Red Feline Faces the Inquisition - Chapter Two

	"Maybe there is a direct connection between the loud cracks of the whip and her curses.", Red Feline thought. She starts to see a connection between her insults and the gravity of the nun's punishment. Maybe her pleading is working against the poor nun. She may not be helping her. She feels sorry. Her cries are now less insulting, but the whip is not about to stop.

	Melissa's cries are still soft. She is resisting, even if her back feels as though her skin is about to jump off her back, or burst into flames. The combined stings of each voracious lash is making her numb. Her skin is softening, breaking, she can feel one or two open wounds bleeding, maybe a hundred. The lash is incessant.

	The art of torturing to extract information is to preserve the life of the victim for as long as possible, days, weeks, as long as it would serve the purpose of the task. So there is an amount of measure, disguised as pity, in what the torturer does. His goal is not to break the skin at every stroke. In fact, it is recommended that the least bleeding be caused, none if possible. And he is an expert. Only in cases such as the one at hand, when a resolute prisoner holds on to her initial claim, does he have the freedom to go to extremes.

	He knows very well the nun is not ready to confess, she has a long way to go. He knows well. So his task is to soften her, not to break her at once. He is also showing the other what her fate will be. It is common to bring another prisoner to witness the torture, to break her soul in advance of her own suffering. So when he stops flogging the nun and grabs her face, under the watchful, fearful eyes of Red Feline, he already knows what he will do next.

	The torturer grabs Melissa's face, forcing her to see him, to question her and learn the answer he already knows. She is innocent, she is not going to confess. But he has to show the hidden priests that he is doing his job well. He lets her face go, she bows her head and closes her averted eyes. Not once does she meet his eyes. But she cannot avoid his strong smell, the smell of a beast. A smell that she knows only a little, since the only contact she has had with a man is her father and the only time she has smelled that sweaty smell was the day she surprised her parents in bed, naked, sinning, drunk...and sweaty. Or those other times when he returned from a hard day's work of toiling the fields, his body covered in dirt, he had the mixed smells of the man and the more palatable smells of the earth.