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THE WALL
Written by Xodliv
Please Note: This is a partial preview of one of four stories that appear in Make Her Talk #1
Amelia did not know how long she had been in the dark room. It seemed like a long time, but without any means of measuring time, it could be a lot shorter than it felt like. Or a lot longer.
The last thing Amelia remembered was leaving the party at the American Embassy. It was two o'clock in the morning, but there were plenty of taxis waiting. There always were, whenever a party was held at the Embassy; in Paris, like any other large city with an American Embassy, the taxi drivers knew when good fares were to be had. Amelia had hailed one and gotten in, had given the address of her fashionable hotel. She had noticed the cab take a wrong turn; she had supposed the driver was just trying to jack up the fare and had been too tired from a long evening of dancing and making idle conversation to put up a fight. When a second turn had taken them even further from her hotel, she had meant to say something; but just then a sharp pain at the base of her skull had exploded the world in front of her eyes into brilliant colors, and then to soft, velvety darkness.
She had woken up later, in total darkness. Darkness so complete it took her a moment or two to realize that she was, in fact, awake. She was lying on a firm, not completely uncomfortable, surface; when she tried to rise she found it impossible. Her legs felt paralyzed. In panic she reached down to touch them; she felt her legs, felt her own fingers on them. She pulled with her leg muscles and found something clamped around her ankles, holding them tight. She could not budge them even a fraction.
Fighting down panic, Amelia took stock of the situation. It was pitch black, impossible to see. She felt of her own body with her hands. She was still clothed, wearing the red Versacci gown, the tasteful yet glamorous jewelry, the black nylon hose. Experimentally wiggling her toes, she found she was still wearing the Manolo Blahnik shoes. Her watch had been taken from her. She wondered why; there was no way she could have read it in this inky blackness.
Sitting up on what she took to be a narrow cot, she felt forward with her hands, trying to discover what was restraining her ankles. To her surprise her hands touched a wall; stone, apparently, from the feel of it, cold, hard, unyielding. Her fingertips scanned the surface of the wall, finding joints of mortar connecting great stone blocks. Then she suddenly touched another surface; wood, she supposed, highly varnished wood, set flush into the stone wall. It was this wooden surface that her ankles disappeared into. She felt around her calves, and the wood surrounded them, like an old-fashioned stocks device. She wondered briefly how that could be, set flush into the wall like that. Perhaps there was some sort of device on the other side of the wood panel, some crank or lever, that opened and closed the holes in the wood. Anyway, her legs were trapped; she wasn't going anywhere. She leaned back on the cot, ran a hand through her thick dark hair, and tried to calmly assess the situation. God, how she wanted a cigarette.
"Miss Michaels?" a voice suddenly cut through the darkness, some time after Amelia's assessment of her situation. The voice startled the young woman into alertness. She peered through the darkness, trying to find the source of the voice.
"Please respond, Miss Michaels," the voice said. "I know you are awake." It was a feminine voice; a high, almost shrill voice, with a musical, sing-song quality about it. And yet, Amelia could not help but notice a subtle undertone that she could only describe as menacing.
"I'm awake," Amelia replied to the unseen voice. She tried to determine where the speaker was, but the echoes made it impossible. This brought home to her the fact that she had no idea how large or small her cell was. She could not reach any walls on her sides or behind her, but her reach was limited by her predicament. The room could be as narrow as a phone booth, or as cavernous as a cathedral; she had no way of knowing. "Where am I? What's going on? I guess this is some kind of kidnap. Well, just call my lawyer and tell him how much you want, so I can get out of here!"
"I'm afraid it is not so simple as that, Miss Michaels," the voice replied. "But I have the advantage of you. I know your name, but you do not know mine. Forgive me for overlooking the introduction. I am Mei Po." There was a pause by the speaker; Amelia remained silent. "What, no gasp of recognition, no start of surprise?" Mei asked. "Please, Miss Michaels, my ego requires that."
"You're saying I should know you?" Amelia asked.
"Perhaps not," Mei said. "Not if you are what you seem to be, the spoiled orphan of a deceased industrial tycoon, jet-setting around the world on a never-ending pleasure trip. But I know better, Miss Michaels. I know that you are one of the top espionage agents for the American government, using your cover as a ditzy--do I have the American colloquialism correct?--party girl of the society set to gather information sensitive to American interests. And I know that, as such, you have been briefed on my activities on behalf of the People's Republic of China."
"Wow, that's some story," Amelia said. "You should sell it to a movie studio. Maybe Keira Knightley could play me, huh?" Amelia kept up the pose of bravado. But deep down she repressed a shudder. She had read the files on Mei Po, kept by the Central Intelligence Agency and Interpol. Little was known about the woman's methods, except that they never failed to extract the information required, and that they always left their victim a broken, mindless wreck. Male and female, both had succumbed to Mei Po's methods of interrogation, and been found later as babbling idiots wandering the streets with glazed eyes and blank expressions. And not a mark of violence was ever found on their bodies.
"You maintain your cover story, even now, Miss Michaels?" Mei's voice came through the darkness. As she heard the voice, Amelia connected it with the pictures she had seen in the files. A Chinese woman, beautiful by any standards, with smooth skin, glossy black hair, a slender figure, an enigmatic smile. She looked like a porcelain doll; it was difficult to reconcile the beautiful face, and the lovely voice that accompanied it, with the cruelty and mercilessness that must reside behind it. "I find that commendable, but futile. You are acquainted with the results of my interrogations, if not the methods. It would be in your best interests to tell me everything I want to know, before I am forced to demonstrate my methods of persuasion upon you."
"Lady, you're nuts!" Amelia spat. "I tell you, I don't know anything about what you're talking about! You seem to think I'm some kind of super-spy, or something. Well, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard!"
"I am glad you find it so amusing," Mei purred. "You may not find it so very much longer. Ask yourself, Miss Michaels; where am I right now? Think, and the answer will come to you."
It did, and it clutched Amelia's heart with fingers of ice. Mei Po, the most feared torturess in the world of espionage, was very likely on the other side of this wall. Where Amelia's helpless feet protruded from the wooden stocks. Did Mei Po's torture methods involve the feet somehow? There are a lot of nerve endings in the human foot; pain inflicted there could be agonizing. The reports had said no marks of violence had been found on the victims' bodies. Would they have checked the feet? Of course they would. They were more thorough than that. Weren't they?
"I trust you have figured out where I am now, Miss Michaels," Mei Po's mellifluous voice came through the darkness. To illustrate the point, Amelia felt something touch her nylon-clad ankle, causing her to give a little gasp. "Now, I will give you the customary last chance to spare yourself the agonies to come and tell me what I wish to know. I assure you, you will talk eventually. But please, hold out as long as you can. It would be my pleasure to force the information from you, bit by bit."
Amelia shuddered, but summoned up the courage of her agency training. "L-look, you might as well let me go, all right? I'm not who you think I am, so nothing you do to me is going to do you any good! Come on, joke over, all right?"
"Oh, this is no joke, Miss Michaels," Mei's voice said. "But I believe you will find it amusing, all the same." Amelia felt fingers unfastening the ankle strap of her left shoe; felt it slowly removed from her foot. She had been wearing nylon stockings and closed-toe pumps for hours at the party and however long she had been here; her toes were sweaty and hot, and she felt cool air through the porous nylon. Her heart began to race. She tried to steel herself for the coming ordeal; not knowing what form it would take made it difficult to prepare herself for it.
Nothing could have prepared her for the feeling of a woman's fingernails lightly grazing her nylon-sheathed arch. The sharp nails, barely scratching the smooth sole, sent an electric jolt surging through Amelia's foot. She let out a little yelp.
"Ticklish, I see," Mei said in the darkness.
"Well, yeah," Amelia admitted. "I mean, isn't everyone? What, you're going to tickle me for information? Lady, you are nuts!" Amelia kept up the bravado in her voice, trying to mask her fear. She had been trained to deal with pain; not this!
"Am I nuts, Miss Michaels? Am I indeed? We shall see." Again Amelia felt the fingernails on her stockinged sole. Very slow, light strokes, like the fluttering of butterfly wings but sharper. The nails tickled her helpless foot expertly. She tried to stifle the laughter, at first, pressing the heels of her hands to her lips. But she remembered her agency training on dealing with pain. She had been taught that resisting the sensations, trying to hold in her reaction, only made it worse and encouraged the torturer. So she let the laughter out in a loud burst that echoed through her chamber of total darkness.
"FFWAAH-HA-HA-HA!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!" Amelia's laughter rang through the chamber. The tickling sensations were maddening! Her helpless foot twitched and flailed like a fish in the bottom of a boat, trying to escape the tickling nails, but it was no use. The stocks only permitted her a couple of inches of wiggling room. She tried to cover her exposed sole with her other, still-shod foot, but the stocks separated her feet too far for that.
"I see you are very ticklish indeed, Miss Michaels," Mei's voice purred from the darkness. "Your foot twitches under the caress of Mei Po's nails. It looks so fetching, squirming under my touch. You are an excellent subject, Miss Michaels. You will break before long, I can tell."
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! I don't--HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! I don't know anythiIIING!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!" Amelia screamed through her laughter.
"Perhaps you don't," Mei said. "Perhaps my information has been faulty, and you really are just a spoiled playgirl. Well, in that case, I will have had some enjoyment with you, nothing more. Then again, perhaps you are merely holding out on Mei Po. If so, you'll soon give in. They all do, Miss Michaels, eventually."
Amelia threw back her head and laughed. She felt the woman's fingers playing with her toes now, through their sheath of nylon. Pinching and wiggling them one by one, "piggying" them as had not been done to her since childhood. She hated that! Every little wiggle of her toes sent unbearable tickling sensations surging through her! She began to tug at her own hair in frustration and ticklish agony. She couldn't believe how torturous this was! Then again, she reminded herself, Mei Po was an expert.
The torture went on for a long time; how long, Amelia had no way to judge. Mei Po kept varying her techniques, from gentle grazing to furious scribbling to soft caressing. Every move tickled worse than the one before it. Amelia was laughing so hard her stomach hurt. Tears streamed down her face. Her fists pounded the narrow cot on which she sat. Nothing, however, alleviated the awful tickling sensations surging through her.
Finally the tickling stopped. Amelia lay back on the cot and gulped air into her tortured, oxygen-starved lungs. She lay there in the darkness, her chest rising and falling heavily, trying to get her pounding heartbeat back to normal. After a few moments' pause, Mei Po's honeyed voice cut through the darkness again.
"That, Miss Michaels, was a sample of the agonies that await you, if you continue to deny my polite requests for information," the Chinese torture mistress said. "I know you have been briefed on my techniques. Perhaps you have even seen a victim of mine, or two."
Amelia shuddered. She remembered the British agent she had seen, in that hospital in Cornwall. The way she stared out into space, a look of horror frozen on her face. And, Amelia now remembered, she kept rubbing the soles of her bare feet on the padded floor of the cell, as if trying to scourge something from them. She hadn't thought much of it, at the time, but now...
Please Note: This story is continued in MAKE HER TALK #1
Written by Xodliv
Please Note: This is a partial preview of one of four stories that appear in Make Her Talk #1
Amelia did not know how long she had been in the dark room. It seemed like a long time, but without any means of measuring time, it could be a lot shorter than it felt like. Or a lot longer.
The last thing Amelia remembered was leaving the party at the American Embassy. It was two o'clock in the morning, but there were plenty of taxis waiting. There always were, whenever a party was held at the Embassy; in Paris, like any other large city with an American Embassy, the taxi drivers knew when good fares were to be had. Amelia had hailed one and gotten in, had given the address of her fashionable hotel. She had noticed the cab take a wrong turn; she had supposed the driver was just trying to jack up the fare and had been too tired from a long evening of dancing and making idle conversation to put up a fight. When a second turn had taken them even further from her hotel, she had meant to say something; but just then a sharp pain at the base of her skull had exploded the world in front of her eyes into brilliant colors, and then to soft, velvety darkness.
She had woken up later, in total darkness. Darkness so complete it took her a moment or two to realize that she was, in fact, awake. She was lying on a firm, not completely uncomfortable, surface; when she tried to rise she found it impossible. Her legs felt paralyzed. In panic she reached down to touch them; she felt her legs, felt her own fingers on them. She pulled with her leg muscles and found something clamped around her ankles, holding them tight. She could not budge them even a fraction.
Fighting down panic, Amelia took stock of the situation. It was pitch black, impossible to see. She felt of her own body with her hands. She was still clothed, wearing the red Versacci gown, the tasteful yet glamorous jewelry, the black nylon hose. Experimentally wiggling her toes, she found she was still wearing the Manolo Blahnik shoes. Her watch had been taken from her. She wondered why; there was no way she could have read it in this inky blackness.
Sitting up on what she took to be a narrow cot, she felt forward with her hands, trying to discover what was restraining her ankles. To her surprise her hands touched a wall; stone, apparently, from the feel of it, cold, hard, unyielding. Her fingertips scanned the surface of the wall, finding joints of mortar connecting great stone blocks. Then she suddenly touched another surface; wood, she supposed, highly varnished wood, set flush into the stone wall. It was this wooden surface that her ankles disappeared into. She felt around her calves, and the wood surrounded them, like an old-fashioned stocks device. She wondered briefly how that could be, set flush into the wall like that. Perhaps there was some sort of device on the other side of the wood panel, some crank or lever, that opened and closed the holes in the wood. Anyway, her legs were trapped; she wasn't going anywhere. She leaned back on the cot, ran a hand through her thick dark hair, and tried to calmly assess the situation. God, how she wanted a cigarette.
"Miss Michaels?" a voice suddenly cut through the darkness, some time after Amelia's assessment of her situation. The voice startled the young woman into alertness. She peered through the darkness, trying to find the source of the voice.
"Please respond, Miss Michaels," the voice said. "I know you are awake." It was a feminine voice; a high, almost shrill voice, with a musical, sing-song quality about it. And yet, Amelia could not help but notice a subtle undertone that she could only describe as menacing.
"I'm awake," Amelia replied to the unseen voice. She tried to determine where the speaker was, but the echoes made it impossible. This brought home to her the fact that she had no idea how large or small her cell was. She could not reach any walls on her sides or behind her, but her reach was limited by her predicament. The room could be as narrow as a phone booth, or as cavernous as a cathedral; she had no way of knowing. "Where am I? What's going on? I guess this is some kind of kidnap. Well, just call my lawyer and tell him how much you want, so I can get out of here!"
"I'm afraid it is not so simple as that, Miss Michaels," the voice replied. "But I have the advantage of you. I know your name, but you do not know mine. Forgive me for overlooking the introduction. I am Mei Po." There was a pause by the speaker; Amelia remained silent. "What, no gasp of recognition, no start of surprise?" Mei asked. "Please, Miss Michaels, my ego requires that."
"You're saying I should know you?" Amelia asked.
"Perhaps not," Mei said. "Not if you are what you seem to be, the spoiled orphan of a deceased industrial tycoon, jet-setting around the world on a never-ending pleasure trip. But I know better, Miss Michaels. I know that you are one of the top espionage agents for the American government, using your cover as a ditzy--do I have the American colloquialism correct?--party girl of the society set to gather information sensitive to American interests. And I know that, as such, you have been briefed on my activities on behalf of the People's Republic of China."
"Wow, that's some story," Amelia said. "You should sell it to a movie studio. Maybe Keira Knightley could play me, huh?" Amelia kept up the pose of bravado. But deep down she repressed a shudder. She had read the files on Mei Po, kept by the Central Intelligence Agency and Interpol. Little was known about the woman's methods, except that they never failed to extract the information required, and that they always left their victim a broken, mindless wreck. Male and female, both had succumbed to Mei Po's methods of interrogation, and been found later as babbling idiots wandering the streets with glazed eyes and blank expressions. And not a mark of violence was ever found on their bodies.
"You maintain your cover story, even now, Miss Michaels?" Mei's voice came through the darkness. As she heard the voice, Amelia connected it with the pictures she had seen in the files. A Chinese woman, beautiful by any standards, with smooth skin, glossy black hair, a slender figure, an enigmatic smile. She looked like a porcelain doll; it was difficult to reconcile the beautiful face, and the lovely voice that accompanied it, with the cruelty and mercilessness that must reside behind it. "I find that commendable, but futile. You are acquainted with the results of my interrogations, if not the methods. It would be in your best interests to tell me everything I want to know, before I am forced to demonstrate my methods of persuasion upon you."
"Lady, you're nuts!" Amelia spat. "I tell you, I don't know anything about what you're talking about! You seem to think I'm some kind of super-spy, or something. Well, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard!"
"I am glad you find it so amusing," Mei purred. "You may not find it so very much longer. Ask yourself, Miss Michaels; where am I right now? Think, and the answer will come to you."
It did, and it clutched Amelia's heart with fingers of ice. Mei Po, the most feared torturess in the world of espionage, was very likely on the other side of this wall. Where Amelia's helpless feet protruded from the wooden stocks. Did Mei Po's torture methods involve the feet somehow? There are a lot of nerve endings in the human foot; pain inflicted there could be agonizing. The reports had said no marks of violence had been found on the victims' bodies. Would they have checked the feet? Of course they would. They were more thorough than that. Weren't they?
"I trust you have figured out where I am now, Miss Michaels," Mei Po's mellifluous voice came through the darkness. To illustrate the point, Amelia felt something touch her nylon-clad ankle, causing her to give a little gasp. "Now, I will give you the customary last chance to spare yourself the agonies to come and tell me what I wish to know. I assure you, you will talk eventually. But please, hold out as long as you can. It would be my pleasure to force the information from you, bit by bit."
Amelia shuddered, but summoned up the courage of her agency training. "L-look, you might as well let me go, all right? I'm not who you think I am, so nothing you do to me is going to do you any good! Come on, joke over, all right?"
"Oh, this is no joke, Miss Michaels," Mei's voice said. "But I believe you will find it amusing, all the same." Amelia felt fingers unfastening the ankle strap of her left shoe; felt it slowly removed from her foot. She had been wearing nylon stockings and closed-toe pumps for hours at the party and however long she had been here; her toes were sweaty and hot, and she felt cool air through the porous nylon. Her heart began to race. She tried to steel herself for the coming ordeal; not knowing what form it would take made it difficult to prepare herself for it.
Nothing could have prepared her for the feeling of a woman's fingernails lightly grazing her nylon-sheathed arch. The sharp nails, barely scratching the smooth sole, sent an electric jolt surging through Amelia's foot. She let out a little yelp.
"Ticklish, I see," Mei said in the darkness.
"Well, yeah," Amelia admitted. "I mean, isn't everyone? What, you're going to tickle me for information? Lady, you are nuts!" Amelia kept up the bravado in her voice, trying to mask her fear. She had been trained to deal with pain; not this!
"Am I nuts, Miss Michaels? Am I indeed? We shall see." Again Amelia felt the fingernails on her stockinged sole. Very slow, light strokes, like the fluttering of butterfly wings but sharper. The nails tickled her helpless foot expertly. She tried to stifle the laughter, at first, pressing the heels of her hands to her lips. But she remembered her agency training on dealing with pain. She had been taught that resisting the sensations, trying to hold in her reaction, only made it worse and encouraged the torturer. So she let the laughter out in a loud burst that echoed through her chamber of total darkness.
"FFWAAH-HA-HA-HA!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!" Amelia's laughter rang through the chamber. The tickling sensations were maddening! Her helpless foot twitched and flailed like a fish in the bottom of a boat, trying to escape the tickling nails, but it was no use. The stocks only permitted her a couple of inches of wiggling room. She tried to cover her exposed sole with her other, still-shod foot, but the stocks separated her feet too far for that.
"I see you are very ticklish indeed, Miss Michaels," Mei's voice purred from the darkness. "Your foot twitches under the caress of Mei Po's nails. It looks so fetching, squirming under my touch. You are an excellent subject, Miss Michaels. You will break before long, I can tell."
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! I don't--HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! I don't know anythiIIING!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!" Amelia screamed through her laughter.
"Perhaps you don't," Mei said. "Perhaps my information has been faulty, and you really are just a spoiled playgirl. Well, in that case, I will have had some enjoyment with you, nothing more. Then again, perhaps you are merely holding out on Mei Po. If so, you'll soon give in. They all do, Miss Michaels, eventually."
Amelia threw back her head and laughed. She felt the woman's fingers playing with her toes now, through their sheath of nylon. Pinching and wiggling them one by one, "piggying" them as had not been done to her since childhood. She hated that! Every little wiggle of her toes sent unbearable tickling sensations surging through her! She began to tug at her own hair in frustration and ticklish agony. She couldn't believe how torturous this was! Then again, she reminded herself, Mei Po was an expert.
The torture went on for a long time; how long, Amelia had no way to judge. Mei Po kept varying her techniques, from gentle grazing to furious scribbling to soft caressing. Every move tickled worse than the one before it. Amelia was laughing so hard her stomach hurt. Tears streamed down her face. Her fists pounded the narrow cot on which she sat. Nothing, however, alleviated the awful tickling sensations surging through her.
Finally the tickling stopped. Amelia lay back on the cot and gulped air into her tortured, oxygen-starved lungs. She lay there in the darkness, her chest rising and falling heavily, trying to get her pounding heartbeat back to normal. After a few moments' pause, Mei Po's honeyed voice cut through the darkness again.
"That, Miss Michaels, was a sample of the agonies that await you, if you continue to deny my polite requests for information," the Chinese torture mistress said. "I know you have been briefed on my techniques. Perhaps you have even seen a victim of mine, or two."
Amelia shuddered. She remembered the British agent she had seen, in that hospital in Cornwall. The way she stared out into space, a look of horror frozen on her face. And, Amelia now remembered, she kept rubbing the soles of her bare feet on the padded floor of the cell, as if trying to scourge something from them. She hadn't thought much of it, at the time, but now...
Please Note: This story is continued in MAKE HER TALK #1
