Thinking The Pain

Author : P. S. Walker

She walked proudly into the office area, where there was a man tied to a chair. She was wearing a grey pin striped suit over her lanky figure, her brunette hair was tied into a pony tail. She also wore a surgical mask and latex gloves.

“I swear I didn’t see…” The man shouted desperately, crying upon the sight of her.

“Shush” she shouted to interrupt, “don’t tell me anything.”

She continued to march over towards him carrying a large suitcase and a small bucket of water. She placed the water next to him and the suitcase on the desk a few feet away before opening it.

“I’m your torturer. I don’t work with these people so don’t tell me anything, if you do I’ll make your pain more severe.” She sighed, he didn’t reply. Out of the case she brought a microphone, a pair of noise cancelling headphones, a long flexible tube, some cables and a tablet computer before carefully placing the case on the floor.

First she put the headphones on, so that should the man confess or describe anything that it might be detrimental for her to hear, she wouldn’t know about it. “Right,” she started, shouting much louder than intended because of the headphones, “I will be hooking you up to my computer, this is how I’ll administer the pain. The water’s for you to drink.” She put one end of the tube into the water and held the other up to his mouth, he took it in his teeth. “Something for you to bite on too,” she gave a smile as if this was friendly advice.

“They can hear through the microphone,” she flicked it on and pointed to the window into the hall, “give me a thumbs up if you can hear” she shouted, still too loudly, a hand with a raised thumb appeared, “good.”

She could see him muttering something, but had no idea what. Normally they protested their innocence or lack of knowledge at this point, so probably that. “Now then mister…”, eventually he said his name but she didn’t hear. “I will be putting these probes into your temples, the program gives off signals to your brain and I can simulate almost any type of pain without having to touch you. Try not to move or this may kill you.” She inserted the probes, though they were small, he screamed. “And, this monitors your heart rate.” She stuck a small pad onto his chest. He almost felt like part of the computer, his entire head was numb.

“Now please confess into the microphone, once they hear what they want they will come in and stop me, let’s begin.” She started tapping away on the tablet’s screen. “First we tear away the hand muscles.” Over the course of a couple of seconds his hands felt ablaze with both heat and coldness with a severe cutting pain. His hands looked fine, but he could not move them, and the pain was unimaginable. She followed this up with the sensations of his toenails being removed and his knee caps shattered.

She was having fun, but halfway through simulating removing his stomach, someone from behind removed her headphones and told her “we’ve heard all we need, finish up.”

She placed the tablet back into the suitcase and removed the probes and monitor. Taking a set of knives from the case she said sympathetically, but excitedly “now time for the real fun, mister.” Dread painted his face as all the previous pain slowly faded, a clean pallet for her despicable art.