A Bestiary of Unnatural Women (8 page)

Her only response was to remind him that he
was the one who wanted to come inside; and that they ought to make
sure that they saw everything because they were unlikely to get
back here again.

He replied that if you’ve seen one iron
maiden, you’ve seen them all.

She did not respond; she was too busy reading
about a pear, a small device shaped like an elongated iron pear.
According to the description, it would be inserted into an orifice,
like a woman’s vagina or a rectum or a mouth, and then screwed
open. The two halves would unfold like petals of a malignant iron
flower, pressing inexorably against the vaginal or rectal walls,
slowly stretching them until they burst asunder. The pain would be
excruciating, the damage catastrophic.

Cindy imagined her own womanhood being ruined
by such a device. The fantasy was abhorrent. Knowing that it had
actually been used on real people in their vaginas, rectums and
mouths was appalling.

She took a picture of the device, as she had
of every device in the little museum, presumably so that she could
remain appalled in years to come.

Trevor could only shake his head.

She did not talk to him about any of the
devices until they reached a simple thing called a Spanish horse.
It was nothing more than a large wooden wedge supported on tall
legs. The victim would be placed astride the device so that his
legs were stretched apart and hung freely on either side, leaving
his entire body weight pressing his crotch against the upper edge.
The working edge was not particularly sharp but the area of the
body that was being tortured – the genitals, perineum, and rectum –
are especially sensitive to pain. She commented that this was the
first device that she had seen that would hurt a person without
being likely to cause permanent damage.

Trevor pointed to the part of the text that
explained that weights would often be hung from the victim’s feet
to increase the pressure. If enough weight was hung, parts would
rupture, and eventually the dull edge would break through the
victim’s flesh.

“No, I mean if it were only my weight resting
on the edge without any additional weights attached. I weigh about
a hundred and twenty pounds and the edge is not that sharp. It’s
only about a forty-five degree angle. I don’t think that I’d suffer
permanent damage from resting astride it for a while. I wonder how
long I’d be able to ride it before I was screaming for mercy,
saying anything, offering to do anything to be released. I bet I
could stand it for quite a while before I got to that point.”

Trevor was more than a little disconcerted to
hear his lover talking about being tortured personally. He hoped
that she was engaging only in idle fantasy but she looked too
intense for his comfort. She was a stubborn woman and, when she
made her mind up about something, she could not be dissuaded. He
had a bad feeling. “I’m getting out of here. I’ll meet you
outside.”

“Okay,” she said with an air of distraction.
“I’ll be out in a minute.” As he walked toward the exit, the walls
were illuminated by flash after flash from her little
point-and-shoot camera. She was taking pictures of the Spanish
horse from all angles.

No more was said about the Torture Museum for
the remainder of their vacation, nor when they returned to
Chicago.

Trevor assumed that Cindy had left her
interest in the topic as soon as they left the museum and spent the
next two weeks living and working with a light heart.

That changed when he came home one afternoon
in mid-July and found her in the spare bedroom, the one that she
used as an office, typing madly on her computer. “Whatcha working
on?”

“Sociological aspects of modern interrogation
techniques. It’s a broad survey. I’ve decided to write a comp on
it.”

“Oh. Good.” Being in her first year of her
doctoral program, Cindy was required to write two comprehensive
examinations to demonstrate her understanding of general topics in
sociology. She had written the first one before their Amsterdam
trip and he was pleased to see that she was making progress on the
second one. She would be a lot easier to live with once the
pressure of her comps were gone. Then he thought about what she had
just said, “Wait a minute! What do you mean by ‘modern
interrogation techniques’? You mean torture?”

“Sure. Torture is only part of the topic, but
it is the biggest single part.” She kept typing.

“Since when does the University of Chicago
administer comprehensive exams about torture?”

“Since I petitioned the Director of Graduate
Studies. He agreed that it has become an important issue since the
administration launched their so-called War on Terror so he would
allow it.”

“That’s sick.”

She stopped typing and turned around to look
at him. “It’s an important issue. People are being tortured by our
government as we speak and that is affecting our whole society in
ways that the Bush administration never anticipated. Not that we
should be surprised by that. That administration never anticipated
the consequences of any of the foolish things that they did.”

He sighed. “Okay. You’re right. It’s
important. Good luck on your comp.”

“Thanks,” she replied, ignoring the fact that
she didn’t need his permission for anything, and went back to
typing furiously.

Trevor consoled himself with the thought that
as long as her interest in torture was only academic, it would do
no harm.

Cindy sequestered herself like a medieval
monk until she had completed her comprehensive exam. A week after
it was over, he was unsurprised when she mentioned that she had
passed with distinction; she had done the same on her first comp.
Her ability to focus on a topic was astounding. He had never met a
woman who could be so single-minded. To his distress, her
single-mindedness in the six weeks before the exam had excluded any
interest in sex. To his delight, in the week after the exam, she
was interested in almost nothing but making love.

On a Thursday night in early September, after
making love for the sixth time in five days, she turned to him and
said, “Trevor?”

“Yes?”

“You’re good with your hands.”

“Thank you,” he replied, stroking her soft,
full breast. “I’m glad you like it.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she said, putting
her hand over his. “I mean, I do like that. But what I really meant
is that you know how to build things.”

“Yeah?” he drawled, wondering what project
she had come up with now.

“I want you to build a Spanish horse for
me.”

“What? A horse?” He was confused.

“You remember. Like the one in the Torture
Museum in Amsterdam. It won’t be hard. It’s just a couple of pieces
of wood mounted on four legs. I’ve got lots of pictures if you need
to look at them. I bet you could build one in a couple of hours. It
doesn’t have to be fancy. You just have to make sure that it’s
strong enough to hold my weight. Even if I’m wriggling around on
it.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“What do you think?” she asked.

He didn’t want to think about what she must
be thinking.

“What do you think?” he asked.

She looked at the device standing in the
center of the room. It was a large wooden wedge, about two feet
long with sides about a foot high. The sides met at a
forty-five-degree angle, about the same as in the museum, but it
looked sharper and crueler when it was sitting in their living
room. Supported by four sturdy, well-braced legs, it stood a little
higher than her waist. When she was perched on it, no matter how
desperately she pointed her feet and strained, the floor would
remain at least six inches beneath her toes. “It’s lovely. Just
beautiful. I thought that it would be a lot more rustic looking.”
She reached out and stroked the smooth wood.

“I made it out of maple. I thought that oak
would be too rough, too porous. And I finished it with linseed oil
because polyurethane would have been too sticky against your
skin.”

“I love the way the grain shows in the wood.”
She ran her fingers across the upper edge. “It’s not too
sharp.”

“I planed the edge off to about the diameter
of a pencil because I don’t want it to cut or cause any permanent
injury. The corners on the side, too, where your thighs will press
against it.”

“That’s good. I don’t want to be injured when
I use it.”

“I don’t want you to use it at all. It’s just
for show.”

“No, it’s not.” She began unbuttoning her
plaid shirt. “I’m going to try it out right now, just to see how it
feels.”

“It’s going to feel painful.”

“I bet it is.” She unsnapped the waistband on
her jean and unzipped them. “I bet it’s going to hurt like hell.”
As soon as she had removed her sports bra and cotton panties she
said, “I’m going to need a chair to climb up there. I can’t just
jump up on it from here.”

“I’ll get one.” He brought one back from the
kitchen area and set it beside the horse. She slipped her white
tube socks off, leaving herself entirely nude.

As soon as the chair was in place, she
stepped up and swung her leg over to the other side, just like she
was mounting a real horse.

She gingerly lowered her crotch down onto the
apex of the blunt wedge. “Ouch. I still have to spread my legs
pretty wide to get on this thing.” She kept a running commentary as
she adjusted herself. “Ooh. It feels a lot wider than it looks. Let
me get my foot off the chair and let you pull it away. Ouch. I have
to rest all my weight on the edge. That hurts. It’s pressing real
hard into my crotch. Ouch,” she said more emphatically. “I thought
that I’d be able to take some pressure off by squeezing my legs
together and lifting myself up, but I’m just hurting my legs when I
try.” She rested on the edge for a minute, then said, “Ow. It’s
really starting to hurt now. A few more minutes and it’ll be real
torture. I wonder how long I can stand it.” She swayed from side to
side a bit. “I have to work to keep my balance on this thing. If I
don’t keep working at it, I’ll fall right off. I guess my upper
body is heavier than my legs.” She put her arms down in front and
back, placing one hand between her legs and the other behind her
butt and pushed down. “This is no good. I can use my hands to lift
myself right off the edge. We have to do something about that. You
can’t let me get relief like this.” She rocked her pelvis forward
an inch before lowering herself back onto the wedge. She replaced
her hands and repeated the action. “This is no good at all. I can
scoot myself right off this thing if I can use my hands.” She
inched forward again, and then said, “Nope. I’m going to run out of
room for my front hand. I have to go backward.” Following her own
instructions, she began to inch backward along the wedge. “It feels
like I’m scraping my thighs raw against the wood this way, but that
doesn’t hurt as much as sitting on the upper edge. It’s no
deterrent. The edges rubbing against the sides of my thighs by my
knees are a bigger problem than I would have guessed. I don’t feel
them much when I’m stationary, but when I’m moving, they makes two
more pressure points that add to the pain in my crotch.” She kept
slowly scooting backward until she had no place to put her hand
behind her. Then she simply put both hands in front of her, leaned
forward and put her weight on them. “This kind of hurts my hands,
but a lot less than it is hurting my crotch. Oops. There we go. I
can feel the corner right underneath me. One big push and I’m off.”
As she described her action, she leaned far forward on her hand so
that her crotch was clear of the corner of the wedge and then
pushed back hard with a little bounce.

She screamed as she dropped off the end feet
first to the floor. “Damn! Damn! Damn!” Her eyes teared up and she
grabbed her crotch with both hands. “Damn, that hurts. I hope I
didn’t injure myself.” She bent forward at the waist and parted her
hands to peer through them at her pubis. “I banged my damn clit
against the corner when I went down. Ooh wee that hurts. It isn’t
bleeding.” She looked at herself again. “I don’t think I’ve got any
permanent injuries there, but sex isn’t going to be much fun for a
few days. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. It’s going to be bruised for sure.” She
clutched at herself and rubbed gently. “We’ve got to fix that
problem. I could probably have climbed off to the side if I’d
tried. That would have been better. The only reason that I didn’t
was because I was worried about catching my foot and dumping myself
on my head, You’ve got to find some way to stop me from moving
around and jumping off. Or falling off. I shouldn’t have to keep
myself balanced all the time.

“While you’re at it, I was wondering if you
could think about some kind of stirrup arrangement. I love the idea
of being able to put myself on the horse without help. The only
thing is there’d have to be some way to get rid of the stirrup once
I’m on the thing so I can’t use it to lift myself up after I’m on
edge, so to speak.”

A few days later, Trevor showed her the
upgraded Spanish horse. It looked more complicated, now being
adorned with assorted straps and chains.

When Cindy saw it, she said, “That looks more
complicated.”

“It has to be. The medieval device in the
museum was used manually by the torturers. They would have put the
victim on it and then kept guard to make certain that he did not
climb off. If you want a self-contained torture device that doesn’t
need assistance, then you need mechanisms to perform the same
functions as human torturers.”

“Okay. So what do I do?” she asked as she
began to shed her utilitarian grad-student clothes.

“First, you buckle this belt around your
waist.” He handed her a black leather belt with a pair of handcuffs
attached to a D-ring in the center. “And when that’s done, you
mount the horse. You’ve got a stirrup now for mounting and
dismounting.” He pointed to a wood and steel strap hanging from a
short chain. You put your foot in it and mount up.”