Explicit version containing graphic violence, gore, and enhanced interrogation themes at 06-127X The Chamber of Torment I at Patreon.com/TheRemainderman
PREVIOUSLY: Channah and Rivqah have just killed two Venetian soldiers and captured two Venetian officials and a Venetian prisoner being subjected to strappado, in the torture room of the Council of Ten. NOW:
The prisoner continued to moan and struggle, but the other sounds—sounds of movement and violence—abruptly ended. Channah had already begun to move to her left, keeping her arrow trained on one Venetian official while remaining mindful of the second official face-down on the floor before her with his arms extended to the sides. Cautiously, she darted a glance toward the middle of the room, nodding with satisfaction to see Rivqah was the only figure standing.
The two of them remained motionless and silent, eyes on their respective prey, listening intently for any sound of alarm.
The Capo began: “What is the me—”
“Shh!” Channah hissed, with sufficient force, and a gesture from her bow, that the Capo fell silent while the interlopers listened for a beat, two, three, four, and five.
Channah flicked her eyes back to the middle of the room, meeting Rivqah’s, and raised her chin questioningly. Rivqah shook her head slightly in response, and both women relaxed.
“Stay still until we get to you,” Channah barked at the two men in front of her, watching the Capo’s eyes widen at the sound of her voice, while Rivqah sheathed her sword and returned to the wall, unwound the rope, and let the prisoner down. He groaned and wept in an odd, sobbing combination of pain, and much-greater relief from the weight finally coming off of his arms. Still holding the pulling end of the rope, she released the man’s arms from the hanging end, and helped him off the platform to a standing position on the ground.
“Thank you! Thank you!” the prisoner wailed gratefully. “My arms—please—for the love of God—” the man pleaded, sincerely, turning his back towards her.
Emotionlessly, Rivqah spun him to face her and pushed him backwards to the wall, where she tied the lifting end of the rope back to the ring in the wall, and then tied his arms to the ring, ignoring his sad and pitiful whimper. “Do. Not. Try. To. Escape.” She commanded, staring into his pain-wracked eyes with her own, ice-cold ones, satisfied by his brief nod and hanging head.
“You’re women!” the Capo cried out in surprise, and then humiliation immediately turning to a hard, contemptuous rage. “Just women!”
Rivqah had already moved to join Channah, stepping around the table and grabbing the Capo by the shoulder of his expensive robe.
Imagining he saw his chance, the Capo cried: “Let’s take them!” as he spun towards Rivqah, who stepped back—yanking him off-balance by tugging on his robe—even as she executed a side-kick into his knee, the Capo fell to the ground, never to stand again. When Rivqah pitilessly dragged him further towards her, to pull him out from behind his table, the twisting and turning of his ruined knee elicited a sharp scream and then silence as he became unconscious.
The Lord of the Night, gamely—or, perhaps, with a foolish, misplaced, misogynistic self-contempt—responding to his superior’s cry, pulled his arms and feet in towards his body, gathering himself to rise to his feet. His effort was killed instantly and decisively by Channah’s boot, which she raised and slammed down on the back of his head, knocking him unconscious, his arms and legs falling slack with the rest of his body as blood pooled on the floor.
Channah and Rivqah exchanged another glance and shrugged, like: “well, so much for them.” Then they both turned their faces toward the prisoner to make sure he wasn’t trying to take advantage of the ruckus to get loose. If he’d thought about it, maybe even tested his bonds in the initial seconds after the Capo cried out, he wasn’t doing so now. Now, he was looking towards them, appalled, his face whiter than the rest of him, shrinking back towards the wall as if it might shelter him.
When the Capo stirred back into consciousness, light reaching his eyes through his fluttering lids, he felt cold water rapidly warming on his face, the room swimming slowly back into focus.
Blinking, he found himself facing two of the most beautiful women he had ever seen in his life. Despite the sweat on their faces; despite the tangled state of their black hair after peeling off their hoods and masks; and despite their middle age—thirties or forties, he guessed, although it was hard to tell precisely because their olive skin glowed with the vigor of youth, even as their dark hawklike eyes regarded him with the cold, acute scrutiny of the most hardened and wizened crones—the two of them were unimaginably lovely. So lovely, in fact, they made the most expensive courtesans and the most-desirable debutante noblewomen of Venice look common enough. “Angels…” he gasped before he was entirely alert, even as he was noticing the wood-paneled wall and the shocked, terrified prisoner pressing himself tightly back against the wall behind them.
Memory came flooding back as his body alerted him to the most extreme kind of pain, more than anything he had felt since he was shot fighting the Turks over a generation ago; more than he could have even imagined before that injury. His knee, shoulders, elbows, and wrists stung and burned worse than any sting or burn he could conceive of.
“It hurts! It hurts worse than I—” he screamed. And as full recollection reminded him where he was, he screamed again, twice as terrified to see the corners of the women’s mouths turning up, delighting in his cries.
“Angels…” the swordswoman, now holding an empty ladle, returning it to the water bucket near her feet, sneered.
“Of a kind,” the archer smirked. “You are surprised to be in pain? You know where you are, yes? Where we found you?”
“The Chamber of Torment,” he sobbed.
“The Chamber of Torment,” the archer practically purred. “But not your usual seat. Capo.” The word was spoken with all the venom and hatred of a viper.
“My arms! My leg—” and then he cried in horror, memory and recognition finally completely returned.
“I think you’re a little overdue for this chair, don’t you?” And with a vindictiveness that shook him even deeper: “And unlike the… I’m going to guess, thousands of others who came to sit here before you, you came into this room voluntarily, didn’t you? Like you knew you deserved to be here. Gasparo Orseolo.”
Literature Section “06-127[X] The Chamber of Torment I”—more material available at TheRemainderman.com—Part 127 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—Abridged 1067 words::Explicit 1173 words—Accompanying Images: 1972-1973—Published 2025-06-28—©2025 The Remainderman. This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions. It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.