Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner (the ebook reader .txt) 📕

only make out the crimson outline of him. She wanted to ask him why he’d hit her, but she feared that if she spoke, he’d hit her again.

She felt hands take hold of her arms and lift her to her feet. Her legs were too weak to support her, but whoever had hold of her kept her upright. Her head lolled to the left, and she saw a hazy image of a woman’s face – a woman with goat eyes. She looked to the right and saw Officer Rauch, gill slits opening and closing, opening and closing, as if he was excited. Both wore the crimson robes of the Cabal. Deep inside, Lori was scared – fucking terrified – but the Driver’s slap had left her conscious mind too dazed to feel much of anything. She returned her gaze to the Driver and waited to see what he would do next. But he did nothing. He simply stood, arms at his sides, and regarded her. His facial expression was indifferent, but his eye patches pulsated rapidly.

She heard a sound then, a grinding, like stone sliding against stone. The goat-eyed woman and Rauch roughly turned her around, and she saw that in the middle of the auditorium’s floor, directly beneath the red-glowing mass of firebabies, an object was emerging. It wasn’t rising through a hole, though. It was growing, the floor’s substance flowing upward inch by inch to form the shape of a large X. Her jaw still felt as if it was on fire, and she could feel the flesh there beginning to swell. She blinked several times to clear her vision, and while it improved, it remained a trifle blurry. Had the Driver hit her so hard that she had a concussion?

When the X had fully emerged, there were soft rattling sounds, and manacles grew from the top and bottom of the X. She didn’t need to ask what – or who – the restraints were for.

She tried to pull free of Goat-Eyes’ and Rauch’s grip, but they were too strong. That, or she was too weak. The two Cabal members dragged her toward the X-cross, and again she resisted, thrashing and kicking, but her efforts were feeble and ineffective. Goat-Eyes and Rauch pushed her against the cross and arranged her limbs in a spread-eagle position, then – moving with swift efficiency – they locked manacles around her wrists and ankles. When they were finished, they stepped to the sides of the cross. She slumped forward, the manacles keeping her from falling face-first to the floor. They were cold against her skin, and the edges hurt her wrists as the manacles now bore her full weight. She forced herself to stand upright, and although her legs still felt like spaghetti, she managed it. The pain in her wrists lessened immediately.

The Driver had only watched as his two colleagues had chained her to the X-cross, but now he stepped toward her, face still impassive, eye patches pulsating even faster. When he reached her, he stopped, grabbed hold of her nightgown’s bodice, and ripped the flimsy thing off her, the fabric tearing as easily as if it were paper.

“There’s really no point to it,” the Driver said. He lowered his hand and let the torn gown fall to the floor. “It’s not like it left anything to the imagination. Plus, it would just get in the way.”

In the way of what? she thought, but she didn’t really want to know and said nothing.

Several firebabies detached from the mass above her and drifted down to the discarded nightgown. They lowered to within inches of the fabric and trained their glowing gazes on it. Within seconds, small sections of the gown began to blacken and smolder, and then flames appeared. The firebabies floated upward to rejoin the others as the flames spread, growing larger and brighter. Within seconds, the entire garment was ablaze. As quickly as it had started, the fire burned itself out, and the gown was gone, reduced to a scattering of charred ash.

Lori’s mental fogginess had mostly lifted now, and she raised her head to regard the assembled Cabal members – at least the ones she could see from this angle. They demonstrated no reaction to her being naked and chained before them, but maybe this kind of thing was old hat for them. She, however, felt exposed in a way she never had before. Hundreds of people were looking at her nude body, and she could do nothing to cover herself, couldn’t hide from their silent, angry gazes.

It was her turn to get angry now.

“Let me go, you sick fuckers!” she shouted. “You have no right to do this to me! I haven’t done anything wrong!”

The Cabal didn’t react at first, then she heard a soft chuckle come from above her, from one of the firebabies, she guessed. It was followed by a second and a third, and then the entire floating mass of miniature infants was laughing. No more chuckling now, but rather full-throated roaring laughter, which sounded eerily adult coming from their tiny mouths.

Goat-Eyes and Rauch joined in the laughter, and while the Driver didn’t, he did break out in a grin.

“Haven’t done anything?” he said. “My dear, you’ve done everything.”

Another object began to emerge from the floor, this one several feet in front of the X-cross. It was flat and rectangular, and as it rose, Lori realized it was a table. When it was all the way up, a number of smaller shapes formed on its surface, all aligned in neat rows. At first she couldn’t tell what the objects were, but they quickly resolved into specific forms, and she saw they were tools. Some were simple things like hammers and knives, but others were more complex and made her think of medical equipment, and some were bizarrely complex, and she couldn’t guess at their function. These were large and wicked looking, all edges and angles and teeth and spikes, and she suspected they had no