Click.
Another muffled cry of agonizing torment escapes around the ballgag filling my mouth as the rack tightens another brutally painful notch...
Click.
The witchfinders captured me two days ago. Two days of unrelenting torture on this rack at the hands of their inquisitors before I confessed to being
a witch. Little did I know that this rack held my brutally torturous fate.
Instead of removing my tautly stretched body from this rack, they first strapped a painfully oversized ball gag deep within my mouth. Then, as I stared in
horrifying disbelief, they brought in a large block of ice and a massive stone weight. Setting the block of ice directly under the rack’s handle, they
placed the stone weight on top of it and attached the weight’s chain to the end of the rack’s handle.
The grand inquisitor paused as the rest of the inquisitors left the chamber, “Soon, the unspeakable torment you’ve endured for the last two days will seem
like a pleasant memory, witch. Over the coming hours, the heavy stone weight will gradually cause this rack to tighten as the ice beneath it slowly melts. The
steadily increasing tension will first dislocate your shoulders. After that, the mounting pressure will destroy the cartilage and tendons in your arms and
legs. All the while, the muscles in your torso will stretch tighter and tighter, making it steadily more difficult to breathe until you slowly die of suffocation.”
Click.
Exodus 22:18, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
Click.
Click.
Click.
At first light, the inquisitors returned to remove the witch’s lifeless body from the rack. They placed her on the gurney and transported her corpse down to the
catacombs deep beneath the ancient monastery. Where they disposed of her body, dumping it into the pit containing the bones of past confessed witches, her flesh
destined to be consumed by the catacomb’s ravenous carrion beetles, leaving nothing but her bones to mark her passing...