As I walked over to Prisoner I felt more as if I was going to work out at a regular gym than to face another ordeal. Maybe this was just my way of coping with what had to be done to open the door, maybe I was getting used to the idea that had built the dungeon in the first place. I stepped up to the framework and could see that it was set up so I’d have to secure my ankles and waist first, and then I could put the manacles on either wrist after that. I knelt down and put the first shackle on my left ankle and as I drew the thing closed it snapped shut on its own and locked. Like everything else in the room, there was more than met the eye to Prisoner. My right ankle met the same response from its shackle. The waist restraint was tied to two pulleys on either side of the framework by steel cables, the same steel cables that attached to my ankles and wrists. This wasn’t self locking, but there was a red light that switched to green once I’d put the restraint on and pulled it secure. The cables on either side of the waist restraint then pulled taut and held me in place. The wrist manacles were last and they snapped on the same as the ankle shackles, locking on their own. Then I just stood there and waited. And waited. And waited.
I began to get concerned that maybe I’d locked myself into a broken machine and I’d be stuck here even if the damned door opened. I tried to pull open one of my wrist manacles when the cables attached to my wrists suddenly snapped tight. My arms were damn near yanked out of my shoulders the thing pulled so hard! Then my ankles were pulled apart and out until I was doing a very painful version of the splits. I grunted with the pain, but managed not to scream somehow. My body was now splayed into an “X” and I will say that this wasn’t really any fun.
The stainless steel door on the wall swung open and there were six robotic arms folded into it. The first one unfolded itself and without any hesitation it poked its tip very painfully into my left armpit and shocked me. Now I screamed. Loud.
Two of the arms unfolded and swung down to shock my ankles while a fourth flew out and shocked my right armpit. The four arms began to shock me in a random series with each shock getting more painful than the one before. This torture went on for maybe thirty seconds, but it felt like hours. The shocks would wrack my body and I felt muscles convulse and release with the shocks and the pain was worse than any cramp I’d ever felt in my life.
Then it stopped.
I hung there catching my breath while I swam about in a sea of pain. The shocks, the cramps, and the pulling at my arms and legs was brutally painful and I was hping that this was the end. It wasn’t.
The two arms that had shocked my armpits rapidly retracted and then unfolded again in the kind of blurry motion that only a machine could achieve. Just the sight of the arms flying around my naked flesh was enough to make me scream and then the two arms froze in place over my nipples. They just held there, each of them maybe a millimetre away from touching me. I screamed with the certain knowledge of what was coming and then caught the scream in my throat as raw voltage coursed into my bodyl through two of my most sensitive and tender places. The shocks came in a rapid-fire staccato of zips and zaps and I was helpless to do anything to stop it, all I could do was scream.
I screamed again when it stopped because I knew that there was more coming. And Prisoner wasn’t going to disappoint me, either.
The four arms folded into the cabinet and then the remaining two flew out to just inches from my face. The effect was intense. The tip of the arm on the right wasn’t an electrode like the first four arms, it was a rotary device with five centimetre-long hypodermic needles loaded into it. A sixth hypodermic needle was just out of my view. The second arm had a device with tiny needles and small tubes connected to them and God only knew what the hell they did. Just having the two needle-encrusted arms inches from my eyes was terrifying enough without wondering what was next.
Both arms retracted and then the arm on the right flipped about and stopped at the thigh opposite the one that had been injected the night before. I struggled with the little bit of play that was left in the restraints and was rewarded with their pulling me so tight that I felt and heard my limbs pull slightly out of their joints. Excruciating is a mild word as I found out. With relentless precision the arm closed on my thigh and then pierced my skin and injected me with the contents of the first hypodermic. The injection burned like hell. The next four injections burned like hell, too and then the sixth and final injection was due. I was relieved to think that the worst was over and there was just one more to go.
The horror was unspeakable as I saw the arm swing up from my thigh to just in front of the lower part of my belly. The needle on the last hypodermic was easily four times as long as the needles of the first five. I looked down and tried to pull back, but that was pointless. The machine held me prisoner and I was going nowhere. The arm raised, lowered, and moved a couple of times as if deciding how to go about the task it was programmed to complete. Then it locked into position and the arm slid the needle inexorably towards my skin. It poked me just enough to make me wince and draw blood before it drove on into me, burying itself to the hilt in my belly. Agony became a mild word as the needle pierced skin and muscle and drove on into where ever it was going inside of me.
The plunger on the hypodermic was pushed home by an actuator on the arm and I felt more unspeakable pain as the fluid was injected into some predetermined place that was now the home of pain. The needle was retracted once the job was done and then the arm flippped back on itself and folded into the cabinet. The sixth arm now began to hum and it swung and flipped about until it had its needles aimed at my groin, just below my bikini line. I was exhausted from the pain of the injections and watched without response as the arm brought the humming needle array to my skin. The pain was at least bearable as the arm poked at my skin and hummed along. Slowly, it moved about in a small area, drawing blood as it moved and then it retracted. The needle array portion of the arm flipped around to reveal another odd set of devices. They closed on the bleeding area and sprayed something that numbed the relatively minor pain and then rinsed the blood from the area with a gentle antiseptic-smelling spray.
I so wanted this to be over. I missed my plain apartment. I missed my job. I even missed my old car. Even my roomie seemed so far away and friendly right now.
In my brief reverie I’d failed to notice the arm retract into the cabinet as the first four arms flew out again to take new positions around my body.
The simultaneous shocks to the backs of my knees and to my spine made my body seize up with painful spasms. The staccato chatter of the electrodes unloading into me sounded like a hailstorm on a tin roof. No matter how fast the shocks came, I felt each and every one of them as they caused muscles I didn’t know I had to seize up and strain at their ligaments. I’m not sure when it occured, but sometime not long after that I passed into blissful unconsciousness.