KurvyKate
Magistrate
Hello DA refugees. Want some more Alison to think about instead of complaining about global capitalism? Oh my goodness how bad is it going to get for the poor sow? By now you're definitely going to have to scroll back up this thread to the parts posted already, to remind yourself what's going on............
Eventually, I stop cursing injustice, hating my captors and planning revenge and drift into soul destroying boredom.
It occurs to me that if I'm not being held for ransom, Jake must be sick with worry. I'm missing. What will the police tell him. Do they know where I am, even the ones who arrested me? He'll see my computer has gone. He'll ring Kate thinking she's got me. He won't believe her when she tells him she hasn't. What language was that inscription in, Spanish? I might not even be in England! Is this really a prison? Have I really committed such a serious offence? Such contemplation comes anyway whether I want it or not because all I have is time.
Survival is a worthwhile occupation and finding water is easier now I'm secured to the wall in a definite place. I follow my chain to the wall, then turn right for seven stones from the shackle and it's tricking down in the gap next to a particularly rounded one. If I push my tongue between the stones I can deflect some of the flow into my mouth. Some of it runs down my body and I worry about it infecting the tattoo the bastards wounded me with. It still stings but no worse than my other wounds. I feel like I've been skinned. "Fuck I'm hungry!" I think, but there's nothing I can do about that. I want to exercise thinking it might fend off the cold for a while. I know I should but I feel weak, my body aches and the chains impair me.
Can I sleep? I thought not but suddenly I'm snapped out of dozing by noise and light from the ceiling. At first it's as blinding as the dark but as my eyes respond I can see something falling. They're throwing it in on top of me. Most of it falls over my legs or around the grate and just before the trapdoor closes, plunging me back into blackness, I thought I saw chips. Have they just thrown food in here?
It's fallen in the disease infested mud on the floor. I can reach out over almost half the cell with my toes but they're numb and it's hard to make them pick up bits of slimy………. what? What is it I'm going to be forced to try to eat? My ankle chain won't let me reach my mouth with my feet but I'm so bruised and stiff I couldn't anyway. Still handcuffed, my hands are useless and the chain welded to my collar will only let me reach the small area of floor, under the shackle on the wall, with my tongue. Am I going to have to do that? Eat out of the mud like a fuckin' pig!
It takes hours to find enough scraps with my unfeeling toes and make a pile worth bothering with, in the right place for me to spin round and investigate with my mouth. It’s scraps, the scrapings from someone else’s plate. Cold, limp, disgusting bits of cabbage, squashed, greasy chips and a few slivers of rubbery carrot, all covered in grit from the floor when I tried to pick it up. I'm desperate enough to overcome nausea and swallow it, amazed I can still tell what it is through the foul tasting mud. "I can't fucking believe this!" I think, justifying the swearing because it really is that bad. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I curse and scream "I fuckin' hate this!" at the ceiling. I'm beginning to understand the naivety of expecting any respect at all. I have no rights but I can't just die, I don't want to.
How long does it take me to stop crying, one hour, two or ten? I don't know, I can't tell. Even self pity this bad gets boring in the end and I'm so weary I must be falling into something like sleep sometimes. It comes and goes. I was wondering how she coped, her who's presence I thought I felt. Then stunned, I feel it again. It's as if she's chained, like me, to the other side of the cell. I peer across it through the blackness but there's nothing to see, I just know she's there. "Who are you?" I ask her and think "Don't be stupid Ali, your mind’s slipping." but it doesn't stop me hoping for an answer. She makes me feel spookily uncomfortable. I can't reach her. I can't test her apparition by touch and she says nothing but I know, I'm certain. I feel how she feels.
It's not rage or the paralysing terror that overcomes me while they do what they want to me. It's a determination to survive, an acceptance of adversity as the way it is and self belief. She's calm, almost peaceful and unyielding. They didn't break her although I feel she suffered far more than the humiliation inflicted on me. "Who are you?" I ask her again. "Please tell me." I plead, but she fades and I lose our ethereal contact.
Am I going nuts, have I been poisoned, am I so tired I'm dreaming awake? I'm fascinated, I can't think of anything else and try to concentrate on the other side of our cell but it doesn't work, not while my head is full of questions. Only when I'm eventually and irresistibly sliding under consciousness does she return again, and this time it's more nightmare than dream.
"Verdadera fe y la obediencia" translates as true faith and obedience. My tangled, compliant thoughts as I sink don't resist alternative history and this is England but our masters are Spanish. Inquisition has followed the Armada after Elizabeth's navy failed. We are occupied and a wave of religious persecution has swept across the country. We are chained, here in this cell five hundred years ago. We are accused of witchcraft, "we" because we feel as one!
The inscription above the door is the motto of the Catholic League, the English interpretation of Aragon's intention and the instrument with which Spain's political will in England is enforced. Anyone of significance has been rounded up because it's important to not to kill but to convert. Thousands of protestants have joined the Catholic cause and their faith is tested by the League, but thousands refuse and coercion is necessary. Wholesale conversion of England's clergy brought swathes of the population under control but the Church of England is not Spain's only problem. Not all England is Christian.
Is it the agony of spending too long resting on the same bruise or the revelation that my education is wrong that wakes me up? I thought the lightweight, nimble English ships harried the lumbering Spanish galleons down the Channel. Taking advantage of their new, long range cast iron guns. Where the Spanish sought to capture, the English favoured destruction, a new way of waging war at sea. Francis Drake, the wild hearted adventurer and saviour of England, used fire ships to break up the Spanish fleet at anchor. They had nothing to fear but fear itself, but they were scared of Drake and the chaos his fire ships caused was their undoing, wasn't it? In the blackness I'm trapped in I know a different truth.
I don't know how I know, I just do and the clarity of it disturbs me. Awake now, my fears return to haunt me and I know this isn't the temporary incarceration extortion demands. If this carries on much longer there'll be nothing left of me to give back and I stop thinking I'm being held for ransom. It makes seeing Jake soon less likely and the possibility I might not see him again brings the tears flooding back. I think of my house, the funky little sports car that Jake bought me and try to remember every detail of our last holiday together. I think about how we first met and try to take comfort in feeling my wedding ring. "They won't take that will they?" I worry. I'm so tired and so cold even crying is hard work and I find it hard to concentrate on anything for long. Negativity is a conscious phenomenon and like last time I suffered it, it slips away again eventually. The ghost of five hundred years ago breaks through the chaos in my head.
Light from above soaks through the darkness and I look up to see not a modern, sealed steel trapdoor but a wooden grill, and people peering in at me. It's noisy up there, something is happening and I'm filled with foreboding and dread. The grill is lifted, a rope falls and a sack full of flaming straw is thrown in. It breaks up as it falls and I have to scramble out of the way to avoid being burned, like the rats. A soldier climbs warily down the rope after it and I understand the fire is light, so he can see. He needs to be watchful. He's not my soldier, he's hers, from her time. A pitchfork clatters down next. I know what it's for and back myself up against the wall as far away from the shackle as my chain will allow. I'm still, waiting for the soldier to pin me in place. He'll hold me against the wall by my neck so his mate can unlock the padlock on the shackle end of the chain, with me held as far away as possible.
They must do it before the straw fire dies. It's not safe to be down here with me. I let him pass the pitchfork under my chin. He's unsteady, he might stab me in the throat if I move. I can see the fear in his eyes in the flickering light as he kicks the fire between us, as if that might make him safer. He pushes the fork into the wall, trapping me. When he's sure I'm subdued, the second soldier slips down the rope. With shaking hands he unlocks me and attaches the rope to my chain. They're terrified of me.
These aren't my bonds, they're hers. Her hands are chained in front of her and I can hang onto the chain above my head to take the pressure off my collar as they haul me up out of the cell. They're not a machine and they snatch and jerk the rope until they drag me out over the edge of the hole in the ceiling. I don't know how they didn't break my neck.
Does anyone think it's worth putting all the bits of this together in a proper read and putting it in the archive? I don't know how to do that. We haven't finished yet by the way. There might be medieval witch torturing in it soon!
Eventually, I stop cursing injustice, hating my captors and planning revenge and drift into soul destroying boredom.
It occurs to me that if I'm not being held for ransom, Jake must be sick with worry. I'm missing. What will the police tell him. Do they know where I am, even the ones who arrested me? He'll see my computer has gone. He'll ring Kate thinking she's got me. He won't believe her when she tells him she hasn't. What language was that inscription in, Spanish? I might not even be in England! Is this really a prison? Have I really committed such a serious offence? Such contemplation comes anyway whether I want it or not because all I have is time.
Survival is a worthwhile occupation and finding water is easier now I'm secured to the wall in a definite place. I follow my chain to the wall, then turn right for seven stones from the shackle and it's tricking down in the gap next to a particularly rounded one. If I push my tongue between the stones I can deflect some of the flow into my mouth. Some of it runs down my body and I worry about it infecting the tattoo the bastards wounded me with. It still stings but no worse than my other wounds. I feel like I've been skinned. "Fuck I'm hungry!" I think, but there's nothing I can do about that. I want to exercise thinking it might fend off the cold for a while. I know I should but I feel weak, my body aches and the chains impair me.
Can I sleep? I thought not but suddenly I'm snapped out of dozing by noise and light from the ceiling. At first it's as blinding as the dark but as my eyes respond I can see something falling. They're throwing it in on top of me. Most of it falls over my legs or around the grate and just before the trapdoor closes, plunging me back into blackness, I thought I saw chips. Have they just thrown food in here?
It's fallen in the disease infested mud on the floor. I can reach out over almost half the cell with my toes but they're numb and it's hard to make them pick up bits of slimy………. what? What is it I'm going to be forced to try to eat? My ankle chain won't let me reach my mouth with my feet but I'm so bruised and stiff I couldn't anyway. Still handcuffed, my hands are useless and the chain welded to my collar will only let me reach the small area of floor, under the shackle on the wall, with my tongue. Am I going to have to do that? Eat out of the mud like a fuckin' pig!
It takes hours to find enough scraps with my unfeeling toes and make a pile worth bothering with, in the right place for me to spin round and investigate with my mouth. It’s scraps, the scrapings from someone else’s plate. Cold, limp, disgusting bits of cabbage, squashed, greasy chips and a few slivers of rubbery carrot, all covered in grit from the floor when I tried to pick it up. I'm desperate enough to overcome nausea and swallow it, amazed I can still tell what it is through the foul tasting mud. "I can't fucking believe this!" I think, justifying the swearing because it really is that bad. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I curse and scream "I fuckin' hate this!" at the ceiling. I'm beginning to understand the naivety of expecting any respect at all. I have no rights but I can't just die, I don't want to.
How long does it take me to stop crying, one hour, two or ten? I don't know, I can't tell. Even self pity this bad gets boring in the end and I'm so weary I must be falling into something like sleep sometimes. It comes and goes. I was wondering how she coped, her who's presence I thought I felt. Then stunned, I feel it again. It's as if she's chained, like me, to the other side of the cell. I peer across it through the blackness but there's nothing to see, I just know she's there. "Who are you?" I ask her and think "Don't be stupid Ali, your mind’s slipping." but it doesn't stop me hoping for an answer. She makes me feel spookily uncomfortable. I can't reach her. I can't test her apparition by touch and she says nothing but I know, I'm certain. I feel how she feels.
It's not rage or the paralysing terror that overcomes me while they do what they want to me. It's a determination to survive, an acceptance of adversity as the way it is and self belief. She's calm, almost peaceful and unyielding. They didn't break her although I feel she suffered far more than the humiliation inflicted on me. "Who are you?" I ask her again. "Please tell me." I plead, but she fades and I lose our ethereal contact.
Am I going nuts, have I been poisoned, am I so tired I'm dreaming awake? I'm fascinated, I can't think of anything else and try to concentrate on the other side of our cell but it doesn't work, not while my head is full of questions. Only when I'm eventually and irresistibly sliding under consciousness does she return again, and this time it's more nightmare than dream.
"Verdadera fe y la obediencia" translates as true faith and obedience. My tangled, compliant thoughts as I sink don't resist alternative history and this is England but our masters are Spanish. Inquisition has followed the Armada after Elizabeth's navy failed. We are occupied and a wave of religious persecution has swept across the country. We are chained, here in this cell five hundred years ago. We are accused of witchcraft, "we" because we feel as one!
The inscription above the door is the motto of the Catholic League, the English interpretation of Aragon's intention and the instrument with which Spain's political will in England is enforced. Anyone of significance has been rounded up because it's important to not to kill but to convert. Thousands of protestants have joined the Catholic cause and their faith is tested by the League, but thousands refuse and coercion is necessary. Wholesale conversion of England's clergy brought swathes of the population under control but the Church of England is not Spain's only problem. Not all England is Christian.
Is it the agony of spending too long resting on the same bruise or the revelation that my education is wrong that wakes me up? I thought the lightweight, nimble English ships harried the lumbering Spanish galleons down the Channel. Taking advantage of their new, long range cast iron guns. Where the Spanish sought to capture, the English favoured destruction, a new way of waging war at sea. Francis Drake, the wild hearted adventurer and saviour of England, used fire ships to break up the Spanish fleet at anchor. They had nothing to fear but fear itself, but they were scared of Drake and the chaos his fire ships caused was their undoing, wasn't it? In the blackness I'm trapped in I know a different truth.
I don't know how I know, I just do and the clarity of it disturbs me. Awake now, my fears return to haunt me and I know this isn't the temporary incarceration extortion demands. If this carries on much longer there'll be nothing left of me to give back and I stop thinking I'm being held for ransom. It makes seeing Jake soon less likely and the possibility I might not see him again brings the tears flooding back. I think of my house, the funky little sports car that Jake bought me and try to remember every detail of our last holiday together. I think about how we first met and try to take comfort in feeling my wedding ring. "They won't take that will they?" I worry. I'm so tired and so cold even crying is hard work and I find it hard to concentrate on anything for long. Negativity is a conscious phenomenon and like last time I suffered it, it slips away again eventually. The ghost of five hundred years ago breaks through the chaos in my head.
Light from above soaks through the darkness and I look up to see not a modern, sealed steel trapdoor but a wooden grill, and people peering in at me. It's noisy up there, something is happening and I'm filled with foreboding and dread. The grill is lifted, a rope falls and a sack full of flaming straw is thrown in. It breaks up as it falls and I have to scramble out of the way to avoid being burned, like the rats. A soldier climbs warily down the rope after it and I understand the fire is light, so he can see. He needs to be watchful. He's not my soldier, he's hers, from her time. A pitchfork clatters down next. I know what it's for and back myself up against the wall as far away from the shackle as my chain will allow. I'm still, waiting for the soldier to pin me in place. He'll hold me against the wall by my neck so his mate can unlock the padlock on the shackle end of the chain, with me held as far away as possible.
They must do it before the straw fire dies. It's not safe to be down here with me. I let him pass the pitchfork under my chin. He's unsteady, he might stab me in the throat if I move. I can see the fear in his eyes in the flickering light as he kicks the fire between us, as if that might make him safer. He pushes the fork into the wall, trapping me. When he's sure I'm subdued, the second soldier slips down the rope. With shaking hands he unlocks me and attaches the rope to my chain. They're terrified of me.
These aren't my bonds, they're hers. Her hands are chained in front of her and I can hang onto the chain above my head to take the pressure off my collar as they haul me up out of the cell. They're not a machine and they snatch and jerk the rope until they drag me out over the edge of the hole in the ceiling. I don't know how they didn't break my neck.
Does anyone think it's worth putting all the bits of this together in a proper read and putting it in the archive? I don't know how to do that. We haven't finished yet by the way. There might be medieval witch torturing in it soon!
Last edited:
.. DA’s message system is garbage!
