Read Online A Bestiary of Unnatural Women by Ashley Zacharias - Free Book Online Page B

attention to detail. That was what made her such
a successful graduate student in the Sociology Department at the
University of Chicago.
    After an hour, he was bored stiff, tired of
looking at device after device that was designed to rend, pierce,
burn, crush, and break parts of the human body in the most cruel
ways that evil, brutal men had been able to devise. He had begun
hinting that he was ready to leave after the first half hour but
she had ignored him. Now, after a full hour had passed, he was
bluntly nagging at her to hurry up. He was hungry and his feet were
tired.
    Her only response was to remind him that he
was the one who wanted to come inside; and that they ought to make
sure that they saw everything because they were unlikely to get
back here again.
    He replied that if you’ve seen one iron
maiden, you’ve seen them all.
    She did not respond; she was too busy reading
about a pear, a small device shaped like an elongated iron pear.
According to the description, it would be inserted into an orifice,
like a woman’s vagina or a rectum or a mouth, and then screwed
open. The two halves would unfold like petals of a malignant iron
flower, pressing inexorably against the vaginal or rectal walls,
slowly stretching them until they burst asunder. The pain would be
excruciating, the damage catastrophic.
    Cindy imagined her own womanhood being ruined
by such a device. The fantasy was abhorrent. Knowing that it had
actually been used on real people in their vaginas, rectums and
mouths was appalling.
    She took a picture of the device, as she had
of every device in the little museum, presumably so that she could
remain appalled in years to come.
    Trevor could only shake his head.
    She did not talk to him about any of the
devices until they reached a simple thing called a Spanish horse.
It was nothing more than a large wooden wedge supported on tall
legs. The victim would be placed astride the device so that his
legs were stretched apart and hung freely on either side, leaving
his entire body weight pressing his crotch against the upper edge.
The working edge was not particularly sharp but the area of the
body that was being tortured – the genitals, perineum, and rectum –
are especially sensitive to pain. She commented that this was the
first device that she had seen that would hurt a person without
being likely to cause permanent damage.
    Trevor pointed to the part of the text that
explained that weights would often be hung from the victim’s feet
to increase the pressure. If enough weight was hung, parts would
rupture, and eventually the dull edge would break through the
victim’s flesh.
    “No, I mean if it were only my weight resting
on the edge without any additional weights attached. I weigh about
a hundred and twenty pounds and the edge is not that sharp. It’s
only about a forty-five degree angle. I don’t think that I’d suffer
permanent damage from resting astride it for a while. I wonder how
long I’d be able to ride it before I was screaming for mercy,
saying anything, offering to do anything to be released. I bet I
could stand it for quite a while before I got to that point.”
    Trevor was more than a little disconcerted to
hear his lover talking about being tortured personally. He hoped
that she was engaging only in idle fantasy but she looked too
intense for his comfort. She was a stubborn woman and, when she
made her mind up about something, she could not be dissuaded. He
had a bad feeling. “I’m getting out of here. I’ll meet you
outside.”
    “Okay,” she said with an air of distraction.
“I’ll be out in a minute.” As he walked toward the exit, the walls
were illuminated by flash after flash from her little
point-and-shoot camera. She was taking pictures of the Spanish
horse from all angles.
    No more was said about the Torture Museum for
the remainder of their vacation, nor when they returned to
Chicago.
    Trevor assumed that Cindy had left her
interest in the topic as soon as they left