Judas Cradle

His face was wrenched by agony. A mixture of blood and sweat dropped onto the cold concrete floor. In his distress he looked up from the dark corner of the solitary room he was in to see a figure walk in the door and up to him. It was a woman. She was tall and lean, and her face showed years of torture with scars and burn marks and red blotches of skin. She wore just a plain white t-shirt, sweatpants, and slippers. Her hair was everywhere, as if she had just awoken from a long, well-needed nap. He recognized her. He had seen her at out and about a few times, and after he was kidnapped, she stood in the corner and watched as two muscly men kicked and punched and cut and hit and threw things at him.

She squatted before him to put her at eye level with him. Sweat ran from his forehead and into his eyes, making it hard for him to keep his eyes open for too long. She just stared at him. Minutes passed of her staring, making him feel slightly uncomfortable. Then she finally spoke up.

"Do you know why you're here, Mr. Morris?" she asked.

He literally had no clue why. "No, I don't," he replied. "I have no idea as to why I am here or what your purpose is."

"Let me explain," she said. "You see, I have been watching you over the past months." She then sat beside him. "I've watched what you've been doing, who you've been talking to, where you go, how you manner yourself, and such. I've planned this out all along, Mr. Morris. I intrica-"

"How do you know my name?"

"Shut up and let me finish!" she snapped. She sighed. "Anyways, I intricately designed a way for me to finally catch you. You see, I'm what many people call a bounty hunter." Her eyes focused on his and his on hers. "People pay me to find and kill other people that they don't like or have a problem with. In the case of the initiator of this specific bounty, I was payed a hell of a lot of money, an amount I'm not going to share. So, this person wasn't me to make sure that you suffer an insurmountable amount of pain, tortured beyond the point of repair."

"Who is this that wants me dead?"

She thought for a moment. "Well, it's not a specific person but a group of people, an organization, if you will. They know what your company has planned to do. They know the secrets you're not willing to share with the public. They even told me what your company is going to do, and frankly, I think of it as a noble act for me to kill you. It's a terrible thing to try to rid the world of such a beautiful national landmark just to build a plant."

She then pulled out a small switchblade and forcefully stabbed him in the gut. He wailed in agony.

"You know," she began, "I'm a big fan of old methods of torture, those seen crude and outdated. An example would be the Judas Cradle. Do you know what that is?"

Between heavy breaths he said, "No, I don't."

"Well, let me explain it to you. You see the Judas Cradle was a medieval torture device that consisted of a pyramid shaped piece. Above it was the victim attached to a harness. By lower roped connected to the victim, the victim would be lowered down onto the pyramid piece. It would be inserted into the victim through the anus or vagina, and as the victim was lowered, muscles and tissue would begin to be torn. Then, the victim would die slowly from infection or by being impaled."

She looked at him, and mortification rattled through his very soul. She bent down, grabbed his cheeks with one hand and made him look straight into her eyes. "We're going to try out the Judas Cradle, okay?" He began to squeal and squirm, trying to free himself from her grasp, but she only gripped tighter. "Guys! Come in her and take him to the Judas Cradle!" The two men who had beaten him up were there and walking towards him. One raised him boot and slammed his booted foot into his face, knocking him out instantly.

When he awoke, he was in a dimly lit room. He was completely naked, and he was strapped into a metal harness around his waist. He instantly felt a giant pressure at his anus, where the Judas Cradle's top began to pierce his raw flesh. Ropes were attached to his ankles and wrists. His left ankle and wrist were held by one of the men on one side, and his right ankle and wrist were held by the other man on the other side. The harness around his waist also had ropes that went to each man. He frantically looked around the room, and in one corner was the woman. She was dressed the same. As he looked at her she smiled and began to chuckle. She motioned her hands downward. Then the two men began to pull down. Instantly, the pain grew immensely. He shrieked loudly. Blood trickled from his anus, and tears swelled up in his eyes.

He couldn't help but cry for them to not kill him. Over and over he shrilly begged them to have mercy on him, and but neither the men nor the woman payed attention to his pleas. He tried to convince them by mentioning that he had a family and friends and a job to go back to. They said nothing. Slowly, the pain grew worse and worse, consuming all that he was. Scream after scream, none of them did anything about it but worsened his pain. Eventually, the pain gripped him so tightly that he couldn't feel it anymore. He became numb to it, and all he could feel then was how tortured his soul felt. He had much planned in life, and now it was all gone. He couldn't help but think about all the loved ones he was leaving behind. Then his mind began thinking about the fact that he felt his life was unaccomplished. He wanted to do so much good, to turn his life around. Now, redemption was meaningless. Blood at that point was spewing everywhere, and the suffering he felt was unlike anything he had felt before. As the tip of the Judas Cradle ripped his insides, he began to lose consciousness and felt himself drifting into the oblivion and void that is death.