From the Witchfinder's Files, Tale II: The Innocent Malice

She felt his touch and shivered trying to pull away from him. Hearing the iron again clicking against the stone wall she felt a tug on the rope and then heard him and she, blind, started to walk.

She laughed to herself as she heard him:

"And then what Devil man, you going to hand me my clothes back and let me go are you?'
 
Medardus chuckled: "Everything in its time. In this case, in the time when you have confessed. Which I recommend you do soon.

He had arrived at what was probably the worst armchair in the world, being covered in spikes on every conceivable surface. The young woman followed him on a short rope, her naked soles pattering nervously across the rough stone floor.

He took her by the hips and, rather gently, sat her down on the "armchair" so she could feel it. He did not fix any of the restraints yet. He just let her try it out. "There! Your first taste of torture! Do you like it?", he snarled at her.
 
She felt him stop and then felt him push her down. She couldnt stop the gasp from her mouth as she felt whatever it was she was sitting on and she tried though her body let her down and started to shake as she felt the pain from the spikes that she now felt all over the back of her body.
 
With a satisfied smirk at her gasp, Medardus jerked on the rope to "help" her stand up. He let her to a much more ordinary stool and reached over to a shelf for the thumbscrews. Grasping her delicate hands, he leaned in very closely and said: "This is your last chance before I get very, very serious. Confess, or scream."
 
"I confess to being innocent and being kidnapped by the devil himself"

Her voice steady though her body starting to betray her a little. She even tried to pull back as she felt him move close to her.
 
He slid the thumbscrews onto her long, slender thumbs and turned the screw until they were tight enough to grip but not to cause any pain yet. Kneeling in front of the blindfolded young woman on the stool, he sighed. "Your choice. The torture begins."
 
She tried to pull back feeling the pinch of the metal on her thumbs:

"Devil leave me!"

She screamed suddenly panicing:

"I'm innocent and you know it to be true"

Her voice for the first time started to go shaky and she felt the pressure in her thumbs building.
 
He had to hold on to her wrists with his left hand with all his strength to keep the screaming Jayne steady. With his right, he still managed to build up some pressure. Slowly. Very, very slowly. He turned until he could see the flesh redden around the bars, then took a step back.

The many oil lamps had made the torture chamber quite warm, so he stood up and took off his tunic, revealing an upper body which, for a man his age, was quite physically fit. It showed that he was passionate about hunting...animals, that is, not witches, in his free time. The warm air felt soft against his skin, but evidently, the screaming midwife in front of him was far less comfortable. He bent down again to continue the torture.
 
She couldnt see it but she looked down in the direction of her hands. She tried as hard as she could but her body and her mind betrayed her and she screamed, and she screamed and she shook and the pain won and went through her body. Her whole arm shaking her fingers balled into a fist as the pressure and pain on her thumb was unrelenting.
 
After a lengthy struggle, Medardus managed to catch the wrists flying wildly around, and get a hold of the thumbscrews. Deeper and deeper the bar went, making the poor witch's flesh bulge and turn dark red as the pressure kept increasing. She was shaking and squirming, and he had to scream very loudly to drown out her sounds of pain: "CONFESS! CONFESS, AND IT WILL ALL BE OVER!"
 
She went to speak and found herself crying out and she couldnt stop the tears from streaming down her face:

"I'm innocent I have done nothing for you to torture me like this"

Sniffling through her words her whole body squirming as the pain ran through her body:

"Pl....please stop this!"
 
The screw felt harder and harder to turn. He knew that he would soon be hitting bone, and while he could crush her thumbs into a pulp, he decided to do something else. As he had observed many, many times, the true pain of the thumbscrews came when they were removed, when the blood shot back into the tormented thumbs. That had to be agonizing.

He touched her back with his left hand and said to the midwife, fatherly again: "I will stop as soon as you confess, you dumb, stubborn devil slut!". With his right hand, he opened the screws and waited for the inevitable
scream.
 
She felt the release of the pressure at first and thought it was over. Then as the pressure went away she felt the burning searing pain and her scream went up she fell to the floor her hands held out her thumbs in the air as she curled up her whole body shaking uncontrollably as she turned from her side to her back trying to ease the pain that shot through her body up to her thumbs. She could feel them throbbing so much that it made her cry and sob a pool of fresh tears quickly formed around her.
 
Unconcerned by the screams and the convulsions of pain racking the entire beautiful body of his young victim, the Witchfinder went to get a length of rope and the next torture instrument, the iron boots. They did look like boots, except for the large screw mounted to their fronts. It was easy to bind her ankles and slip the boots on while Jayne was rolling around on the floor in agony. Soon, large masses of iron on her legs promised her the next agony. Dumb, dumb witch. Poor, poor witch.
 
She didnt even know what was happening until it was too late. As the throbbing in her thumbs subsided a little she brought them up looking at them even though she couldnt see them. She felt something cold around her legs and tried to kick though the effort of doing so seemed to pull something in her leg and another scream of pain slipped from her. She wanted to reach down to touch but just moving her hand made her thumbs throb once more.
 
Following a sudden impulse, the Witchfinder decided to remove his trousers, so that he was standing there only in a loincloth. A loincloth behind which something had been protesting the entire time. What a wonderful young body, it said. Get some enjoyment out of it before you burn it to ashes! The desire had become stronger and stronger, and the bulge was actually quite painful. For now, though, he decided to continue with his work by pulling on the rope again to make Jayne sit on the stool for the next torture.
 
She felt the same pressure she had on her thumbs suddenly on her legs and she screamed louder and despite the pain it caused she tried to reach down with her hands at what was attached around her legs. She had lost all her compsure by now and was shaking and crying and terrified:

"Take these OFF of me!"
 
Medardus did not react to his prisoner's desperate pleas. Instead, as soon as she was sitting on the stool again, he knelt down and started turning the screws, tightening them slowly around her bound legs. Again, he stopped when they had "bite" but did not apply any pressure yet. "The iron boot torture.", he announced impassively, "confess, or you will never be able to walk again!"
 
"I confess and you do it anyway, take them OFF of me"

She screams trying to move her legs though she cannot move them at all. Squirming she felt the stool rocking and she tried to rock it enough to send her to the floor once more.
 
The young woman had really squirmed so much that the stool flew away, landing her on her butt with a thud. Not that she cared much, probably, given her red, throbbing thumbs.

"So, you finally confess your crime?", the Witchfinder said, keeping his hand on the screw's handle, "you have chosen very wisely, and I will take the boots off of your legs and allow you to recover as soon as I hear your confession repeated. It is for your good, and the good of your soul!"
 
"I saw the devil in my dreams and it was YOU"

She screamed at him, she had felt the legs of the stool as she fell. The stone floor unforgiving, but with all the strength she could and ignoring the pain in her foot she grabbed at the stools leg and flung it in the direction she heard his voice. Letting out the scream from her throbbing thumb she let it go feeling it fly out of her hand not knowing if it hit him or not.
 
The sudden attack came too fast to react. The Witchfinder felt something hard graze his skull, causing him to see stars for a moment. The little devil slut had actually attacked him! Enraged, he grabbed the rope binding her feet and started to drag her towards the middle of the room, where a hook on a rope was hanging from the ceiling. All the way, this bundle of pain and belligerence he was pulling on screamed and fought and struggled. He had to strain his arms mightily to drag her.
 
She reached out her arms trying to grab at the stones on the floors as she was dragged. Kicking as much as she could. Underneath the cloth that covered her face she smiled knowing she had hit him. She kept trying to lift her head as she went over the stones so as not to hit the back of it.

Then she felt her legs being lifted up. She could tell her legs were in mid-air, held by something. She was laying on the stone floor and her feet were pointing up towards the ceiling.
 
The Witchfinder was furious. Furious at the throbbing pain in his temples, furious at the little slut's insolence, and furious at her insistence on a lie. This was not work anymore, it was revenge, and he would make her regret every single insult she had spat at him. Having secured her feet to the hook he was now busy hoisting her up by the winch. He would make her hang upside down, until she regretted her deeds, regretted having defied him, regretted having been born.
 
She felt her feet being pulled up, pulled up to the sky. Slowly less and less of her back was against the stone floor. Her head couldnt even touch it. Only her arms were still touching the stone and soon she felt that slip from her. She couldnt feel the stone any more and she knew she was hanging there in the middle of the room by her feet.
 
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