Wrecking Ball
Cyric was sure that his arm was only moments away from popping out of the swollen socket of his shoulder. The muscles had long been numb from the constant strain of so much weight pulling on the tissue. The tendons and ligaments had stretched to unnatural limits, and he wasn’t sure whether any of the damage being done was going to be permanent.
Not that it mattered.
He looked up at his blood encrusted wrist, flexing the hand and fingers against the manacle that was firmly shackled there. No pain reached his brain, but the sensation of mangled flesh pulling and scraping along the metal bands was enough to ignite the anger within him anew. The chain which stretched upward away from his hand was thickly constructed and continually mocked him with those tiny squeaks of laughter.
Cyric hung his head and shook it with disbelief as maniacal hysteria flitted on the edges of his psyche. He mentally ran through the scenarios he had tried, the images flashing across his short term memory, the sweat, the climbing, the flexibility, the notion. All the standard attempts had failed and given way to more delusional concepts over the past…hours? Days? The notion of time quickly dissipated from the stable internal clock, adding its own maliciousness to the gnawing insanity.
Which reminded him. Gnawing his own arm off at the shoulder. Had that though really crossed his mind? Had he actually spent several precious minutes weighing the pros and cons of the cannibalistic act, only to throw it out due to fatal blood loss? A deep, hacking cough was the only response to his unspoken questions, the phlegm resonant and thick in his lungs. Hurking out a monstrous wad of bloody mucous, his eyes, slitted against the pain, followed the glob as gravity pulled it away from him in swift silence.
A sickly splat abruptly shortened the fall of the spittle. Cyric’s eyes found the wet spot as it lengthened along the spherical surface of the iron ball hanging below him. A poisonous look was in his eyes as his gaze followed the chain from the top of the ball to the manacle shackled to his other wrist. He couldn’t help the morbid speculation of which shoulder would give first as the giant weight pulled on him with unrelenting persistence. He had never been on the rack but had heard about plenty of others that had suffered the stretching fate. As respectful as Cyric was of torture in general, he was truly beginning to appreciate the sheer viciousness of the ratcheted wheels literally ripping a man apart.
Like a wound in the mouth that kept summoning the tongue, his mind could not escape the vivid images of people being torn limb from limb. Little he did could guide his thoughts away from the pictures for any length of time. Finally he had started to feel his resolve begin to fray at the edges. His will was not as strong as he believed. The prayers began flowing shortly thereafter, promises and deals made with any deity that would offer an ear. There seemed to be no other direction to which he could turn. All escape attempts, actual physical reaches for freedom, had failed beyond imagining. The last attempt had sent him spiraling into blissful unconsciousness for several hours.
Never one to give in to defeat, Cyric had gotten the notion into his head that he could use the huge iron ball to smash his way out of his predicament. The shadows had left him blind to most of his surroundings with the exception of the immediate hunks of metal strapped to his limbs. This lack of information needed to be explored. So he began swinging.
The effort was slow to start, but once the thunderous sphere built up a sufficient arc, he simply added to the momentum as the ball passed its lowest point. The obvious problem was that with each consecutive swing, the weight of the wrecker continued to grow. Cyric figured he could hold out long enough for a few solid whacks of metal against stone. Balls to the wall as it were. The smile this thought elicited did not last long.
One hundred and seventy-eight arcs later, Cyric gave one final heave of the great ball with all his remaining might. The black sphere raced through the shadows and reached a near parallel height with the ceiling above. And nothing. He had been so sure! Cyric had arced his weapon throughout as much of a full circle as he was able, but nothing was within striking distance. That last push nearly dislocated both of his shoulders, so he didn’t come to his unfortunate conclusion until hours later, when he resumed consciousness.
The fragile illusion of time shattered completely when Cyric’s eyes opened to the unyielding view of the inky darkness. Panic threatened to well up from the more distant recesses of his mind, but through sheer force of will, he entered a meditative state of controlled breathing and was able to remain fairly level headed. For a time, but his will like his sanity was slowly draining away.
Thus it was with quiet, erratic fascination when his fifty-fourth glance upward along the chain of his cage brought a rather spectacular change in the scenery. Blinking repeatedly in an attempt to remove the sludge inside his eyes, Cyric stared quietly for several long minutes. The woman clinging to the length of chain a few meters above him stared silently back.
She was a magnificent specimen as far as anyone losing their sanity was concerned. Skin a sensational shade of coral glistened with moisture where it wasn’t covered with reflective silver leather. The woven outfit was an wicked web of straps and rivets that traveled crisply from neck to hips. Doing little to hide his appreciation of her voluminous curves, Cyric’s eyes walked a searing path along her physique from shadowy ankles down to her piercing gaze. Narrowed eyes with prismatic green hues met Cyric’s blue eyes confidently. For the entire stretch of time that the pair stared at each other, Cyric was certain she hadn’t blinked. He wasn’t entirely sure she even had eyelids. At this distance he couldn’t be certain. Her hair didn’t help the matter. Long ebony tresses stretched down from her scalp toward him, swaying lightly in the ambient air currents. Without any doubt, he clearly saw the fullness of her plump lips. His eyes trained back onto the pouty deliciousness of her mouth again and again. She noticed, and a tiny smile formed on her lips.
Cyric wasn’t sure if he smiled back or not. The delirium upon him was heavy, and he was still entertaining the notion that his visitor was merely a figment of his tortured imagination. He was somehow aware that his eyes never seemed to travel the length of her supple arms to the delicate hands. An arcane weave must have been upon him, for he certainly would have been alarmed by the razor like claws extending from the tips of her fingers. Each one serrated beyond a sane fashioning and lacquered to a painful reflectivity. Cyric’s shattered consciousness even kept him unaware of the tick, tick, screech that the hook on her index finger scraped out rhythmically against the chain.
“My avenging angel,” Cyric blurted with jovial anguish.
The visitor’s head snapped to one side on her slender neck, looking at Cyric as if he had roared a lion’s oath. Snapping her head just as quickly to the opposite side at that painful angle, she narrowed her eyes and the smile slipped from her face.
“Why do you suffer?” her thin voice darted from her throat.
The sheer bluntness of her question stymied Cyric, and for a few moments, he was at a loss for words, failing to understand not what she had asked, but why. The absurdity of it blindsided him, and he burst into a laughing, coughing, hacking fit. Spots of blood sprayed from his lips, and even the tangy moisture of his own life was welcome in his parched mouth. Spasms wracked him, sending new waves of old pain through his failing limbs.
Silently the watcher kept her vigil. The only break in her stoic features coming from a quick flick of a whip thin tongue snaking out to taste the salty, blood filled air. Cyric caught nothing of the scenting, flapping in agony as he was. When he was able to regain enough of his composure to respond, his sight relayed only the same unwavering image of his most feminine observer.
“Why do I suffer?” he mimicked her words bitterly, a rueful smile forming on his blood flecked lips, “That one is simple to answer, though difficult to comprehend. You see my beautiful apparition, the worlds are filled with countless minds that shadow themselves in ignorance. By choice mind you.”
Taking several deep breaths to regain a modicum of strength and to allow his thoughts to coalesce somewhat, he glanced upward again, meeting the dark gaze from above. Then Cyric explained his circumstances in one simple decree.
“I suffer because I seek the truth.”