as well. Jennifer felt that she had little choice, and obliged. Then Joel started his movements, slower than Francis to start with, drawing moans of protest instead of screams from his victim. But he soon accelerated his strokes, and Jennifer was crying out, "No, please stop!" But it only spurred him on, and so a second load of sperm was deposited in her.

Joel took the place P.L., who went to stand over Jennifer's head. His wife meanwhile positioned herself with her strap-on dildo poised over Jennifer's sore and suffering pussy. P.L. put his hands around Jennifer's throat and instructed her, "Open wide, I'm coming in!" and simultaneous thrust his cock at Jennifer's mouth. Surprise more than anything caused her to comply, and with her head tilted back as far as it would go thanks to P.L.'s grip on her neck, he was able to push right into her throat where he held still for a moment while Jennifer gagged and struggled for breath. As he pulled out, Eleanore struck home, driving her demonic hard implement into the plundered dark reaches of Jennifer's pussy.

Maybe the couple had practised this routine on hapless victims of the husband's ruler, for the precision with which they carried out their double-ended brutalisation was remarkable. As soon as Eleanore withdrew from one end, P.L. would be driving his cock full-tilt into Jennifer's throat. It was not slow fucking, either: they drove with a spiteful, frantic rhythm without ever falling out of beat with one another. But they stopped as if on a signal, before P.L. had ejaculated. The relief that Jennifer felt was short-lived, however.

"Suck and swallow, sweetie!" crowed Eleanore as she showed to her victim a sharp pin and proceeded to lower it to Jennifer's clitoris. She opened wide once more, and as P.L. placed his cock between her lips, she did as she was instructed, doing her best to stimulate the beast so that she could avoid Eleanore's threat. It did not take long, for P.L. had been very close to orgasm when he brought the throatfucking to a stop. Jennifer found her mouth flooded with his semen and desperately she gulped it down, anxious to the last to avoid the vindictiveness of her late husband's cousin.

"How did she do?" demanded Eleanore,

"Hmm, so-so, I guess!" replied P.L., who saw that despite Jennifer's efforts some of his seed had leaked from her mouth onto her face.

"Ooh, is that good enough, do you think?" asked Eleanore, going into a well-rehearsed routine to prolong the suspense for Jennifer.

"I don't know, I'd best toss a coin for it. Heads is yes, tails is no – seems appropriate!" P.L. drew a coin from his pocket and flipped it. The answer was a forgone conclusion: it was a two-headed coin, but Jennifer wouldn't know that and the riveted gaze that she fixed upon the spinning disc confirmed that she was entirely focussed on its outcome. Another time, P.L. would have fixed it the other way, but today Jennifer was destined for a longer-lasting torment, and the sooner it started the longer it would be.

"Heads it is!" he announced, "So we've decided that you get away with your slovenly work this time." Eleanore pulled her steel thorn away from Jennifer's privates and stood back. Now it was the General's turn.

Like many who have reached the top of their military career in a regime where that carries more political than combat power, the General was not a fit man, but fancied himself as a gourmet: he ate a lot, of the very finest, while the average man in his country struggled to feed himself, let alone his family. Currently, he weighed in at around 120 kilos (about 260 pounds). A swaying orb of blubber, he pressed his bulk down onto Jennifer's slim and muscular frame as she whimpered and wriggled beneath him.

"Aah," the General groaned softly as his penis went where the others had gone, "I see now what this peasant slut had that enticed young Daniel. Although this is not exactly the way he would have done it!" Shame flushed Jennifer's face: for some reason nothing else had bothered her about the event in that way: perhaps the torture and physical concerns had driven it from her mind, but only now, with some stranger making personal comments about her love-life with her former husband, did she feel emotional shame as opposed to physical humiliation.

The General started heaving on top of Jennifer, practically rubbing her with his rolls of fat as he plunged his cock into her. The effect was almost like being caught in some great tidal swell at sea, and even the sensation of a threat of drowning accompanied it as the waves of fat seemed to sweep up and threaten to engulf her, as they crushed and forced the wind from her lungs.

And then the General was withdrawing, having added his own contribution to the mingled DeMoeira semen in Jennifer's cunt.

James Edward returned to his role as MC: "And now we will have a brief pause while the men who have just performed so admirably put their clothes on again, and so that Mrs DeMoeira née Derby can get her breath back: after all, she's going to need all she can get in just a very short while!" There was a short round of applause for the men, during which Eleanore returned to a point beside Jennifer's head. She had brought a carton of water with a tube running from it. The other end of the tube she placed in Jennifer's mouth.

"Drink up! We don't want you passing out from heat exhaustion," commanded Eleanore. "Besides which, I think you need to swill out after my husband's cum flooded your airway. Again, we want you breathing as easily as possible – at least to start with!" Jennifer did as she was bidden, gulping down the water and washing it round her mouth to try to remove the taste of P.L.'s seed. Soon, there was none left in the carton and Eleanore went and stood at the back of the stage alongside the men who had finished dressing themselves by this point.

"And now, there are two more nails required to fasten our wayward sister to her tree. P.L., Eleanore, Joel, if you would be so kind as to continue?" The three named protagonists stepped forward and went into their routine.

This was different to the hand nails, because it seemed important to the DeMoeira plan that Jennifer's feet were positioned correctly. Joel was holding Jennifer by her armpits as P.L. took hold of her around her shins, pushing her legs tightly together and pulling hard against Joel's grip. Eleanore was once again in charge of the hammer and nails.

Eleanore started by taking a nail and poking it through the metal tunnel in Jennifer's foot, making Jennifer wonder for a moment what would happen. Then P.L. leaned his whole weight across her legs as Eleanore gave a violent twist to force the nail's shaft into an almost vertical position, wrenching at the tortured innards of the foot in the process and wringing a piercing scream from Jennifer's lungs. The pain did not stop there, however. Eleanore had placed the tip of the nail against the wood and was using that leverage to bring it ever closer to vertical, straining against the natural resistance in the bones of the foot and the muscles running all the way up Jennifer's leg. It was impossible for Jennifer not to try to lift her knees at least slightly to take some of the strain, but of course this had been anticipated and that was why P.L. was positioned as he was, preventing any such easing of the stresses induced. Finally, Eleanore was satisfied with the angle of her nail. Therefore, she took her heavy hammer and started to drive it home.

This was not like the hammering of the hand nails, where unless a blow went astray, the force was directed only onto the nail and then the wood. Here, because of the way that the nails had been put into place, the head of the nail rested almost directly onto the foot. Each hammer blow also forced the angle of the foot ever close to the horizontal, towards extension of which even a prima ballerina would be proud, had it been achieved naturally. BANG, went the hammer on the nail, and crunch went the already broken bones in Jennifer's foot. The impossible stretching of sinews and tendons, and the flashing pain of the hammer blow each time forced a scream from Jennifer's lips, and James Edward commented to the crowd that, "At least her lungs are in good working order at the moment!" Jennifer barely noticed as they chuckled.

Finally, Eleanore stepped away for a moment and Jennifer heaved a sigh of relief: it was over. But she had forgotten that this was only the first foot to be done. Eleanore was just collecting the second nail, and the terror started again, no screams this time from Jennifer, just an incoherent babbling of useless protest, punctuated by gasps as each hammer blow struck home. Before long, Jennifer was nailed firmly to her cross by hands and feet, agonisingly stretched both vertically and laterally.

The stage assistants that had helped to lift the cross onto the platform in the first place now climbed up onto the stage. Joel and Francis moved to help, while P.L. and Eleanore stepped down in front of the platform, ready to guide the others.

The team quickly lifted Jennifer on her cross to knee height and shuffled her towards the front edge of the platform, until the top of the cross was poking over the edge, and the crossbeam was just level with it. Four of the lifters then took places ready at the foot of the platform, to lift the cross to shoulder-height between them. Gradually, the cross moved forwards again as all the carriers lifted, until another pair had to shift from the stage to the ground, until all the lifters were carrying the cross shoulder-high. For Jennifer, the repeated stopping and starting was signalled by steady jolts as she was rocked from side to side each time the cross was lifted and then put down again. It wrenched at her arms and shoulders, and at her hips and ankles. Almost paradoxically, she had a smoother ride once the men were carrying her out to the centre of the amphitheatre formed by the two grandstands. James Edward had fallen silent now, believing perhaps that the events could speak volumes for themselves with no need of embellishment from the loudspeakers.

There, a hole had been prepared in the ground, and Eleanore and P.L. were waiting to guide the toe of the cross into it. Slowly, the men negotiated a 180 degree turn so that Jennifer would not be placed head-first into the ground. Then Joel and Francis at the toe end of the cross orchestrated the measured tilting of the wooden construction.

In some ways, it was a good thing that the wood was so smooth – it meant that Jennifer would not be getting any splinters. On the downside, it meant that each minute increase in angle was translated to a greater strain on her arms, and a greater need to lock out her knees against her own weight. Soon, the toe was at the lip of the hole. The men eased it inwards, Jennifer finding herself grimacing and gritting her teeth to hold out against the increasing pain in her feet and arms.

With a sickening jolt, the cross slid the last foot or so into the hole, jarring Jennifer so that she lost her grip on the situation. Her knees buckled, dragging unbearably on her arms and hands. A barking cry of pain burst from her lips. All around, the crowd were applauding again as the workers filled in the soil around the foot of the cross while Joel, Francis, P.L. and Eleanore held it upright.

The gathered people rose as one when the workers stepped away at last from the wooden cross, and applauded cheerfully the spectacle of the lonely blonde girl forced open and totally exposed to their eyes and the elements, spread and nailed to a cross in the manner of a criminal of ancient Rome. Jennifer closed her eyes and tried to think of something, anything, to take her away from the world of agony, torment, and gleeful hatred that had ensnared her. But the only memory that came to mind again and again was the sight of Daniel tumbling onto the rocks far below.

"It may take a little while for the full effectiveness of this method to become apparent," announced James Edward once the clapping and cheering had died down, "And we are interested in seeing just how long somebody might last when subjected to this method. Jennifer is a strong, fit woman and there are accounts of people in ancient times lasting several days before expiring. However, I think we will take the expert Doctor's opinion at nightfall, it being now 1300 hours, and decide then whether she should also face the desert night. Meanwhile, we can watch from indoors via CCTV and discuss other matters while we may."

The courtyard began to empty, leaving the stretched and sun-battered Jennifer to her fate.

Part 3: A Short Interlude

Angela Devoneste (her professional name, of course) woke from a deep sleep, and briefly wondered where she was. Then she remembered. An out of work actress, she had taken a curious job purely because she had no other way of paying her bills this month, and would have to leave LA and head back home to her parents unless she earned some cash, quickly.

"We'll fly you to Latin America, you then spend the day pretending to be a character we've created for you, we've even got a credit card in her name (which charges to our company, it's not illegal or anything). You can buy just about anything you like with it, we don't mind. Then we will fly you back on a private jet that in the story is owned by this woman that you're pretending to be."

She was on the jet plane supposedly owned by this Jennifer chick. She hadn't seen any film cameras or anything during her stay in – whatever city it had been – but that didn't mean anything. There were so many ways of making a film these days, for all she knew the camera had been hidden in the clothes they gave her to wear. She had passed out after drinking a couple of glasses of the wine that the pilot had given her.

Other facts started to creep into her consciousness. The first being that someone had stripped her naked while she was out cold. It dawned on her that she must have been drugged, and that this was going to be one of those nightmare kidnapped-and-sold-into-slavery type stories. The money had been too good to be true, and now she guessed she knew why.

She was on a bed, she realised, which was about as big as could be fitted onto this particular aircraft. She rolled off the bed and decided to go look for someone, maybe get her clothes back (or at least, some form of clothes). No luck. The door to this compartment was firmly locked. Desperately she searched the room for something to wear, but the single cupboard had also been stripped of all its contents. Somebody definitely wanted her naked during this flight. And the pilot had had such a charming British accent, she couldn't understand how such a person could be involved in white slavery. She curled up on the bed and started to cry, sobbing into the sheets at the unfairness of a world that treated the ambitious so harshly.

Then she heard footsteps approaching. Frantically, she gathered the sheets around herself to cover up her private regions. The door opened, and in walked the pilot.

William DeMoeira strode confidently towards the cabin of his captive. She had played her part beautifully, and would have one last act in which she would star as Jennifer. He had just listened by encoded radio transmissions to the events in North Africa thousands of miles away as the real Jennifer was nailed to a couple of planks, and half way through was nailed by a couple of planks (William had little respect for his cousins Joel and Francis). He had appreciated the dedication made by his father James Edward, but it didn't improve his mood at having to miss out on the big day. Perhaps of all the DeMoeiras, he had been the one who most wanted to fuck Daniel's wife (even while Daniel was still alive). It wasn't love for her, though: he had wanted to rape her, brutalise her, punish her for being cheap and lowlife and different in the world of the DeMoeiras, and for leading his cousin astray. Of course, if he had done so before the murder, then it would have been he who faced death by some hideous concoction of the families twisted minds.

Ah, well. He couldn't have the real thing yet, but there was no reason why he shouldn't have his own private celebration with the faux Jennifer. Ms. Devoneste was still made up as Jennifer, and might as well take her place. With the plane on autopilot, he stripped in the lounge area and made his way to the bedroom at the back of the aircraft.

When he opened the door to the rear cabin, he almost laughed out loud to see the living, breathing simulacrum of Jennifer cowering amidst the bedclothes. It would be so sweet to degrade and desecrate the dumb actress who had leaped at the chance to play the part. Her little "eek" of surprise at his nudity just added to the effect.

Lightning-quick, he grabbed a handful of sheet and whipped it away, her fearful grip no match for his animal strength. Then he was on her, skilful hands snatching her wrists and forcing them back onto the bed, his weight pushing her body after them. Violently, he lunged into her, letting the stupid bitch scream for mercy as he held her down on the bed. Hard, brutal strokes, but not uncontrolled like his cousins in Africa had been. He was in command of himself, drawing out his victim's suffering as those two were unable to do for very long. She was struggling, of course, but made no difference to her situation and only had the same effect on him as if she had been responding positively to his approach.

Then he let go of the girl's arms. She flailed at him immediately, but it was short-lived. Almost without missing a stroke in his rape of her now severely bruised pussy, he grabbed one of the pillows and shoved it into her face. Now he was holding it down over her pathetic mouth, and he had raised the tempo of his thrusting. She was struggling still, but weaker and weaker as he built himself up into a crescendo. He felt an unmistakable shiver run through the body beneath him and it triggered his orgasm just as he had hoped it would. He slumped over the lifeless corpse of Angela Devoneste, the pillow still firmly over her mouth just in case there was some vestigial trace of life in her. But it was unlikely.

After ten minutes to recover, William made his final preparations. He drew a pair of pliers from his pocket and carefully removed every tooth from the actress's mouth, before wrapping her in one of Jennifer's bathrobes and arranging her on the bed. He returned to the cockpit where he shuffled the corpse of Jennifer's usual pilot, who had been carefully strangled while he and Jennifer slept on the flight to South America, into the pilot's seat of the aircraft. William DeMoeira made one last adjustment before he donned his jumpsuit, strapped on his parachute and abandoned the plane to its fate.

The timing was perfect, a little before dawn over the Pacific Ocean, not far from the US coastline. The location was just as expected and, if all had gone to plan, there would be a DeMoeira yacht waiting to pick him up. He had activated a coded radio beacon that would tell the rescue crew where he was coming down, just in case they missed each other originally. A High-Altitude, Low Opening (HALO) jump was called for, for secrecy, but William was already a skilled parachutist and that was why he of all the DeMoeiras had been chosen for this part of the mission.

And it befell just as intended: in fact, William had to steer slightly to avoid the mast of his rescue vessel. While the rescuers were busy fishing him out of the sea, the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle fell into place, as the jet plane exploded in mid-air. It was set up to look like an electrical engineering fault had caused a spark in a fuel tank. If anyone should ever be recovered, there would be two bodies that could be presumed to be Jennifer DeMoeira and her pilot. And so the newspapers reported the following day on the continuing tragedy of the young DeMoeira couple, first the climbing accident and then the air disaster ripping the fairy-tale couple from the world.

All William cared about was that there was no way anybody would ever come looking for the real Jennifer DeMoeira.

Part 4: The Shop Window

Crucifixion is probably the most fiendish means of execution devised by the minds of men. For sheer simplicity, effectiveness and the amount and duration of suffering caused, it outranks just about every other device ever invented. Most other methods would last under an hour at the longest, but there are records of crucified people lasting for days before finally expiring.

For her first few minutes on the cross, Jennifer was aware most of all of the pain in the tendons in her legs, the awful stretching as her feet were driven into unnatural positions by even more unnatural metalwork. She was a fit, tough woman and her legs were strong enough for the time being, even in their current shape, of holding her weight.

Her long blonde hair was scattered and tangled, falling untidily all about her, some across her face, some between her head and the wood behind it, and some around the crossbeam or behind the upright. She longed for a breeze to take it away from her face, because every time she drew breath, her own hair threatened to be sucked into her mouth.

She was also acutely aware of the sun beating down on her, her pale European skin unfit for such direct rays. Her cross had been positioned, by accident or design, to face south and the brightness forced her to squint and turn her head to one side. Her skin was coated in sweat from the relentless heat whose myriad fingers burrowed to her very core in greedy waves.

She was almost thankful to Doctor Brava that he had pierced her hands with his nails well before she had been forced up onto this cross, for that pain she did not have to endure so heavily now. Instead, for a while it was merely discomfort from many sources that filled her awareness.

But the remnants of those nails were unforgiving when her whole weight was upon them, and in her feet they had smashed through bones that then were given no time to heal. That pain existed and grew in her consciousness. Growing, too, was the tension and tightness in her legs, beyond discomfort and into anguish and finally, foot and leg could hold her weight no more in the sapping heat of the African afternoon. Slowly, gently, Jennifer tried to bend her legs and take some weight onto her arms.

She was stretched enough, both vertically and laterally, that the slightest adjustment was communicated instantly to the rest of her body. Her arm-muscles suddenly sang in high-pitched tones as they were brought into tension. Her hands, too, were run through with Doctor Brava's surgical metal, and as weight shifted to them, their twisted, ruined inner workings were aggravated once more, flaring up in the sharp reminder of what had been done. But the leg muscles and foot bones needed more slack yet if they were to recover, and so the hands and arms had to take more, stretch further and suffer more painfully to allow it.

Yet the cycle was not done: for as the legs gave way further, and the arms were stretched higher and further back against the sinking torso, the tightness across the chest began. Where Jennifer had been breathing freely and carefully to avoid choking on her own hair, now she was having to work hard just to gulp in as much as she could with what she had. Soon, she could scarcely draw breath at all, and spluttering on hairs that had indeed entered her gaping mouth. She could do nothing else but push back down with her feet and aching legs and lock them out once again, enduring once more the grating of broken bones and the stretching of sinews once again.

She was unrested in her legs, her arms and hands ached and blazed with pain, and she was short of breath and partially smothered by her own hair. Yet Jennifer knew that this would happen again and again, because she could not hold her legs rock-steady forever; they would start to give again, and she would be forced into the same cycle of torment. And each time, the increase in her suffering would be her own fault as her resolve would crack and give way to the weakness of her body.

* * * * *

From eight different vantage points, DV cameras were recording the whole affair: one of them in close-up on the victim's face and adjusted for her movements by one of the technically-minded DeMoeiras; four recorded the full length of the cross from various angles including front-on and various side angles. Another recorded the whole arena with the cross and its occupant centre-screen. Two more were at floor-level close to the cross, looking up at its length and the length of Jennifer's body. One of these was to her left at 45 degrees; the other was to her right, at 75 degrees from the line of the crossbeam, giving a more frontal view. On a vast cinematic screen, all eight were displayed to the watching family and their valued customers; in the centre of the screen, a slightly-delayed picture was showing anything that seemed of particular interest at the time, in the eyes of another DeMoeira who fancied himself as a film director. The final editing of this epic masterpiece of sales material would, however, be left to those who truly understood what was happening, and what was required from their footage. A few of the most loyal customers would be allowed to take the original footage to cut their own versions for private use. Doctor Lucas Brava watched carefully as the fruits of his labour were put to the test.

The gathered people did not focus on the screen the whole time, for this was going to be a very long show. Instead, they treated the occasion as any large family group might treat a chance to get together and exchange the latest news and gossip. James Edward and his two eldest sons were talking earnestly with the various military leaders who had graced the event with their presence, discussing the latest uses to which DeMoeira equipment had been put and ways in which the existing implements might be improved, or confirming new orders for the old favourites.

On the screen, Jennifer's face grew ever more strained and anguished, as she pushed herself to the limit each time in a vain effort to gain some brief respite from one element or other of her suffering. A new main picture appeared: uncontrolled tears were streaming down the girl's face, her lips were dried and sweat dripped from every line.

Doctor Brava crept out of the room.

* * * * *

Hours had past since she had been nailed up, and in the relentless and still heat, Jennifer had sweated heavily and without pause. Her lips felt as though they were made of sandpaper and her throat was little different. It was becoming hard to think, and thirst raging and unending added itself to the agony that consumed her.

When she saw Doctor Brava appear carrying a bucket full of water, she cried out with relief, "Thank God!"

But the Doctor did not come any closer: "Thank who?" he asked.

"Thank Doctor Lucas Brava," Jennifer croaked.

"That's better," the doctor responded, and he came the rest of the way. In his other hand, he was carrying a long pole and a strange contraption attached to it. Its purpose Jennifer could not determine until Brava was at the foot of the wooden column.

Attached to the pole was a long rubber tube, and it was obvious that this was to pass water up to the mouth of the victim on the cross. Attached to the tube near the other end was something else that she could not identify from her unusual perspective.

Dr. Brava put the free end of the tube into the bucket of water, and lifted the other end on the pole to Jennifer's mouth. Greedily, she tried to suck, but no fluid would come. Dr. Brava laughed at her.

"Silly little bird in your tree! Don't you know that rain always falls, but never rises? It is a scientific fact that the human mouth is not a powerful enough suction pump to lift water that far. If you want it, I must use my foot pump to help you."

He pumped the strange contraption a few times with his foot, and sure enough a gout of water spewed from the raised end of the tube, spraying over Jennifer's face.

He held the pipe closer, a few centimetres from Jennifer's lips, but also a little bit lower than them.

"I won't move it from this point," he said, and pumped again, hard. The splash of water fell well below Jennifer's mouth.

"If you want to drink, you'll have to stretch for it."

Jennifer needed to drink. Desperately, she leaned her body weight forwards, pushing her head out from the pillar to try to catch the tube and maybe gain some relief. Her arms screamed at her, her hands twisting now and punishing her fractured bones there as well. But she had to drink. Her ankles were eased slightly by the change in attitude, but other stresses were introduced in her feet, and the broken bones there shifted and grated anew. But she had to drink.

Triumphantly, she took the rubber between her teeth only for Brava to snatch it away again. She took another desperate lunge after it with her teeth, and screamed horribly as her hands were wrenched impossibly once more. She fell back from that lunge, and Brava let her drink, pumping spurt after spurt of water into her gaping maw, spilling some to soothe her lips and then pumping again. Nearly two litres in a minute or two, Jennifer gratefully swallowed, and then she thanked the doctor again for giving her something to drink. Only then did she realise that she was having trouble breathing again.

Lucas Brava was a very intelligent man, and he had timed his drinks run with great care. It had served two purposes: one, was to make sure that Jennifer did not die of dehydration and thereby spoil the effect; two, was to persuade her to abandon the support afforded her by the sturdy upright post. He had made sure that she was already tired and her limbs worn out before going, and now he was fairly sure that she would not be able to regain her original upright posture.

Jennifer was just discovering the diabolical cleverness behind the trick with the water. Suddenly, with her arms completely overstretched, she had no strength in them to pull herself back. Although briefly it had seemed that her legs had had a slight improvement from it, she was now finding that they too were suffering more as she had to use them not only to counter the vertical force of her weight, but now they had to fight at an angle to support it. And the suffocating effect that was the fatal element of the crucifixion was now accentuated, as her arms were bent back behind her, locking the ribs and their intercostal muscles, and making her diaphragm do all the work of breathing. Her diaphragm too was compromised by the position of her lower body, as she found herself forming an ever more bowed shape (though that effect was invisible on most of the cameras, since she had been stretched so tightly to begin with). Given just a little extra stretching, there was less that the muscle could do to power the lungs, and so the basic operations of the respiratory system were all severely limited.

* * * * *

At first, the viewing room had been filled with boos when they saw the doctor on his apparent mercy mission. But when they saw how he had manoeuvred Jennifer into an even more punishing situation, they laughed out loud at his cunning and their own misunderstanding of his deeds. When he re-entered the chamber, it was to an uproarious cheer from all present.

* * * * *

Jennifer had no way of knowing how long she had hung there, and it was irrelevant in the broader landscape of her pain. Hours had passed before Dr. Brava brought relief at such a terrible price. Hours followed in greater agony than before.

Jennifer's lungs were a pit of fire in her chest, her skin was baking under the sun that was only now, it seemed, sinking towards the horizon. Her limbs blazed from constant abuse, the effort of supporting her weight and trying uselessly to lift herself back to the relative ease of the vertical position, and the twisting and grinding of the Brava Nails against her damaged and broken hands and feet.

It felt like drowning while in the fresh air: slowly, excruciatingly drowning for ages untold by man while all around her the life-giving oxygen was at her lips and in her mouth but would never reach her hungry lungs. Each lungful was a struggle, more difficult than the last, and never actually filling the lungs but giving just enough to last until the next breath. Her head hung forwards, no strength reserved for the neck muscles when it was needed more elsewhere.

Gone now was her steady, careful control of her actions. Her legs were tested as though by having run marathon after marathon, her arms as though she had carried a great stone above her head on those races. She could no longer hold any position, but gyrated from one to another: the knees would bend a little and the arms tighten and strain, twitching right to the fingers that could do no more than that. Then the chest would tighten, and she would suffocate a little more. The legs would push upwards again, feebly, aided by the tormented arms and she would gulp a little more air as the arms muscles relaxed minutely, and then the knees would give way again immediately. It was like some drawn-out, slow-motion butterfly stroke, working every part of her beyond their natural limits.

Sinking. Drowning. Resurface. Again, and again, every minute a repetition of ever-changing, ever-demanding pain.

* * * * *

The sun was rapidly descending in the sky, and had lost its ferocity of the afternoon. The DeMoeiras re-emerged to watch the show in the flesh, rather than by video link. The desperately slow writhing of their naked victim was now grotesquely erotic, as though she were being gently screwed by some invisible giant who caressed her as his unseen penis slowly ground into her and out again, and she riding him in the same manner.

In or near the Tropics, the sun sets very quickly, appearing to accelerate as it approaches the horizon, and so it was not long before it was growing dark in the DeMoeira compound. Bright floodlights replaced the glare of the sun. Now, the heat of the day was dissipating quickly into the cold of the African desert at night. Now, at last, a breeze started to drift its way around the buildings of the complex.

Jennifer was still coated with her sweat, which had poured from her all through the day. A new distress assaulted her senses as her burning skin began to cool rapidly. The breeze that would have been welcomed a few hours ago as now an instrument of most hideous torture, accelerating the cooling process by speeding her sweat's evaporation. Uncontrolled shivering started across her body, disrupting her breathing even more and making it even harder for her to push firmly enough with her legs as the muscles were occupied not only with the vital work of lifting her so that she could keep breathing, but also the vital work of shivering and generating heat so that she did not freeze to death.

In the grandstand, James Edward consulted the doctor: "Should we bring her down now, to keep her a bit fresh for the next operation?"

"No, it would already take her several days to recover sufficiently to survive that process. Might as well leave her up there to the end."

James Edward went out into the courtyard, once again briefly taking the role of MC: "I have just been promised by Dr. Lucas Brava that we will in fact be taking Jennifer all the way!" A whooping cheer went up at this news while James Edward returned to his seat. To Jennifer it meant nothing, for she had no way of knowing that there had been a brief moment when she might have been brought down sooner. Instead, the announcement and the cheering washed over her as so much irrelevant noise: her whole universe was composed of a cross, four nails and the air of which she could never get enough.

* * * * *

The end did not take much longer. Two hours after sunset, and Jennifer's legs had finally given up completely and she was sagging, all her weight carried by her hands. She choked as she failed completely to draw breath, and felt herself slipping from the world. Her last thought was, "At least they went too far, and will not enjoy my pain any more."

She went down from her breath cycle, and her limbs twitched but she did not rise again. At that, James Edward gave a quick glance to Dr. Brava, who nodded, and instantly the teams swung into action. They knew that there was every chance that Jennifer was suffocating while ever she hung like that.

Ropes were cast about the arms of the cross, and a circular saw taken to the base of the cross. Crews with medical equipment were standing by ready for the moment that the cross came down. The felling of the cross was carried out in immaculately controlled fashion, and achieved less than a minute from when the go signal had been given.

An artificial breathing apparatus was attached to Jennifer's face, forcing oxygen-enriched air into her lungs and sucking it back again, doing the work that her body was currently unfit to do. Others worked quickly to withdraw the nails from the wood and flex the arms and legs to stimulate blood flow. They had already established that there was still a faint pulse, so if they did their jobs properly, Jennifer would live to die another day, and another.

In the stands, none of this was apparent and everyone there watched with baited breath. The dramatic "death" on the cross had excited them all, but it would be no joy if it proved to have been a genuine fatality. Jennifer's still body was loaded onto a hard stretcher, accompanied by the breathing machine, and carried into a second medical facility on one side of the courtyard.

* * * * *

The audience adjourned to the viewing room once more, where James Edward spoke once more to the customers and his clan members.

"I must apologise for the fact that we went for the dramatic and spectacular, rather than the practical when we selected the cross for our first demonstration. Dr. Brava is currently overseeing the recovery operation, but assures me that Jennifer will eventually give us the pleasure of seeing her in action again – and many more times after that as well, I hope. She will convalesce in preparation for a further round of treatment under the good doctor's scalpel. Let me reassure our honoured guests that we have developed a range of crosses that will make recovery of the victim much easier. In the meantime, let's relive some of the highlights of the evening's entertainment!"

The video screen sprang into life again. Before long, James Edward had secured at least three firm contracts for delivery of the components of the Brava Nails Process, including one with a "hinged cross" installation.

Part 5: In The Hospital

Jennifer woke to find herself in a hospital bed with bandages on her hands and feet, and aching all over her body, with sunlight streaming in through the windows. It had all been a dream, she thought as she looked around her, there had been a plane crash, her jet had come down and she had somehow survived to be brought here, with severe injuries in her hands and feet, and possibly in other parts of her body as well. In her coma, her guilty conscience had constructed these into a nightmare of revenge as the DeMoeiras sought to destroy their errant in-law. But now she was awake, and safe in the hands of the very best of American doctors and nurses. That there were no other people in the beds around her simply showed what wealth could buy you in America.

Then the wall opposite her bed seemed to dissolve, and was revealed to be a vast flat-screen television. James Edward DeMoeira's face gazed upon the almost-empty hospital ward.

"Yes, it was all true. You really were hung upon a cross for seven hours, and you really did die – well, almost! The genius who devised the infinitely repeatable crucifixion, Doctor Lucas Brava, is sufficiently gifted as to have revived you. We want to make sure that your hands and feet have healed as well as they are ever going to before we do that again, but after that, we will do it as often as we like, whenever we like. At last, it is possible to put a person to death over and over again! Rest well, and come back soon!" The picture faded to a still from one of the videos of Jennifer's crucifixion. It was near the end: the floodlights were already on, and Jennifer was hanging low on the cross, a grimace twisting her face.

Jennifer turned to one side and was sick over the side of the bed.

A young-looking African woman in a nurse's uniform came and cleared it up in a professional manner, and went away. Jennifer just lay on her back where she was. It hurt too much to move after the stretching and flexing that she had suffered on the cross. Only the deeply ingrained desire not to lie in her own vomit had pushed her far enough not to leave it in the bed itself. Now that that was out the way, she could only lie there and wonder what hope she had of surviving the DeMoeiras' crazed vengeance.

After a length of time that to Jennifer seemed to stretch interminably, the nurse returned. She was pushing a trolley table, on which was a steaming plate of wonderful food. Jennifer's mouth watered at the prospect. Maybe she would be given one last chance to enjoy life while she was waiting in the hospital, and she would seize it while she could!

There was also a bowl, which seemed to contain soup of some kind. The nurse helped Jennifer into a sitting position so that she could eat more easily. The movements hurt like hell, but Jennifer was grateful.

The bandages on her hands did not cover her fingers, so when the table was wheeled over the bed for her to start eating, she reached for the knife and fork herself.

The nurse mentioned, "The doctor say, I must not help you, and if you try to eat with your fingers, then I must take the food away immediately. But you may eat whatever you wish." Jennifer then discovered what had been done.

Her fingers would not respond properly to her wishes. After the horrendous damage done by Doctor Brava's nails, she had no way of flexing her middle two fingers on either hand, and the index finger was much weaker. Her hands were utterly crippled. Only her thumb worked properly. She simply couldn't control her cutlery well enough to start on the sumptuous foods that were piled onto the plate. Then she looked at the soup. A tiny plastic spoon rested by the bowl, but the soup itself smelled horrible, and looked like gruel more than anything. Weeping with frustration, Jennifer picked up the spoon and balanced it in her hand, using her thumb and index finger to control it. She dipped it into the soup and lifted it to her mouth. The soup tasted just as bad as it looked, but the nurse seemed to approve: "Good choice. The doctor says it has all the nutrients you need!" Dr. Brava, it seemed, had condemned Jennifer to feed on this filth while a beautiful plate of gorgeous, mouth-watering delights sat so close and yet so untouchable to her. Humiliated and broken in spirit, Jennifer reluctantly ate the rest of the soup, knowing that it would be all she would ever taste ever again.

As evening came, the nurse brought Jennifer the same non-choice of meals. She guessed that the nurse herself must be allowed to eat whatever Jennifer did not. That must be why she was so keen on Jennifer taking the horrid soup instead.

The nurse changed Jennifer's bandages, applying some form of salve to keep the swelling down, and then tucking Jennifer in and closing the curtains. She switched off the light and left Jennifer in darkness.

* * * * *

At dawn, a giant James Edward head yelled, "Rise and shine!" into the ward and woke Jennifer. Then it went away. Jennifer was awake again.

That day, and the ones following it, unfolded in exactly the same way. The nurse changed Jennifer's bandages and reapplied the salve every morning and evening. Jennifer had three meals a day of the gruel. The nurse made sure that Jennifer had use of a bedpan as and when necessary. Nothing else happened, except that the soreness began to dissipate in Jennifer's mistreated body, and the pain in her hands and feet seemed slightly less.

On the sixth day, however, as she was changing Jennifer's hands in the evening, the nurse spoke to Jennifer: "Oh, I feel so scared for you. They are going to perform some terrible operation: even worse than these," and she gestured at Jennifer's hands and feet, "Oh, I do not want to help them prepare you for it!"

"Please, you must let the world know that I am here. Say that Jennifer DeMoeira is alive and held prisoner here. Take a swab of my saliva: they can DNA test it and prove that what you say is true. Then I will be rescued and you will be a heroine!" Later that night, the nurse did as Jennifer asked, and made the swab and put it properly in a sealed tube. She said that she would go for help immediately.

When Jennifer awoke the next morning, to James Edward's noisy wake-up call, she found that she was no longer the only patient in the DeMoeira hospital. The nurse was lying on the next bed, her wrists and ankles held by broad leather straps to the head and foot of her bed.

"I'm ve-ee ho-ee. Vey hau' me," the petite African said to Jennifer. It took Jennifer a moment to realise that they had cut out the woman's tongue. She had tried to say, "I'm very sorry. They caught me." Jennifer had always been good at understanding speech impediments, but this one was so severe and so evil in its cause.

"Vey boo 'oo me wha' vey boo 'oo 'oo."

"These?" asked Jennifer, raising her hands.

"Uh-uh. Wha' I warm abou'."

"I'm so sorry, I should never ever have asked you to help me!" Jennifer sobbed in return. For the first time, she thought she realised what the term "greed" really meant, what she had become, and why she deserved to be punished. It was things like her callous disregard for the poor nurse's safety in her eagerness to escape.

The new nurse proved to be none other than Eleanore, and she wielded a syringe that she aimed directly at Jennifer.

"Lucas says that you've recovered enough for your operation, honey," drawled Eleanore, "And silly bitch over there is still in quite good shape even after they caught her trying to leave the compound. So it's nighty-night time for you two!" It didn't sound at all like the Eleanore that Jennifer remembered, but then, she had never realised that Eleanore was a professional sadist and member of a family of torturers, either.

The injection stung, but was very effective, and Jennifer knew no more.

When she came round, she was strapped firmly to her bed, with an IV tube in her arm. The giant TV sprang into life, showing James Edward once again.

"The doctor tells me that it will take a few weeks for you to recover from his second operation, during which time you will not be permitted to eat or drink anything. All your nutritional needs are provided by that tube. We have hired a new nurse, who will be much less inquisitive and much less eager to help her patient.

* * * * *

Jennifer's bandages were changed just as before. There were no more torments with the food, since she wasn't to have any. Her bodily functions were at first handled in the same way, a bedpan providing the receptacle for the waste. After a couple of days, however, there was nothing left in Jennifer's bowels, so a catheter was set up permanently to drain her urine. Jennifer began to wonder if the idea was to bore her to death.

On the fifth night, a new torment began. There was no need any more for James Edward's head to wake Jennifer, for at 9pm, 12 midnight, 3am and 6am she would wake herself. Her own screams would fill the room as the TV sprang into life showing the video of the first operation that had preceded her crucifixion. Her voice tearing the air as the nails were hammered home, and each time shattering the sleep that she hoped to gain. Soon, her dreams were of nothing but giant nails bearing down on her, and she would wake, screaming, a few seconds before the television started its ghastly show. In the day, James Edward started to show the final cut of the crucifixion video, all seven hours of it. By light and by dark, Jennifer was confronted by the images of her torture.

Then, after two or three weeks (Jennifer had lost count), the routine changed suddenly. At 2am, an hour earlier than usual, she was woken by screaming: but it was not her own. She focused her bleary eyes on the screen in front of her. It was not her own Nailing that she saw, but that of another woman. She was about 5'7" to 5'9", with long, shining chestnut hair that spilled over the top of her cross-table. She looked fit and strong, but was just as helpless as Jennifer had been. The video seemed to skip when they moved to her feet, and Jennifer guessed that they had not wanted this woman to slip into the same sort of fugue state as Jennifer had reached. They had obviously paused a while after doing her hands, and then come back for her feet.

What Jennifer had not anticipated was that the girl on the screen would take more than four of the special nails. She was turned on her side, and a fifth nail was lined up, before being struck hard and savagely through the horrified girl's breast. The sixth nail went through the other breast to balance it out. Jennifer's screams joined those of the victim on-screen when the breast-nails went in.

At 4am, and at 6am the same video was shown. Jennifer's conditioning was so great that she was awake for the opening of the 6am showing. She got to see the woman walked across to the cross-table and laid upon it by two guards dressed as surgeons. She noticed that the woman had no body hair, and there was a ring through her nose, piercing the fleshy wall between her nostrils. She was the only white person in the picture, the others being black. Jennifer wondered if there was a reason for that.

At the end of the 6am showing, James Edward appeared on the screen.

"You know, Jenny," he said, "That was all thanks to you! You gave such a good show on that cross, and of course when Lucas did his hammering, that several dubious regimes have seen fit to order from us the equipment for the Brava Nails Process. We named the nails after the good Doctor, because he invented them, and the process of putting them in after the nails themselves. Elegant, eh? And you just witnessed the first-ever commercial use of the Brava Nails. We never thought of that thing with the breasts, but then, there isn't enough flesh on yours to make it feasible, and they were originally designed with you in mind. Abigail, that's the name of the woman you just saw, and those who follow her, will be just a lucky bonus for us. Anyway, thank you for being such a good model for our wares!" And he was gone.

The routine returned, with a mixture of Abigail and Jennifer on the nighttime viewings, and the Jennifer crucifixion on in the daytime. Jennifer hoped that that meant that Abigail was already dead, and her suffering over, but she doubted it very much. The whole point of the Brava Nails was so that a person could be "executed" in a horrible way, many times. Maybe they hadn't filmed Abigail's crucifixion. Eventually, they decided that the swelling had stopped in Jennifer's hands and feet, and the bandages could come off.

Then, after six long weeks of broken sleep and non-stop replays of her own and Abigail's agony, Jennifer was immensely relieved when they came to get her out of bed.

Part 6: Something Inside So Strong

After six weeks strapped to a hospital bed, Jennifer was extraordinarily stiff. Although the nurse had given her a daily flexing of limbs and electrical stimulation to ensure that her circulation was okay and that her muscles didn't start to waste away, Jennifer had been effectively motionless for seven weeks, including the week before the mysterious operation. The nurse was accompanied by Eleanore and James Edward himself. They raised the folding half of the bed so that Jennifer was in a sitting position, and then undid the straps that bound her. First they released Jennifer's feet, and James Edward held them firmly to stop Jennifer from kicking anyone; although she was in no fit state to do so, they were not going to risk it.

With her upper body still firmly bound, Eleanore showed her a nut and bolt combination, larger than usual, and the head of the bolt and the nut itself were very wide in diameter. When the nurse undid the straps, Jennifer discovered why: her hands were to be bolted together behind her back, through the holes left by the "Brava Nails". James Edward swivelled Jennifer's legs through 90 degrees, and the nurse with Eleanore's help lifted Jennifer to her feet. Without the use of her hands, it would have been almost impossible for her to stand without assistance.

Only when she was on her feet, balancing on the metal plates in the hollow of her foot, that Jennifer had the first inkling of what might have been done to her this time. She had heard the phrase "a poker up the bum", but this was the first time she had had a literal demonstration of what the term was supposed to mean; it had only been a colloquial figure of speech until now. Her spine felt as if it had been rendered utterly inflexible and she was unable to bend her torso forwards or backwards, or leaning left or right. Her neck still worked, but her body was totally frozen. She could manage a bit of twisting at her hips, but that was all.

It played havoc with her sense of balance as James Edward and Eleanore helped her to walk from the ward, along a corridor and back into the courtyard where, nearly two months ago, Jennifer had been nailed to a cross.

There was no raised stage this time, just wooden boards placed over the sandy ground. A wooden block stood at the centre of the floor, reminiscent of the chopping blocks seen in films where the hero is about to be beheaded (only to be rescued at the last minute by his faithful companions). Jennifer had no faithful companions, and had no illusions about being a heroine. But she knew that the DeMoeiras would not behead her. Unless the operation she had undergone would somehow enable the DeMoeiras to repeatedly chop her head off, put it back on and revive her in time for another go, she could not see it happening that way. There was also a ladder and a tall crane, the purposes of which she could not imagine.

To one side of the arena stood a podium with a microphone for James Edward to play the part once more of MC. If anything, there were more people watching than there had been for Jennifer's last "performance". Eleanore assisted Jennifer to the block and made her kneel. This was not going to be a beheading, realised Jennifer, thankful for that much at least (although perhaps she should have welcomed death rather than whatever the DeMoeiras had in mind instead). Her knees were pushed right up against the block. They were also forced wide apart by a lip at the base of the block. Eleanore pushed her forwards until her crotch was against the rough corner at the top of the wood. Only now did Jennifer realise that she was still naked. She had not had any clothes since her crucifixion, and she had all but forgotten her nudity. Now, though, with her sex exposed and an audience of nearly two hundred, the full shame of her condition came back to her. There was nothing that she could do about it, though, except blush and shrink into herself: even that action was less effective with her restricted level of movements.

Eleanore stood guard beside Jennifer as James Edward mounted his dais and started his presentation:

"Friends and family members," he began, "Our fabled Doctor Lucas Brava has done it again! We are here today to witness the results of possibly the most daring and innovative experiment in the history of torture and execution. That the preparatory operation itself has been completed satisfactorily is in itself a testament to the man's sheer brilliance in his chosen fields of metallurgy and medicine.

"But that is not all! There is a small matter of industrial discipline that will be settled after the main show, and before the main show, we must welcome back my eldest, from his sea trip in the Pacific to bury Jennifer forever in the wide ocean! He missed out on our first experiment, but is here today to play a full part in the second. So, everybody, welcome William DeMoeira, pilot and skydiver extraordinaire!"

William DeMoeira stood and walked forwards from his place at the front of one of the grandstands.

"William will not only assist with the actual erection, but will also assist by use of his erection, in order to prepare the victim for her ride," James Edward commented as William began to strip off beside Jennifer at the wooden block. Once naked, William showed off his body, well-endowed in all respects, to the waiting audience. Then he whispered in Jennifer's ear, "I think I'm glad I missed you on the cross, because I think doing it this way will be much sweeter! You always were lowlife trash, and you deserve everything I'm going to give you. I bet you even enjoy it!"

Eleanore forced Jennifer to bend forwards over the bock, pushing her rigid torso towards the ground. Somebody had worked this out very carefully, because Jennifer's forehead just touched the ground when her belly on the far edge of the top of the block would allow her to bend no further at the waist – although it was her hips rather than her waist that had to provide more of the flexibility.

Eleanore unbolted Jennifer's hands and forced her to place her elbows on the floor as William moved into place behind Jennifer. He patted her arse playfully.

"You're going to want to relax that as much as possible," Eleanore whispered to Jennifer, "Otherwise this whole thing is going to hurt a lot more. And you have to take William's whole thing as well, first!"

William was not one given to kindness, so his preparation of Jennifer's butt, and his own cock, with plenty of lubrication was not a sign of a willingness to save Jennifer any pain; rather, it showed that whatever the DeMoeiras had planned, it involved Jennifer's arsehole and would be big. Jennifer didn't see it that way, though.

"No, please, not there!" she wailed into Eleanore's crotch, but the sound was transmitted to the whole audience, and Jennifer was shocked to hear her desperate pleas broadcast over the PA. Eleanore had deliberately hidden a radio microphone in her costume just for such a purpose.

"Please!" Jennifer begged, as William placed the head of penis against her puckered anus, "I've never done it before, you'll tear me apart!" Indeed, if anything her anus was as unprepared as it was possible to be for such an assault. Thanks to the IV feed, it had been almost forty days since she had last had to have a shit and her arse was seemingly closed to all traffic in either direction as it had gradually fallen into disuse.

"Just relax it," soothed Eleanore, "It'll hurt less!" This was also not advice given out of kindness, but rather to allow Jennifer to blame herself when she did not relax enough. The DeMoeiras also did not really want Jennifer too badly damaged at this stage.

William used his hands to pull Jennifer's cheeks wide apart, and began to press his hips in towards her upturned bottom. He knew his duty here. Once inside, he could hammer as hard as he liked, but he couldn't go too fast too soon, or the whole event would have to be postponed. Besides, this way he could prolong the slutty bitch's agony for several seconds longer.

"Ow!" cried Jennifer as the bulbous end of William's cock finally forced its way past her sphincter, "Oww, no, please stop!" Her voice cracking with the pain in her backside, each of her complaints drew a round of applause for the man inflicting the pain upon her. Though well-endowed, William was hardly massive; just on the big side of average. Enough to impress the ladies, and satisfy the sluts, was his own way of putting it. To Jennifer it might as well have been the Titanic that was barging its way into her darkest regions.

"Wargh!" she cried, as William reversed direction, and a terrible slow sucking sensation seemed to be dragging her insides out after him as he withdrew at the same speed with which he had advanced.

Then the vengeful DeMoeira heir took his hatred out on Jennifer's arsehole. He abandoned his initial tempo and went for it as hard as he could, speeding up as he felt Jennifer's hole becoming weaker. Jennifer grunted with the first impact of the accelerating William, and screamed louder and higher-pitched with every subsequent stroke. Suddenly he was jerking, grunting, cursing his defiled in-law, as he came deep in her brown tunnel.

"Some extra lube for you there," he whispered hoarsely to Jennifer, "You're going to need it!" Jennifer did not attempt to answer; tears of pain and impotent rage were all she had, and they soaked the wooden floor just below her face. Eleanore took a handful of Jennifer's hair and rubbed it in the salt-water as the manoeuvres were made ready for the headline event.

"There is little that can be said about what is going to happen, that cannot be expressed better by simply letting it happen," announced James Edward, "Suffice to say that no other woman could possibly survive the treatment that we are about to give to young Jennifer DeMoeira, née Derby."

Four of the DeMoeira boys in roughly the same age group as Jennifer (and the late Daniel) came in, and they were carrying what appeared to be a decorative flagpole. William had put his trousers on and was helping to direct them. They passed behind Jennifer and out of her sight. As she did so, she saw that the head of the flagpole was pointed, going into a ball about the width of a golf ball before a slight pinch and then it widened to about half an inch fatter than the head, and was apparently the same width all the way along from that point. She consoled herself that it would be fatal if inserted into her...

"Argh!" Jennifer screamed as the very thing that she had been ruling out happened. The head of the flagpole itself was being driven into her anus. She knew that it would have been impossible if William had not widened her there already.

"Nooo! I can't take it!" she cried as another inch was pushed down her back passage. Already the bulb at the top was all the way inside, her anus closing tightly around the neck before the wider part. She could feel the terrible thing inside her, too fat to come out but impossible, surely, for it to go further in?

But it did. Inch after inch, and now her anus was stretched far beyond anything she could have believed ten minutes ago. The men were driving it ever so slowly, and Jennifer was thankful for the lubrication that William had put in her as it pressed ever forwards.

How much was in her already? Surely she could take no more! They would nail a seat to the pole, hoist it to vertical and leave her there, a pretty bird sitting on a red and white tree in the desert. But it just kept on coming, rasping against her sore rectum and driving onwards and inwards.

Finally it stopped! There must have been about 3 feet of pole inside her, but that was impossible. It must surely only have felt like that?

And then the pole moved, the other end being lowered to the floor and Jennifer found that her own body had to move with it. Her kneeling hips were the pivot on which it rotated and her torso was forced ever straighter, horizontal to the ground. It felt as though there truly was a pole running right through her body, and the pain that erupted in every part of Jennifer's torso was unbelievable as it shifted. William and Eleanore lifted Jennifer to her feet, and made her shift again as the pole was once more lowered. Eleanore took Jennifer's hands and once more bolted them together behind Jennifer's back. William made sure that her knees were locked straight as Jennifer found herself bent almost parallel to the ground and balanced only by the pole emerging from her backside.

William went somewhere behind Jennifer, presumably making an adjustment to the pole-bearers' stances. Jennifer didn't want to know. Eleanore looked in their direction, and when she received some signal of affirmation she looked Jennifer in the eyes.

"When you hear them shout, 'Now!' you should take a very deep breath. Otherwise this will be a lot more painful that it needs to be, and will have to be repeated. Understand?" Jennifer nodded, and Eleanore gave a thumbs-up to her brother William.

"Now!" Jennifer did not need Eleanore's advice to take a breath. The swiftness with which the men raised the pole towards vertical was so shocking that she gasped inwards in surprise. Her gasp was cut off midway through, though, because suddenly she could the feel the pole forcing itself not only between her arsecheeks, but into the bottom of her throat as well. The only way she could accommodate it was to relax her oesophagus as much as possible, but her windpipe was crushed completely closed by the hideous shaft, and breathing was no longer possible. She tried to control the gagging reflex, but it was impossible with such a massive object blocking her throat. Her ring muscles fought impossibly against the weight of the pole, and her rectal ring muscles trying to expel the pole from the other end. Neither had any chance of success, and all that was possible was for Jennifer to slide down the pole.

She discovered what the crane and the ladder were for. William was there, a rope attached to the crane in his hand. He was beside Jennifer's head, standing at the top of the ladder.

Jennifer suddenly felt a pricking at the back of her mouth. The head of the pole! Her own weight would drive it right through her brain unless she tilted her head right back and opened her mouth as wide as she could. Survival instinct took over, and Jennifer threw back her head, sending her blonde hair tumbling down her back, and opened wide just in time for the pole to come through. William immediately wrapped the rope tightly around the neck of the pole, and the crane took the weight as Jennifer watched helplessly while the pole gradually emerged from her throat while being fed into her arse at the other end. It tasted, she noticed, of disinfectant. No chances were being taken there, then.

By now, her lungs were aching. They needed new air to replace the old that was left over from her sharp intake of breath. It was impossible to hold her breath any longer, but there was no passageway for air to reach the lungs. Her chest was working as hard as it could to achieve the impossible, but her diaphragm and intercostals were no match for the implacable column on which Jennifer was now fully impaled, and down which she was slowly descending. Her legs had flailed wildly at the start, but now they just hung limply beside the pole.

She realised that she had to do anything she could to smooth the pole's passage through her insides. She relaxed her throat and rectal muscles as far as she could, and she realised that if she could part her legs then she might be able to loosen further the passage at her rear. She had no choice but to spread her thighs as wide as she could, her lower legs hanging free. It must have looked like some grotesque attempt to display her sexuality to the crowd, but there was no other option for her. Her chest was ablaze, her arse was tearing, her throat was raw and she was feeling very, very faint. It grew hard to keep her legs aloft, and she began to sag...

And there was the ground beneath her feet! She had reached the base of the pole and could tighten up her leg muscles, and try to take her own weight!

The pole did not stop moving, but the sound indicated that the crane was now lifting it through her body. It made her feel very light on her feet until suddenly, just before she passed out completely, the base of the pole emerged from her mouth to rapturous applause from the gathered company. Jennifer sank to the sandy ground, aware that there was a slight trickle of blood from her anus. She couldn't curl into a ball, but lay with straight back, her limbs tucked up, like the skeleton of some long-dead beast that had died in its sleep.

James Edward explained what had just happened. "As you can see, Jennifer has survived a complete impaling with only minor damage to her rectum. She survived a descent of around 2 minutes 40 seconds, if my stopwatch is accurate. What Doctor Brava has done, ladies and gentlemen, is to insert a titanium tube from the rectum to the base of the throat, through which may be safely passed just about any sufficiently clean object. It completely bypasses the digestive system, and Jennifer will never be able to take any form of sustenance by mouth again. The best she can hope for is a tube leading directly to her stomach, down which we can pour water and nutrients.

"But enough about her. We have a second impalement to demonstrate! Welcome Adenike, the nurse who tried to help Jennifer escape."

It was Joel and Francis who brought in the captive black woman. She was beautiful still, despite whatever had been done to her, with her dark hair cut at about shoulder-length and a slender body. Jennifer reckoned her at about 5'6". At first it seemed as though the girl walked proudly to her fate, but then it became clear that her arms were tied behind her back, each wrist to the opposite elbow, making the girl's impressive bust stand out even further.

Eleanore made Jennifer kneel to watch the event. Adenike was forced to kneel over the wooden block, just as Jennifer had been. Joel forced the hapless nurse's face to the wooden boards while Francis performed the task that William had performed on Jennifer, but more brutally and much quicker, and without any lubrication. Then he and Joel swapped places so that Joel could also leave his seed within Adenike's shithole. Throughout the double anal rape, Jennifer watched the girl bucking and screaming as though her very life was being torn from her. Finally, the two men were finished. Jennifer looked across at the pole down which she had slid, but nobody seemed interested in it. Then she saw why: a much fatter steel stake, about six feet long, had been brought in instead. She gasped, and Eleanore laughed nastily.

"What? You didn't think we'd waste precious resources keeping her alive, did you? When we said she would get the same as you, we meant that she would be impaled. We didn't mean she would survive it!"

The pointed end of the stake was placed at Adenike's arsehole, and William lifted high over his head with a mallet to strike the end. Adenike screamed as the pole forced her anus open. Another hammer blow, and she screamed louder and more shrill. Jennifer could see that Adenike's anal ring had been split, and blood was already seeping from the wound. Adenike screamed and screamed without pause as William methodically hammered the metal pole into the woman's soft and helpless body. Soon enough the screams turned to gargling, croaking yelps. Adenike was almost dead, and long before the point burst from the base of the girl's throat, she had ceased to live, becoming just a piece of meat run through by a giant spit.

Eleanore leaned close to Jennifer's ear:

"That's going to be the main meal this evening!" she chortled, and laughed all the more as Jennifer retched at the thought.

"Join us tomorrow, if you can, for a very different impalement of Jennifer!"

Joel and Francis came with a stretcher to carry Jennifer back to her hospital bed, where she could await tomorrow with dread and the accompaniment of a video of Adenike's last minutes on Earth.

Part 7: The Swing

Jennifer was given most of the next day to rest, attached to her IV feed and lying immobile on the bed. The DeMoeiras had not bothered to tie her down any more: there was no point, since she could barely make a hobble, let alone a dash for it. With her toes permanently limp, her feet disfigured with metal plates under them, and her back rendered as rigidly straight as the proverbial poker, balancing was a huge problem and moving at any speed was simply out of the question. If she tried, Jennifer would be certain to fall flat on her face. The reason that she had been tied down before was to give her the minimum opportunity to guess what had been done to her before the demonstration of the survivable impaling.

The sun was making its rapid descent towards the horizon when the DeMoeiras next came for her. Her IV tube was removed and she was once more escorted into the courtyard to face the gathered DeMoeira clan and any interested onlookers whom they had invited. She was being paraded like a circus animal night after night before the baying crowds uninterested in her as a performer, just in what could be forced upon her.

The crane was the same, and the wooden block was there, the boards around it stained with a claret colour from the blood of Adenike who had died so horribly the day before. Jennifer did not need to be forced. She knew what she would be made to do, and that the DeMoeiras could make her suffer for a long time before the main event if she did not do it. Besides, she knew that she could take the pole in her behind, it had been proved yesterday. Far better to let her 3-minute slide be over quickly and then she could return to her bed.

But this was a very different impalement. She had forgotten James Edward's promise to the watchers yesterday.

The long pole on which she had been hoisted into the air was absent. Instead, Eleanore inspected her anus and declared it loose enough already, at which a much shorter pole, perhaps just 5 feet long, was brought in. It was more bullet-nosed at the top, and narrower than yesterday's pole. For a moment, Jennifer felt relieved, but then decided that this could only mean that they were going to use it to suspend her, and the obvious reason for that would be to roast her alive. She started to weep at the hideous cruelty of which her in-laws were capable.

However, Jennifer was soon given cause for hope. P.L. carried onto the stage a length of medical tubing, and a water bag. They would hardly be giving her a drink if they intended to roast her, would they?

As she was bent over the impalement block, she was gradually forced to swallow the tubing. She could feel it scratching its way down her oesophagus; the only way that P.L. could be sure that he was not going to be pouring the water straight through was to trace the side of her throat all the way down until he reached her stomach. At last, he had the pipe where he wanted it, and he undid the valve on the bag. Jennifer felt the cold water flowing through the piping down her throat, but it was a curious, unnerving sensation that, although she could tell it was happening, she could feel no wetness. She could also feel as the cold water started to collect in her stomach, which was pressed onto the top of the block. P.L. looked at Jennifer, who was quietly accepting all that was being done to her in the vain hope that it would soon be over.

"I thought you would like to know," he said, "That there are four litres of water in here, and you are going to get all of it. Good luck!"

The flow continued, and Jennifer was starting to feel horribly bloated already, though the bag was barely half-empty.

"Your titanium tube rests very close to your stomach," P.L. commented, "I wonder what effect that will have when we stick you soon?"

Jennifer whimpered as a bloated feeling turned to genuine tightness, and actual pain. Suddenly, the bag gave a gurgle and the water ran out, just as Jennifer was sure that any more would have killed her. She had no time to relax, though: already the blunt shaft was being pressed against the doorway to her back passage. She concentrated on releasing any tension in her anal ring as the rod was driven inwards.

"Ow!" she said, as the stubby front end penetrated her rear defences, but it was not the agony of yesterday's brutal assaults that her voice conveyed, but a mere complaint of the sudden stress on her body. P.L. did not make her put her head to the floor this time, but had her on her hands and knees, more horizontal as the pole came through her innards. As her artificial channel was filled with the pole, which ratted a little inside her due to its smaller diameter, she felt it pressing and sloshing her stomach, which made her feel as if she was going to be sick. That would soon be impossible though.

"Take a deep breath!" advised P.L., and she did. The pole quickly thundered through her throat, closing her windpipe just as the larger one had done, and she knew the posture to adopt as the shaft ploughed on and out of her mouth. There, it stopped, and she could not tell what was happening, only that something was being done behind her, at the bottom end of the pole. She hoped that they would hurry up, because already the air in her lungs was growing stale. Then suddenly there were four DeMoeira men in front of her, all with a grip on the pole.

"Relax your bottom and neck, dear, or this will sting a bit!" advised one of the men. Jennifer did as she was told, and immediately the men ran backwards, ripping the pole through Jennifer's body at a great speed. No matter how relaxed she had been, there was no way that it would not cause friction heat to burn her rectum and oesophagus, and as soon as her airway was clear, her scream ripped through the air. However, it was not the shrill cry of earlier events. Her vocal chords had been seriously crushed and damaged by the impalings and only a hoarse screeching emerged from her pummelled larynx.

Something else was affecting the noise. Jennifer now knew what had been done behind her. She had not noticed before the metal hoop at the base of the five-foot pole, but now that it was in front of her it was very clear. All the more so, because attached to it and running straight down Jennifer's neck was a shining metal chain.

It had rattled into her arse as the pole had pulled through, but had not registered instantly because each link was much smaller than the width of the pole itself, and the friction of the pole's passing had triggered far more potent sensations in her abdomen and throat. As her behind began to recover, she was aware of the knobbly cold feeling of the chain links resting in her.

The men who had pulled the pole right through her had now detached the chain from the pole, and were attaching it to something else: the hook that hung from the crane, whose head was now positioned directly above Jennifer's.

The inevitable happened, and the crane began to reel in its cable and the chain attached to it. Jennifer had no alternative but to use her lips and tongue to protect her teeth from catching on the links of the chain as they were pulled through her mouth. But that meant that these fleshy parts of her buccal cavity took the hammering that came of the metal lumps racing through her mouth. She was starting to taste blood from them when a new assault registered: the chain had all but stopped, and a massive steely torpedo was clamped against her anus. The chain was pulling over her face, crushing against her nose, and now was making her tilt upwards as the crane's relentless hoisting continued. Her hands left contact with the ground, and Jennifer struggled to her feet, tripping on the wooden impaling block as she did so. Soon the force of the crane was working directly opposed to the force of Jennifer's weight, and so the metal dildo was being driven in by Jennifer's own body mass. It was an uneven struggle, and her anal ring was sure to lose. Again she screeched in pain as she was torn apart by the enormous device. She could tell that it was even fatter than the pole had been yesterday (which in turn meant that it would not go right through her, because the titanium tube had fitted perfectly yesterday's pole). She had no idea how long it was, but was extremely thankful when she found that a steel bar was attached across its base, providing a sort of swing seat for her backside. The torpedo was stretching her horribly inside, and she was unable to stop herself moaning continuously under its influence. With the chain running through her, the sound was strange and eerie, but the meaning was clear and obviously excited the audience.

Jennifer's feet swung just a few centimetres above the ground when the crane came to a halt. Another metal pole appeared from somewhere, and this one had two prongs with threaded ends about a metre apart. To these they bolted Jennifer's feet and then used further chains to pull it up close to the swing seat bar and link the two. Jennifer's hands were bolted together behind her back. The crane lowered her a little, and she was disturbed by the way that the vibrations of the engine were transmitted so effectively down the chain, through her body and into the torpedo in her arse.

She then discovered why she had been lowered a little: James Edward had called forwards five of the generals who were valued customers of their torture equipment industry.

Jennifer's cunt had been squeezed by the huge object lodged in her rectum, and even the modest prick of the first general caused her to squeal as he roughly rammed into her. Adding to her discomfort was the fact that she was swinging freely on the chain, and as the man pushed into her, she would swing, the chain would rock in her throat and mouth, and make the dildo move as well. The general gripped her body as he approached climax, and spurted his semen into her, before making way for the second rapist.

James Edward appeared to have a very good working knowledge of the intimate anatomy of his guests, for he had arranged these generals in order of increasing penis length and diameter. Jennifer wept as her over-full belly was rubbed by theirs, and their ever-larger cocks pummelled her, driving her seat on and off the evil pillar pressed within. Each one left his seed within her, glorying in his conquering of the helpless woman.

The last man finished, and P.L. was there.

"Please, not you as well!" begged Jennifer.

"You're in luck! No. Not me. This." P.L. held up another metal shaft, even larger, it seemed to her eyes, than the one in her arse. Without another word, P.L. rammed the thing home, forcing it deep into Jennifer's tunnel, pushing its monstrous length right up to the hilt, forcing her pussy-lips wider than she had ever dreamed possible. A taut steel cable then linked the base of the dildo to either end of the bar on which Jennifer was sitting, to which was attached the weapon embedded in her behind. A flange of metal protruded from the dildo's base, covering Jennifer's clit, and its end had a small bump of metal that was now just gently brushing the erogenous tissue in its sheath.

P.L. showed Jennifer something else. He had now in his hand two small electronic devices, each one about the size of a personal stereo.

"These are radios, with very powerful amplifiers for their size. They fit just perfectly onto your swing seat here, and are designed to transmit all of their sound energy directly into the bar under your buttocks. We will be broadcasting continuously, and the batteries will last a lot longer than you are scheduled to be out here.

"It will be most interesting to see how many times you cum during the night!"

P.L. made short work of clamping the radios in place, and retreated, leaving a large bucket positioned beneath his victim. The sun was almost below the horizon by this time, and the arena was beginning to get cold. James Edward advised his guests that those who wished to could stay up to watch Jennifer's all-night ordeal, but the whole thing was being recorded digitally, and they would be able to watch at their leisure the official full-length version edited by the family experts. Therefore, they were welcome to adjourn to the viewing room or their accommodation, as they preferred.

The grandstands emptied and Jennifer was left alone to dangle in the gathering night air, illuminated by the floodlights that had come on as soon as darkness approached. Her pussy and arse were filled with metal invaders, her throat and mouth were clogged with chain so that it was hard (but not impossible) to breathe, her arms were linked behind her back, her legs spread and pulled upwards. Her belly was uncomfortably full, and she had been given far too much water to drink. How could she suffer more?

Then the radios started. They were working in perfect synchronisation, and the DeMoeiras had calculated the exact resonant frequency of the bar to which were now attached both dildos. It was subsonic, around the 15-20 Hertz range. The resonant vibrations easily overcame the damping effect of Jennifer's butt and were transmitted with ease along the bar and down the taut cable, into the steel that plugged Jennifer's dark holes. And it also set the flange, attached to the dildo in her pussy, vibrating in sympathy with the rest of the framework. Rubbing, churning, stimulating Jennifer's clitoris at over fifteen times a second. It was painfully hard against her button, but so welcome as well after two months without any form of stimulation for her clit.

"Oh, no!" she wailed as she realised what had been done to her by the demonic brilliance of her torturers. The arousal was inescapable despite every discomfort and agony that she felt. Worse was the growing realisation that the water that had been deposited in her stomach was now being processed and her bladder was filling as her body decided that she had too much fluid already.

The pleasurable sensations in her clit were transforming the vibrations in her rectum and vagina from punishment to arousal as well, and she was now receiving a mechanical double-fucking as never before. She did not want to cum while there would still be people watching live, but she could not help herself as the vibrations suddenly doubled in frequency. They were still resonant with the bar, and now were much more urgent and stimulating. It was too much, and tipped Jennifer over the edge.

"Aah! Ah, ah aah!" she cried as the orgasm coursed through her suspended body. As the sensations surged through her body, she was no longer able to control herself, and she was shocked to feel her piss flooding from her body as she came. Even as her body rode the orgasm for all it was worth, the deepest sense of shame overtook her mind, and away in the viewing room the close-up camera on her face showed the flush of shame as well as joy that flooded her cheeks.

Elsewhere, in the editing suite, William DeMoeira applauded himself in his deployment of the higher frequency. It was set to be random through the night, but he had thought that Jennifer might need an early orgasm to get her going. It's always easier the second time, was his thinking. He switched off the higher frequency, and put the control of the transmitter back on random switching.

* * * * *

In all, Jennifer orgasmed another five times during the night, and lost control of her bladder on another two of those occasions. She was kept from freezing by the heat from the floodlights, but the sweat that she had exuded during her excitement had made it a close-run thing in the end.

P.L. removed the cable and the dildo from Jennifer's pussy, before enlisting the help of some other DeMoeiras to hoist Jennifer bodily from the dildo in her arse, which was somehow unbuckled from the chain, and then Jennifer was allowed to sink rapidly to the floor while the chain rattled upwards through her body and out of her mouth. Then they undid the nuts that held her feet to the second metal bar.

Almost two litres of Jennifer's piss had been collected in the bucket, and this seemed to give one of James Edward's younger sons (aged eighteen) an idea. He went back to the building and came forth with a curiously-shaped glass that Jennifer recognised from her student days as being the "Yard of Ale". It was a favourite drinking challenge in many pubs. Holding anything from 3 to 5 pints, the drinker had to down the lot in one go. The special shape of the glass was a part of the challenge: only if a special technique was used could the task be done: otherwise, about half the original volume of liquid would suddenly surge down the glass and soak the drinker.

Now, the DeMoeiras were challenging Jennifer to drink a yard of her own urine. To her chagrin, it was as if she had colluded in their idea: she had passed just enough urine to fill the glass tube neatly.

The gathered spectators were armed with whips in case she tried to refuse the challenge, because she would need both her hands and her feet to be able to accept it. Jennifer looked at the ring of sadistic faces around her, and knew that they would love to lash her almost to death, if she did not accept the challenge. Feeling sick to her stomach, she took the glass of her piss in her hands and started slowly to pour the stuff down her throat. Of course, most of it went straight through the titanium tube and started to leak from her anus immediately, adding to her humiliation and degradation at the hands of her in-laws.

Jennifer had never even attempted the Yard of Ale while at university, let alone mastered the technique. Pretty soon the inevitable happened, and her yellow pee rushed down the pipe and covered her face, hair and naked body. Laughter surrounded her on all sides, and she sank into a heap on the floor, noticing as she did so the pinkish tinge to the fluid still dripping from her backside.

Hours later, after she had been hosed down and inspected by Doctor Brava, the verdict was given: "I don't think she can take another impaling tomorrow," said the doctor, "So I suggest we put her on the cross again."