The first thing I was aware of was that I wasn't wearing my shirt. That, and that I was lying face down on the floor with my wrists bound painfully behind me, bending my arms upward at an impossible angle. I knew I wasn't wearing my shirt because I could feel the wood floorboards directly on my breasts. My breasts were pressed flat on the floor by the weight of a man kneeling on my back. The wood was smooth and cool. My wrists were shackled together between my shoulder blades and attached to a leather collar that, fittingly enough, was around my neck. The man kneeling on my back was just finishing the job of attaching said shackles to said collar, and taking no pains to be gentle about it. Needless to say I was in considerable discomfort and as close to panic as I had ever been.

Obviously my cover had been blown. Either that, or someone got their jollies pressing a stun gun into the spine of innocent college girls. Well, of course I wasn't a college girl, but I was supposed to be.

Whoever had done it was more than pretty good. I had checked the tells on my motel room door and was sure no one had been through it since I had left. The windows of the room were sealed – they couldn't be opened. Still, he, or they, were there. I never saw him, or them. Just felt the surge of electricity hit me in the small of my back, and then smelled the chloroform on the rag that was pressed over my face while I flopped around on the floor like a fish in a frying pan.

And why had they stripped off my shirt? Or had they? I began to remembered a little more. I entered the room, gone into the bathroom, taken off my blouse and bra to shower, remembered…something…and went back out to the room and that's when the taser hit me. That also answered the other question – they had come into the room after I was already there, while I was in the bathroom.

Not that any of this mattered. All that did matter was that I was half naked, cruelly bound and helpless, and in the hands of people who obviously meant me no good. That I had a good idea of who these people were did not make me feel any smarter, or better.

The man kneeling on my back got off me and pulled me to my feet holding my arms firmly below my shoulders.

"Christ," I said to him, "eat a salad would you. You are one serious load."

Another man stepped in front of me and slapped me hard across the breasts, then again backhanded. It hurt but not enough to dampen my world famous wise-guy personality. "Shut up," he said, or something to that effect.

"If that's your idea of foreplay, I really would prefer a more gentle stroking."

He drove his fist upward into my gut and I really couldn't think of a smart reply. So I simply double up in pain and let him throw me over his shoulder and carry me from the room.

I had no idea exactly where I was. If I was right about who had kidnapped me, it was probably a government building, or even more likely, a "quasi government" building. As I bounced up and down on the guerilla's shoulder, still trying to catch my breath from a second punch to my stomach, I had an excellent view of the floor. It was wood like the floor of my room, the floor boards not fitting tightly, which spoke of poor construction or the effects of time and weather or, most probably, both. The walls were plaster and the paint was peeling here and there near the bottom. There was no air conditioning. Being a spring morning it was only in the low eighties but I was sweating like a pig, if pigs sweat, which I doubt. I guess I was sweating so much because I was a little nervous. After all I was an undercover agent in the hands of the enemy. I was pretty certain they were taken me to an "interrogation" room where I would be tortured.

When I took this assignment, I was their last choice. They didn't want to send a woman. "Too dangerous," they said.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Why is something too dangerous for a woman and not for a man?"

"If you are compromised it could get, uhmmm, dicey." I cocked my head at him, enjoying his discomfort. "I mean, these men have no inhibitions. None at all. The things they would do to a woman for information…well, I would rather not think about them."

"And you have no trouble thinking about the things they would do to a man? Schmuck. Give me your balls for ten minutes and I'll make you change your mind."

In the end I went. I was the best qualified for the job. I had been coordinating the intel on the operation for over a year. I knew the region, the country. I had even spoken to our mole twice in the past three months, the only contacts we had had with her since she had turned. It was foolish to even think about another op.

It was one of the biggest cartels bringing drugs into the U.S., and the fastest growing. We had made little progress in doing any major damage. We would get schedules and drop points, make seizures and arrests, but they were always isolated and relatively small time. We couldn't make any headway toward really damaging the operation in spite of all the info we were getting.

Finally it became clear. They had government muscle. We thought it was just local, with probably a high-up military connection or two, but not on a meaningful national level. We thought, but we didn't know. And before we coordinated with the national people, we needed to know how deeply it went. That was my job.

Of course now I was being hauled along a passageway in some God forsaken building with my arms twisted so far up my back I couldn't breathe without it hurting. I must have overlooked that part of the job description when I read the brochure. We passed a few men in the hall. They wore slacks and short sleeve shirts. Nondescript. They looked at me with some interest but did not seem surprised to see a trussed up half naked woman being carried down the corridor. I think they were mostly interested in my tits.

That a prisoner in my rather extreme situation, i.e. strictly bound in a deliberately painful position in a state of partial undress, drew so little curiosity was not a good omen. It was obviously not an uncommon occurrence. I had a foreboding that shrieks of agony probably would elicit no more than a raised eyebrow.

At the end of the hallway was a stairway which we walked down. Well, which my two captors walked down and which I bounced down on the shoulder of my escort. I grunted with each step. He was big and very strong, not even breathing hard under the weight of my body, which included the leather collar and the chain to my wrists. Struggling would do no good. His grip on my legs was so tight I couldn't even flail my legs.

At the bottom of the stairs we came to another hallway. We only walked a few feet down it before we turned right and the guard accompanying me and my pack horse knocked on an office door. We entered. Words were exchanged with a woman sitting at an L shaped desk with three computers on the return portion. She looked at me with a wry smile. Oddly I felt embarrassed being at being inspected in my state of undress and bondage by another woman. She picked up the handset of a phone console with at least twenty buttons, punched one and told us to go in. I was carried into the inner office.

I've been dumped by guys before but not from that height, nor have I landed that hard. I would have screamed from the pain in my arms but the fall knocked the air from my lungs and my head snapped back and cracked on the floor. In a daze I felt myself being dragged by the hair and propped up more or less in a sitting position against the wall. "So, I am told you are an American student here on spring break." The speaker was a middle aged man, only about five foot seven, with a paunch and bald pate. He had two prominent scars on his face, one running diagonally over his left eyebrow and the other a jagged lightning bolt down his left cheek. His eyes were hooded by deep eye sockets, his mouth small and his chin split down the middle by a cleft. His arms and torso were thick with muscle. All in all, he could not have been much more intimidating even for such a short person.

"I am speaking in Spanish because I am told you speak our language perfectly." His voice rose a little at the end of the sentence making it as much of a question as a statement. I still couldn't speak but I nodded my head.

"What is it you study, Miss Lewis?"

I was still trying to catch my breath when one of his goons bent down and slapped me hard across the face. I tasted blood.

"Romance…languages," I managed to gasp.

"So that is why you speak Spanish so fluently?"

"Yes." I almost spit the answer out not wanting to get popped on the mouth again. "Italian, French and Portuguese too."

"I didn't realize they had that major at Langley."

I tried to look a little puzzled. "No. I'm a grad student at Princeton."

I got slapped again, this time on the side of my head.

"Hey!" I shouted, "Stop that. And let me go. Why have you kidnapped me?"

He ignored me, but smiled, if you can call the little sneer caused by turning one side of his lips up a smile. "Romance languages…?"

"I thought it would help my love life. I confused Romance with romance."

I guess the slapping was done with because I didn't take a shot for that wise ass remark. The thought crossed my mind that my arrogance wasn't helping my case of being an innocent student. But he wasn't going to buy that anyway and it made me feel better.

"Do you think you could undo my arms? Really, it is quite uncomfortable and I've got a 2:00 tee time. I do need time to loosen up."

They might have been done with the slapping but they hadn't given up on kicking. I got a boot toe in the stomach.

While I was wriggling around on floor they pulled my jeans off. My panties slid down to my knees in the process and they pulled them off as well. My bald little friend obviously preferred the direct approach to corny pick-up lines but I had my doubts that it would work in an American bar. I would have told him that too but they had shoved my panties into my mouth. Then, while gorilla number one was finishing the gag with a strip of cloth tied around my head, gorilla number two was shackling my ankles. End result: I was naked, bound hand and foot, gagged with my own underwear and in more pain than I could remember. Even if I could have spoken I couldn't have come up with juicy bon mot. I was too terrified.

They stood me up. I could stand, no problem. The chain between my ankle shackles was six inches long. That was the first time I realized my feet were bare. I had been wearing tennis sneakers when I walked into the motel room. I had no idea where I had lost them.

Baldy walked behind me. My hands were numb by this time but I could tell he was tugging at my fingers. He removed the three rings I wore, then my watch from my left wrist and my bangle from my right. Then came my sea otter pendant and chain from around my neck and the studs from my ear lobes. Finally he bent down and pulled the silver band I wore off the little toe of my right foot. It felt as if I had been stripped naked all over again. Worse. Can you understand that? I had to fight back the tears but I'm sure he saw my eyes grow moist.

"I will break you like a dry twig," he said. "Forty-eight hours maximum. Absolute maximum. Probably a lot less."

The guard who had done the slapping and kicking snapped a chain onto the ring that projected from the front of my collar. It was not a long chain, maybe four feet, and quite lightweight. He wrapped the chain around his hand cutting the length to less than three feet and tugged. I followed. I had no choice. There was no way I could resist with my arms twisted behind my neck and my ankles so restricted. He led me to a door, but not the one we had entered from. Baldy opened it. It was a closet. In the closet was shelving with papers, files, whatever. But on the back of the door was a full length mirror.

You would think that since I had been thrown around like a sack of sand for the past half hour, and had been unable to stop them from kicking, slapping and stripping me, seeing myself naked in chains would not have been any kind of a revelation. But it was.

First off it was that I was naked. Listen I've got a great body. My breasts are full and perfectly formed (No, really, I've been told more than once.) My stomach is flat and hard with an inviting swell below my slim waist. Long, slim but strong legs. All naked in the mirror. I looked so slender and vulnerable. Even my ankles, encased by heavy steel shackles, and the delicate bare feet so small beneath them.

But not only naked – I was naked and helpless and in the hands of my enemy. It was they who had stripped me. Stripped me so they could torture me. Stripped naked so they could reach any part of my body with their devices.

Naked I would be hung by my wrists, my legs spread far apart and chained to rings in the floor so they could reach between my thighs with their whips and hot irons. Naked I would be tied to a chair, thumb screws crushing my fingers and a soldering iron burning away my nipples. Naked I would be spread-eagled to the torture table, my arms and legs pulled so tight even breathing would be painful and screaming impossible as their electrodes were inserted into my anus and vagina.

That was what I saw in the mirror. Then there was the almost theatrical way I was bound. The hideous black leather collar with its four steel loops to hold chains, two already attached: one to the front held by one of my guards so he could lead me around like a dog and the one in the rear fastened to my manacled wrists. For the first time I realized how my bondage forced my back to arch and thrust my breasts outward.

And the gag. Why was I gagged? So I couldn't yell for help? I would have thought they would enjoy my screams of pain and hearing me beg for mercy; both of which I knew I would soon be doing. What the gag did do was make my helplessness total. Not only wouldn't they be able to hear me beg for mercy, they wouldn't be able to hear me scream out that I would talk. There was no way I could stop my torture.

The bald man seized my jaw in his hand and turned my face toward him. He smiled his evil little sneer. "I see you are trembling," he said. It was true, I was shaking like a leaf. "I don't know why, I think you look quite…um…quite…alluring. Yes, that's the word.

"So. Before I send you downstairs…are you going to tell me who you work for and what you are doing here or am I going to have to torture you to get it? But know this – I will get it. I have never failed. And before I do you will pray for death, beg God with all your soul to die."

I shook my head no.

"Fine." He turned to his goons. "Prepare her. I will be back sometime tomorrow to start the interrogation."

I was in shock. Why hadn't I nodded yes and given him what he wanted? Maybe because then he would have killed me on the spot. Also I was sure number one through ten on his list would be the name of our informant, which I didn't know. And he wouldn't have believed me. So I would have been heading down to his torture chambers in any case. But maybe it was because I believed in what I was doing, knew the risks I was taking and had sworn to myself never to betray my comrades or country, no matter what.

I was led out of the office, the guard behind me swatting me on the ass and sniggering. In the outer office the woman behind the L shaped desk called out, "Where are you going with her?"

Gorilla one gave her a big smile. He knew she knew where we were going, and this was simply a way to engage him. She was pretty enough that I could see why he was pleased.

"Downstairs." He moved over to the desk and sat on the edge pulling me along. I kept as far back as the chain leading to my neck would allow.

The woman's dark eyes burned into my flesh as she looked me up and down. "You know this shit makes me hot as hell," she whispered in a husky voice.

My gorilla's smile widened. "I know Carla. Then why not come down and watch. When you're nice and horny we can go out."

"Bring her closer, Domingo."

He pulled on my chain hard and I stumbled forward. He placed his free hand at the small of my back and pressed me against the edge of the desk, holding me there. "Say hello to Carla," he said.

Carla stood up and glanced at the door to the inner office, then ran her hands over my hips and down my belly into my thin landing strip of pubic hair. I squirmed and tried wriggle away. She laughed. Her fingers brushed my pussy then slid up my body to my breasts. She squeezed my nipples and pulled me forward until I could barely keep my balance. I was squealing into my gag.

"I think she likes this," she said, then glanced at the door again. "He is leaving early. I must stay here until eight or else," she laughed, "I might end up downstairs with her. I will see you later downstairs. You too sweetheart." This last sentence was addressed to me.

Domingo pulled me toward the door and I saw Carla reach out and felt her long fingernails graze my buttocks. Tears started running down my cheeks, tears of fury and humiliation. A young woman had just been invited on a date to watch me tortured.

I wasn't going to go easy. I dug my heels in and twisted my shoulders to the side, struggling to keep from being led meekly to my fate. It was no use. A simple pull on my chain and I went stumbling out the door.

There were a dozen people in the hallway and my humiliation reached new heights. Not solely because I was being dragged along naked and in chains at the end of a leash, either. Normally I was graceful as a sylph, but with my wrists bound so high up between my shoulder blades thrusting my chest forward and pulling my neck back, and with my ankles fettered by a six inch chain, I could no more than lurch clumsily after my keeper.

Domingo stopped at every chance to allow people – fully dressed people going about their everyday routines – the opportunity to not only examine me, but to feel, stroke and prod me. Which they did. Especially my breasts and buttocks, squeezing the former and slapping the latter. Even the women. Mostly the women. And of course I was unable to defend myself or try to ward off their groping hands, or even curse then with my mouth stuffed with my panties. I knew this was part of the drill, to debase me and humiliate me, to drive my self esteem lower and lower so that I would be easier to break. I knew it but it didn't matter. I was totally degraded.

When we reached the end of the corridor we walked down another flight of stairs and then back along the hall along which I had originally been carried, just to give a whole new cadre of gawkers the chance to fondle and maul me. Then down two more flights until we came to a locked iron door, which Domingo opened with a key from a ring of at least a dozen. The door opened onto a narrow passageway that ran the same length as the upper floors.

We were below ground, there would be no windows. The dim light in the corridor came from a line of 60 watt bulbs in metal cages set ten feet apart in the ceiling. Walls, floor and ceiling were painted the same dark gray. There were heavy wooden doors reinforced by iron bands set irregularly along both sides of the hallway. I didn't want to go further. It was obviously the modern South American edition of a dungeon. It was beastly hot and clammy and the sweat seemed to suddenly spring from ever pore of my nudity.

No wood floors here, only dark gray cement. It was rough under my bare feet, and the coarse surface against my soles seemed to emphasize not only my nakedness but my utter helplessness as well. I leaned back on my heels trying to resist the pull of the chain that led from my collar but Domingo easily dragged me forward toward the horrors I was beginning to imagine.

But of course, having no imagination themselves, my keepers wanted my thoughts based on more tangible grounds. Halfway down the hall we stopped and Eduardo (I would never find out his name but it is getting so clumsy calling him the "other guard" or some such that I will name him Eduardo.) held me by the shoulders while Domingo unlocked one of the cell doors. It was almost pitch black in there, with only a thin splash of pale yellow from the hall creeping into the cell.

When Domingo flipped up the light switch, the cell, if not exactly flooded with light, was illuminated enough that I could clearly see its occupant. It was a woman, and judging by the firmness of her naked body, a young one. If I could have seen her face I might have been able to guess her age somewhat better, but a black bag covered her head and was fastened around her neck by a drawstring. She was suspended by her wrists from a chain that ran down from the ceiling. She hung motionless in the still air. Her bare toes were two or three inches above the floor and blood had run down her arms from where the handcuffs had cut into her wrists as they bore the weight of her body.

She had been whipped. Her back, which was turned toward us, was crisscrossed by scores of lash marks and splattered with streaks of blood. Not only her back, but her hips, buttocks and thighs. Even her calves. In some places, especially where the striations intersected, the skin had been deeply sliced and was a darker red in color.

Domingo put his hands on her hips and she jerked as though she had been jabbed with a needle; a fitting image since there were needles shoved under her toenails. He turned her around so I could see that her front had received the same lashing as her back. I stared at her breasts, at where her nipples once were.

"Soldering iron," Domingo said, "Pussy too."

My body rapidly grew heavier and heavier until my knees started to shake from supporting the extra weight and my thighs turned to water. When I had taken this job I was aware of the possibility of capture, and capture almost certainly meant torture. But it all seemed so remote, and torture such a formless concept; in my mind nothing more than that my captors would hurt me to get information. But hanging here was a way too solid illustration, and way too close, a few arms lengths before me. So close that when Domingo swung the whip I could feel the thin whisper of air as the tip swung past my cheek.

It slashed across the top of her breasts, immediately drawing blood. Her body seemed to rise in the air along with her scream, somewhat muted by the black cloth that covered her head and face. Her legs kicked out like a frog's in a biology lab and Domingo used the opportunity to send the whip between her thighs to tear at her sex.

What had the girl done? Who was she? Why was she being savaged? I would never know, nor did I especially care. Why was she being exhibited to me? That question I could answer – as an example of what could be done to me if I did not cooperate. And that I did especially care about.

I would have collapsed had not Eduardo been holding me by the shoulders. As it were I was so slick from sweat that I nearly slipped through his grasp. He turned me back to the door and I heard the whip cut through the air one more time, heard the crack of leather on flesh, heard the poor girl shriek. Then I was out of the cell, being propelled down the hall, moaning in pain and terror, toward my own personal chamber where it would be me being tortured.

Another heavy door opened and I was in another cell, a larger cell, my cell. Directly in front of me twenty feet away was a chair. It was bolted to the cement floor and festooned with all manner of straps and belts. That was all I managed to take in before I was forced to my knees and then flat on my stomach.

My face was turned away from the door so I stared at the bottom of the chair with its straps and buckles ankle height on each leg. Also an iron ring set into the floor less than a foot from my throat. I felt my neck pulled back by my collar and heard a sharp metallic click. Then a hand grasped me by the jaw and undid the chain that had served as my leash. Seconds later another click and I was secured.

They left, Domingo and Eduardo, leaving me naked and helpless, my arms twisted behind my back and chained to my collar, my collar attached by two links to rings on either side of my neck holding my cheek tightly against to the floor. My nude body was splayed belly down across the cement, held there by my shackled collar as effectively as if my limbs were bound to stakes. I could barely move. My bared breasts were crushed against the rough cement, my belly abraded by the coarse surface.

Can a body part be numb and still hurt? I couldn't feel my arms from the shoulders down, yet my elbows and shoulders burned like fire. I wondered how long my arms could remain bound in this diabolical position before they were permanently damaged. Still I was glad the two of them had left. When they weren't here they couldn't hurt me anymore. And they wouldn't see me crying.

Then they were back. I heard the key in the door. (In my entire time of captivity I was never left alone without the door being locked, no matter how tightly I was bound. Escape was a hopeless dream I never entertained, except escape through a quick death.) With my face turned away from the door I didn't even see the shoes of the one who walked behind me and lifted me by my hips. The extreme flexibility of my body was all that allowed him to lift my knees clear of the floor without breaking my neck. They positioned me in a kneeling pose with my spine at an acute angle to the floor and my buttocks thrust up in the air like a female simian offering her self to the alpha male. The thought crossed my mind that it wouldn't only be the alpha male to take up the offer, but the beta male, gamma male and all the way to omega.

My ankles were seized and shackled to rings set in the floor three feet apart, opening my sex even further. I was going to be raped like a dog, the only question was when – before they tortured me or after.

One of them undid the cuffs that locked my wrists and my arms flopped uselessly at my sides. The relief was immediate and for a moment it made me forget the torment from my back. Quickly my wrists were seized and manacled to the rings that held the chains that ran to my collar. But before that job was done the blood started rushing back into my shoulders and arms and I screamed like I had never screamed before. I was still screaming when they left my cell. That my screams were stifled by my gag didn't matter at all.

The pain from my shoulders and arms dissipated rapidly but the pain from my back and neck grew by the second. I had never imagined that simple bondage could be so incredibly painful. I was in agony after a few minutes, true agony. The fact that I couldn't move added a new dimension to my suffering, that of helplessness and despair. If I could only shake my head or lift my knees or stretch my back, even for a few seconds…

A drop of water fell on my face, on my temple, just behind my eye. Then another and another and another. Every eight seconds a drop would hit me in the exact same place. I could see them for an instant out of the corner of my eye right before they struck me. The Chinese water torture, I thought. How quaint, how positively literary. I was in pain, a constant grinding debilitating pain greater than I could have ever imagined, naked and cruelly bound before my enemies, and they were going to break me with dripping water? If I hadn't been in such agony I would have laughed.

Twenty minutes later I didn't think it was so humorous. I strained with all my strength to move my head even a fraction of an inch so the drops would not pound at that same dime sized spot over and over and over. No use of course. The pain racking my body was now an afterthought. The certainty of gang rape no longer a concern. My world was the constant beat of the water on my temple; the hammering of the drops drowning out the thumping of my heart and the sound of my moans.

I have no idea for how long it went on. Maybe an hour. Then it stopped. I wept with relief. And waited. Nothing happened. Everything was the same. I was still bound naked on the floor in excruciating pain. I was still a captive. I was still at the mercy of people who had no mercy. I still had no hope. And for the first time I wished for death.

Perhaps five minutes passed, perhaps ten. Then a drop fell. Just one drop. Then nothing. Just a remainder from before I thought. A minute later another drop, and another. A pause. Then the incessant drop…drop…drop and I screamed into my gag.

On and on it went, drop after drop, minute after minute. Every so often I interrupted my moaning and sobbing with a scream. Now every drop seemed to strike me like a sledge, driving my knees into the cement floor and crashing into my cramped back unmercifully. I couldn't take anymore. I couldn't. But that didn't stop the drops.

Then it did stop. This time there was no relief, only an agonized wait for when it would start again. The minutes dragged on and still the water did not start. Instead of gratitude for the surcease, I felt terror. I screamed a helpless scream, helpless because it was swallowed by my gag and wouldn't have been heeded if it could have been heard. "Start it!" I screamed. "Get on with it you fuckers!"

Finally the first drop landed and I was broken. I would tell them anything, everything. If only they would stop the drops. If only they would untie me. If only they would stop the pain. If only I didn't first go mad.

The drops of course eventually stopped but this time the door opened and heavy footsteps echoed through my cell. I was surrounded my men. Some wore boots, some wore shoes. How many. Five? Eight? How many would rape me?

The first blow fell on the small of my back. A broad leather belt landing with so much force I couldn't breathe. Then across my shoulder blades. My buttocks. The back of my thighs and my calves. A belt curled around my back into my rib cage. The whipping went on and on. I was whipped from my shoulders down to the bottoms of my feet. That was the worst, the soles of my feet. That was when I screamed the loudest.

I fainted. Somehow they knew. Probably because I stopped screaming. My body could not have moved, could not have collapsed or sagged because the way I was bound. It had to be because I stopped screaming around my gag. They threw a bucket of water on me and started again to make me scream.

The next time I fainted I woke to the drops of water falling on my temple, on that same dime-sized spot. I prayed with all my soul to God to let me die, to let me die now, now God, now.

The drops stopped, the door opened, the men came in. This time they raped me. But first my arms were retied in that reverse prayer position and manacled to my collar, just to ensure that every time I got fucked it would be with the maximum of pain. Each time one of the men entered me and leaned his weight on me I thought my knees would be crushed against the rock hard floor, that my spine would snap, that my arms would be torn from my shoulders. They pounded at me, driving into my cunt, and then my asshole. In and out, in and out. Some held onto my hips while they fucked me, but mostly they grabbed my tits or my shoulders. One pulled back on my hair and I thought I would die. Twenty times I was fucked. At least twenty times. Some had me twice I am sure. One of them had the bright idea of whipping the soles of my feet while I was being ravaged. And in the middle of this gang rape, of my ultimate degradation, while I screamed wordlessly and tried to beg them to stop with my underwear stuffed mouth, I saw a woman's shoes standing inches from my face. And I knew she was looking down at me. And I knew she was smiling. And I knew it was Carla from upstairs.

How long did my group rape go on? How long does it take twenty plus men to fuck you. Two hours? I don't know. When I saw Carla's shoes my first thought was that my rape and torture had taken all night, she was here before going to work. My heart leapt at the prospect of being able to spill my guts to the Colonel and end my ordeal. Then I remembered – she would come down at eight o'clock after work. My God, I thought, they have barely begun!

The room emptied. Or almost emptied. Left there were Carla, Domingo and Eduardo.

My arms were freed and moments later the horrible pain started as the blood flowed back into my limbs. It was not as bad as the first time but enough to make me scream.

They unfastened the collar from the iron rings. Then my wrists were rebound in front of me and attached to a hoist that pulled my arms over my head until my back was straight and another inch would have lifted my knees off the cement floor.

Carla stood less than two feet in front of me, arms akimbo. "Now it is my turn Chiquita." Her voice was husky and dark. She turned to Domingo, "Take her gag out so I can hear her scream."

Domingo did not protest. I guess he wanted to hear me scream as well. He untied the cloth strip that held my panties in my mouth. I tried to make his job easier by pushing with my tongue but I couldn't budge the wadded up underwear in my mouth. From his shirt pocked he pulled out a latex glove and slipped it on his right hand. I couldn't blame him, I wouldn't have wanted to touch my sopping wet panties either. He squeezed my jaw hard with his left hand making me screech in pain, either because he wanted to make sure I didn't bite him or just to hurt me. He pulled the gag from my mouth.

I tried to speak but my mouth was so dry I couldn't pronounce the words I wished to say, basically "Please stop." All that came from between my lips was a hoarse croak. Carla was still standing in front of me but she had acquired a new accessory to match her slutty mini skirt outfit – a leather belt, broad and thick, which she held doubled up in her right hand, slapping the folded end into the palm of her left.

I had been savagely whipped by a platoon of men a few hours ago, but I knew that my lashing at the hands of this sadistic bitch would be worse. How did I know? Maybe it was the way she was rubbing her thighs together, so excited by my naked helplessness that she couldn't contain herself. Or maybe it was the way she let the belt fall across the tops of my breasts, licking her lips as she did. Or perhaps because she asked Domingo in her sweetest voice if he couldn't "spread her legs a little further apart and tie them that way," which he did by running two new chains around my knees and fixing them to another set of rings set in the floor.

Or maybe it was the way her smile grew wider and wider as she looked down at my upturned face and saw the tears rolling down my cheeks. "Beg me," she said, "Beg me not to whip you."

Again I tried to speak and nothing came out except a rasping cough.

"Give her some water, honey," Carla cooed to Domingo. Which he did, a couple of swallows from a tin cup.

I suppose I should have said "Fuck you bitch," or some such. Begging wasn't going to do any good in any case. But I couldn't. I guess that's what it means to be broken by torture. So instead of keeping the last shred of self respect left to me I begged her "No more. Please don't hurt me anymore. I'll do anything you want. Just no more. Please. No more."

She started at the top of my tits and worked her way down to the bottom of my thighs, returning a couple of times to lay the belt across my nipples with enough force to flatten my breasts. I screamed for her to stop and begged her for mercy, probably because it was all I could do – I mean I was helpless. The chains held me tight, upright and open. All that my frantic attempts to free myself, or to at least move my defenseless breasts and belly away from the full impact of the strap, accomplished was a sensual writhing of my naked body.

Her discipline was amazing. She was panting, practically foaming at the mouth with sexual excitement. But despite her lust she worked slowly, savoring my screams and struggles. The belt bit into my sides and armpits, then the soles of my feet, then back to my breasts. Now I knew what true torture was. She paused for an eternity between each lash, letting me anticipate the next horror and enjoying my agonized pleas for mercy.

She held the belt perpendicular to the floor and let it slap lightly against my belly so the tip passed between my thighs. With all my strength I tried pull my legs together, straining until the chains dug into the inside of my thighs, but of course with no success. I looked up at Carla and whimpered "No. Oh God no." And then began to sob. I hung my head on my breasts and bawled like a baby, waiting for this final indignity and the concomitant pain.

Carla drew it out slapping the belt with a little more force on my belly so it just stung my sex. She did that three times while I sobbed and moaned and shook my head slowly back and forth. Then she laughed. "Eat me," she said, "Eat me good and maybe I won't whip your pussy." She pulled down her panties and stepped out of them, then pushed them into my face. They were wet and smelled of her musk. "See how hot you made me," she gloated, "Now finish me off."

Carla pulled up her skirt with her left hand and grabbed my head with her right. She didn't so much as pull my head toward her as thrust her crotch into my face. But I am tall and she was short, so my nose simply dug into her belly. "Lick, bitch, lick!" she screamed at me, and I did, for all I was worth, but my tongue couldn't reach below her thick black bush. She stunk and I thought I was going to vomit, when she pulled back and yelled at Domingo. "This is no good. Give her some slack so she can reach my pussy."

Domingo almost leapt to the crank on the wall and let the chain out a good six inches so I could bend forward and get my mouth on her cunt. Which I did, the abasement and disgust coming no where near my fear of her lashing my sex. Thank God it took only about thirty seconds before she was shrieking in ecstasy, pushing my face into her crotch with both hands, her skirt falling over my head.

Eduardo was next, or rather, Eduardo and Domingo were next. Eduardo using my mouth and Domingo using Carla's. While Eduardo held my head by my hair and plunged his cock into my throat, I could see Carla working on Domingo with what I would call unbridled enthusiasm. My enthusiasm was definitely bridled.

Carla and Domingo kept their eyes on me the whole time. The sight of me in chains sucking off Eduardo under the threat of torture must have been a real treat because Domingo shot his load in nothing flat and Carla came for a second time. Eduardo was seconds behind.

There was no affectionate afterplay. Eduardo grabbed my face from behind and forced my mouth open. Carla's panties were shoved into my mouth, followed by mine, and tied in place. The chains that spread my knees were loosened and Eduardo lifted me off the floor.

Domingo stood in front of me holding five metal bars, each three feet long, triangular in shape with two inch sides between the sharp edges. They were welded together to form a ten inch wide platform with hard steel edges protruding every two inches.

He slid it along the floor under my shins. When it was positioned to his satisfaction he nodded to Eduardo who dropped me onto the sharp edged bars.

I shrieked in pain but they weren't done. A chain was run between the two rings set outside my knees and pulled tight. With my ankles still bound to the rings behind me, my shins were pressed hard against the steel edges.

I kept screaming into my panties gag for a full minute. The pain was incredible and so unexpected. How could anything so comparatively benign be so agonizing? They stood back and listened to my muffled cries until I was merely grunting and sobbing.

Eduardo wound the winch until my arms were pulled straight up once again. Carla bent over, took my face between her hands and kissed me on the forehead. "Sleep tight darling. And thanks for licking my pussy," she whispered, then backhanded me across the face splitting my lip.

Before I could thank her in return a heavy black cloth bag was pulled over my head and tightly fastened around my neck, leaving me in total darkness. The last words I heard before the door banged shut behind them were from Eduardo. "Wait, muchacha. This is but nothing. Your real torture starts with the boss in the morning."

I thought I would die. Literally. I could barely breathe. In no time it was stifling under the black sack that encased my head. My mouth was crammed full of not-too-fresh underwear. My sobbing had filled my nostrils with mucus and I had to snort and wheeze with every breath. I was panting crazily trying to suck precious air into my lungs. The fact that I was in full panic mode was no help.

Hour after hour dragged by. I have no idea how many, only that it was an eternity of horror, pain and fear. I wanted to die, to die before they began my torture in earnest. There was no hope. I didn't have the answers to all the questions they would ask. I would be tortured to death. Death was inevitable, so let it happen now.

Yet I fought to breathe, to live. To live so I could face more agony. And that wasn't the only paradox. It wasn't long before I was praying for them to return, even though I knew that would mean the start of an unthinkable ordeal. I just couldn't bare my present torment any longer.

I began to hallucinate. I was outside my body but still in the dungeon, watching myself suffer. My nude body was kneeling in front of me. I could see every link of the chains that held me fast and pressed my shins to the iron bars. I could see my torso stretched taut by the winch, the welts from the whipping still red on my breasts and belly. I could see the black bag that covered my head, the same as the bag that covered the head of the tortured girl in the other cell. But I could see my face through the impenetrable cloth, see my mouth distended by the gag and how my nostrils flared as I fought to breathe. And even though I was not in my body I still felt the agony that racked my every inch.

I was beyond exhaustion but the constant battle to breathe wouldn't let me sleep. Yet when they came back into my cell I didn't hear them, didn't know they were there until the bag was ripped from my head.

The light, though dim, hurt my eyes that had been in total darkness for hours. I squinted through the slits of my eyelids for the moments it took me to adjust. There were the three main actors: the bald man, Domingo and Eduardo. The bald man slapped me across the face twice. Hard. Once forehanded and once backhanded. I grunted into my gag.

"Put her on the chair," he said.

Baldie walked away. The other two unchained me. I rolled off the grid of triangular bars and curled into a fetal position. Any minute I expected to be seized and dragged over to the chair with the straps and buckles. I lay there for a minute before Domingo kicked the back of my thigh.

"Crawl over to the chair, bitch."

I didn't move, just pulled my arms tighter around my knees and scrunched into the smallest ball I could. This time the hard toe of his boot came up against the bottom of my buttocks, just missing my pussy. It hurt like hell. I screamed into my gag.

"Move," he said.

I moved. Slowly. I had no strength. I couldn't even bring myself up to my hands and knees. I had to pull myself along the ground by pulling with my hands and pushing with the sides of my feet. Every few feet Domingo would help me along with the toe of his boot.

I would have felt utterly humiliated if I hadn't been in such pain and fear, crawling nude along the cement floor, the gag making me wheeze and snort through my nose for precious oxygen, using all my strength to make such painfully slow progress toward the chair where I would be strapped down and tortured some more. I didn't even have the strength to lift my head more than the inch or two that would keep it from scraping along the rough surface of the floor. But I struggled on, basically because I was at the point I would do anything my captors demanded.

Finally I collapsed unable to pull myself any further. Domingo and Eduardo lifted me under the arms and dragged me the last few feet and dropped my into the torture chair. Strapping me in was no problem, the only difficulty was keeping me from sagging off the chair, so I was first fastened in with a belt that went tight around my waist. Then came my ankles and wrists, palms down, and straps above my knees keeping my thighs spread open. Finally my biceps were buckled to the upper arms of the chair and I was ready.

I really didn't care. I was totally broken, unable to muster any defiance, or as implausible as it may sound, interest in the preparation for my torture. I was in a strange twilight zone between oblivion and awareness. I was numb. My head lolled on my chest and finally I was slipping into blessed sleep.

I never even felt the hypodermic, I just became aware of a blossoming warmth suffusing my body. My heart began beating more rapidly and I quickly became attentive to my situation, especially the pain that racked every inch of my body.

The bald man was standing in front of me, the syringe still in his hand, a drop of liquid at the tip of the needle. He smiled at me. Now was the time to tell him he had won; that I would tell him everything I knew. I got no further than "Please…" before I realized I was still gagged with Carla's (and my own) underwear.

"I think…I think perhaps we should use a little more persuasion on our guest before we ask her to confide in us."

I shook my head violently and screamed into my gag. I was fully awake and fully aware of what he meant – which was "I am going to torture you just for the fun of it." Surely he knew he had broken me. Surely he knew I would do what ever he wanted if he just stopped hurting me. Then why? Why?

The bald man took the two steps forward necessary to bring him close enough to touch me. He bent slightly and stroked my right hand. A chill ran down my spine. "You have lovely long fingers, senorita," he said, and then looking down at my feet, "And beautiful delicate toes. With which shall we start?"

I shook my head back and forth and screamed again into my gag.

"Oh how stupid of me, I forgot. You can't very well answer me, can you?" I looked up at his grinning face and tried to beg him with my eyes. "Then I suppose I will have to pick. I would prefer toes, but bending down to reach your feet is hard on my back. Ah, but since I have Domingo to do my chores – why not? Domingo, remove the toenails on her right foot as slowly and painfully as possible."

Domingo smiled broadly. "I will be back in a minute with my tools."

The bald man squatted in front of me and touched my right foot with his index finger, pressing down lightly at the bottom of my instep. Tears were pouring down my cheeks. "This," he said, "is because you were such a pain in the ass yesterday."

Now if you have never been tortured, having your toenails removed "as slowly and painfully as possible," might not sound like too big a deal, especially after having been raped, whipped and otherwise agonized. So you will have to take my word for it – everything else that had been done to me paled in comparison. In spite of the freshly injected stimulant I fainted while he was pulling out my fourth nail, the one next to the big toe. He saved the big toe for last. I should also mention he did not use a pliers; he used a knife. So I guess technically he did not pull the toenails out, he cut them out, although as a general rule he finished the job by placing his thumb on the top of my nail and pressing down on the knife which was under my nail and then dragging the nail away from the bed. Of course by that point there was very little holding the nail in place anyway and it barely made a soft sucking sound as it came free.

But forgive me, I have left out the good parts. Instead of boring you with my agony through the first four extractions, I will describe the last one, after they had revived me with ammonia salts and finished the job on the next to last.

Eduardo slid the point of the small knife under the tip of my nail directly in the center. My foot jerked reflexively, but didn't move. The straps held it fast. At the first sign of resistance to the blade, he paused. I stared down at the knife under my toenail, eyes wide, unable to really believe it was all going to start again. Domingo looked back up at me, not really smiling, his brain too consumed with sadistic lust. For someone who was so impatient sexually he couldn't contain himself for more than half a minute in Carla's mouth, he showed great patience now.

The technique was simplicity itself. He slid the point of the blade a few millimeters deeper under the nail. I screamed in pain. He then slowly moved the knife to the left, taking care not to push it any deeper, and then slid it over to the right while I writhed and bucked in my bonds. Pause. Listen to me sob and moan into my gag. Repeat process.

When he reached about two thirds of the way to the base of the nail he withdrew the knife and started phase two. This was to simply dig the point into my cuticle. And dig. And dig, pressing the point in at an angle until the blood gushed from under my nail. He went all around the perimeter that way, burrowing the point under my flesh until there was only a stray strand of tissue or two holding the nail in place.

Oh, and the pain, the white hot indescribable pain. The lightening bolts of agony that shot up from my foot but inundated my entire body until I could no longer tell from where it started. I could no longer scream. I could no longer think past make it stop make it stop. Death would have been a blessing.

When Domingo did stop I was slumped forward as far as the tight straps would allow, my head lolling on my chest, my eyes staring at the pool of blood around my tortured toes, my brain uncomprehending. A hand grabbed me by the hair and pulled my head up. The bald man asked, "Do we need to do the left foot as well?" I just stared back at him.

The gag was pulled from my mouth. I just looked up at the bald man with my mouth gaping open, not issuing a sound. He slapped me twice – hard – once across the face and once across the breasts. I might have grunted.

"Who do you work for?" he said.

I tried to answer but all that came out was a croak. I tried to swallow. My mouth and throat were dry as dust. I coughed and s wheezed desperately trying to speak. Finally I managed to splutter "Wah…wah…water."

A tin cup of tepid water was held to my lips and I tipped my head back. Three swallows and it was removed. I almost cried.

"Who do you work for?"

The words rushed from my mouth. He didn't have to ask me another question. All I wanted to do was please him. If that meant sucking his cock I would suck it with gusto. If it meant betraying all that I had promised to keep secret I would do it in a heartbeat. I told him everything. Everything. Or almost everything. I didn't tell him the name of our mole in his organization. Only because I didn't know it.

Whenever my ramblings slowed and my voice began to crack I got another swallow of water. Finally, when I began to repeat myself for what was probably the third or fourth time in my desperation to make my torturer happy, he stopped me.

"What is the name of your agent?"

I stammered, me, who is never at a loss for words. "I…I…I…don't…know."

He raised his hand to slap me again but the look of sheer panic on my face must have convinced him that I was telling the truth. He grabbed me by the chin.

"Then you tell me everything you know about him. Convince me you are telling the truth or I will have Domingo remove all the nails from your toes and fingers as well as pull out your teeth."

I screamed so loud he pulled his head back. "NO! NO! It's not a he it's a woman. It's a woman. I spoke to her twice. Her code name is Dahlia. That's all I know. She's in the north. She has a sexy voice. She laughs a lot. That's all I know, I swear that's all I know."

And that was it. He did believe me. He patted me on the head and said, "I'm sorry you had to go through all of this."

They held me for a month. The first week was in a hospital, the next four in sort of a half way house. I had my own room and there was a guard continually outside, but the food was more than ok and I had magazines and a choice of books. I was treated well.

I never thought of escaping. Manuel (that was the bald one's name) had promised me I would not be harmed and would be freed in the not too distant future. He visited me in the hospital and told me this. He again apologized for "having to torture me." He visited me four times at the half way house. We had sex each time. He did not force me. He was not even the instigator the first time. I took him by the hand and led him to the bed and undressed him. It was the best fuck I ever had.

I must have come half a dozen times, once when he kissed my devastated toes. The last time he told me I would be released the next day, and I was. They gave me my passport back, new clothing and $5,000 American. That was it. I walked out on the street, took a cab back to my old motel. The were holding my luggage. The room had been paid for. The next day I took a plane back to the states.

The agency debriefed me. It was not nearly as thorough as I expected. They told me I was being retired on a full pension. My experiences of course never happened. I got the distinct feeling they never wanted to see me or ever hear my name again. The thought crossed my mind that eliminating me had been a considered option.

I did ask what happened to Dahlia. Had they been able to pull her out before the bad guys discovered who she was? I got no answer. I was no longer part of the team.

You missed a part, Lewis. The part where they tie my wrists in front of me with a long rope and drag me into the barn. The part where they throw the other end over a rafter and haul me off my feet. The part where the three of them strip me naked while I hang from my wrists, then tie my ankles together and hang on a ten kilo weight. The part where they beat me with an old pool cue, a broom handle and a doubled up garrison belt. Beat my stomach and my kidneys, beat my sides, my belly and my breasts. I didn't scream then, Lewis. I couldn't. I grunted and cried out and threw up but I didn't scream. And you missed the part where they leave me hanging there while they smoke their cigarettes and then each one puts his out on my pubic mound. And the part where the scrawny one lights up another just so he can put it out in my navel before they tie me to the chair so they can really work on me.

So thanks Lewis for all you have done for me. I hope someday to be able to express my gratitude in person.

I hang naked and moaning while my captors decided what to do with me. Through my pain I try to focus on the many questions that swim around my brain and to ignore the one certainty – my torture is just beginning.

How did they find out I am an agent? Are they sure I am? Can I convince them I'm not? Will they let me live if I can? Who has betrayed me? How much do they know?

I always knew this could happen, that I could be captured and tortured ruthlessly for information. But like all agents I was sure it would never happen to me.

I couldn't stand when they let me down. I collapsed onto the floor. One of them left and the other two rolled me onto my back and untied my wrists and ankles. I thought this is where they let me go or kill me and I started to plead with them that I was just a mule, a courier who ran drugs into the States – that I wasn't some kind of a spy . But they rolled me back onto my stomach and retied my wrists behind my back. They pulled me to my feet just as the third one came back from the house with a chair. There were two women with him and they both carried chairs as well. They pushed me into one of the chairs, pulling my arms over the back. The back was high and it dug into my armpits and kept my cheeks from touching the seat. They tied my wrists off to the rung between the two back legs and my left ankle to the front leg. The scrawny one knelt in front of me and pulled my right foot up onto his knee. When I saw the pliers I started to struggle like a mad woman. But he was a lot stronger than he looked and held my foot fast even though the chair was bouncing and rocking. I almost tipped it over with my struggles and he couldn't hold my foot still enough to get a grip on the nail. Finally the other two stood behind me and held me down by the shoulders. When he got the pliers on the nail my fight was over. I tried to pull free once and a bolt of pain shot up from my toe. I threw my head back and squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the pain. When he started to pull I started to scream.

"Pull the next one out more slowly Luis. Make it hurt more." It is the younger woman, the scrawny one's wife. His mother just sits there silently, her hands in her lap, a smug smile painted on her stern features.

"You want to watch, watch. Just shut up Rosie." My torturer looks up at me. "Ready," he says, "for number two?"

"No!" I shriek, and tear my foot loose from his grip. He tries to capture my flailing foot without rising from his knee and it catches him on the shoulder knocking him over. His mother roars with laughter. Rosie leans forward and watches the drama intently. He gets hold of my calf and then my foot. The two behind me press down on my shoulders anticipating my wild contortions when the torture starts again.

For the fourth time he grips my nail with the pliers. For the thousandth time I shriek out my innocence. Blood trickles from my nose and runs more freely from my lip from the vicious slaps across my face he has used to revive my interest in the proceedings between extractions when my head lolled on my chest and I stopped screaming. But I have not passed out. No matter how I have hoped for oblivion I have remained conscious as each nail is torn from my poor tortured foot – from the initial burst of pain that starts my screaming, through the excruciating agony that builds and builds with exquisite slowness to the final crescendo as the nail comes free from its moorings and leaves me breathless and unable to scream anymore.

"Make her beg," says Rosie.

No. I have not begged. I have screamed and struggled and shouted my innocence but I have resisted that final humiliation. But it seems like a good idea to Luis.

"Beg me Chiquita," he sneers, "Beg me and maybe I will stop hurting you."

"Oh God I'm not an agent. I told you I'm not an agent. Why are you doing this to me? I swear I'm not a spy."

"Have it your way," and he begins to pull out my nail.

Halfway through pulling out the nail on my big toe I finally pass out. They wake me with a bucket of cold water. I stare down at the bare foot still tightly gripped by Luis. The pain seems disembodied, in no way connected with the four bloody toes and the nail sticking out at an obscene angle from my big toe. Luis holds the pliers an inch from the toe, where they have been poised waiting for me to come to. No sense in finishing the operation on an unconscious victim.

"Who do you work for?"

"No one...told you...not agent..."

He clamps the pliers on my nail and I start to scream as he gently rocks the nail up and down, up and down and then slowly pulls it back toward my leg until I think I will die of the pain the moment it tears free of my foot.

Luis ties my right ankle to the chair leg. He stands up and stretches. "My back is killing me," he says, "We are supposed to be torturing her, not me." He looms over me, grabs my hair and pulls my head back. "Are you ready to talk or do I do your other foot?" The thought of losing the toenails of my left foot to Luis's pliers is almost too much for me. I am afraid that if I say anything I might start begging, and then talking. He pulls my head back further bowing my neck and lifting the front legs of the chair off the floor. My mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water but all that emerges is a pitiful whimper. I see anger flash in his eyes. He is furious he can not break me. "I will make sure this one is a lot worse than the first." He strides out of the barn leaving me bound naked and shivering in the chair.

A minute later he has backed a Ford pickup into the barn. He drops the tailgate and shouts to the other two to put me in the back. They lift me still tied to the chair onto the bed of the truck and I am almost overwhelmed by my sense of helplessness. They can hang me by my wrists, strip me naked, torture me and now move me about like a piece of furniture, and I cannot resist, cannot even put up the most meager of struggles.

Before either of the men can move Rosie vaults effortlessly into the truck. "I will hold her," she says, and I feel her long bony fingers close on my bare shoulders. "This will be fun," she says to me her mouth close to my ear, "And by the time Luis is done with you, you will be begging. I promise you."

I am filled with rage. "You evil slut," I hiss at her.

She laughs at me, "But not much you can do about it, eh?" She reaches down and squeezes my nipples. "I know you're not an agent," she whispers, "That's why I am enjoying this so much – you are suffering for nothing. Luis, this is his job, but he enjoys it too. So when he is convinced you are not a spy, he will not mind torturing you just for me."

In a rage I strain against the ropes that bind me to the chair. I am raging against my helplessness, at being at the mercy of this worthless scum. I promise myself I will survive so I can come back and kill her. I will use my rage to get me through this, to keep me alive. But thirty seconds later my rage has dissolved into agony.

Luis uses the truck as a platform so he can reach my foot easier, without straining his back. He does not bother to untie my ankle from the chair leg, he just takes the little toe of my anchored left foot in his left hand and starts. But this time he uses a small pocketknife to take out my nails.

He slides the point of the knife under the tip of the nail and I know immediately how bad this is going to be. I throw my head back and start to scream and don't stop until I pass out from the pain. What follows is a blur. There is no rest, no pause in my torture. He does not stop to ask questions. The others shout at me, "Who are you working for? Who do you work for?" I do not answer, I just scream. He stabs the knife under the nail and begins digging and probing until the point reaches the base; then levers it up and back until it breaks away from the toe. Immediately he takes hold of the next toe and starts again. He only stops when I faint and then cold water revives me. I wake with Rosie holding my head back by the hair laughing down at me. Then she releases my hair so she can grip my shoulders tightly. She needs to. As soon as Luis starts drilling the knife deeper I heave and buck with all my strength. I hear her laughter above my shrieking, her shouts of "Yes! Yes! Yes!" at my frantic struggles. I don't want to scream, I don't want to struggle, but my body has a mind of its own. I don't know how many times I faint, how many times I am revived for more torture. All I am sure of is the agony that doesn't stop but grows and grows and saps my strength until my screams are no more than hoarse croaks and my struggles reduced to a pitiful squirming and I feel my will crushed under the weight of the unceasing torture until I know I cannot take anymore and will die from the pain itself.

Then it is over. Luis holds the bloody knife up for my inspection. My head slumps down on my chest, my weight pulling on my tethered arms. I am exhausted and unstrung. I stare blankly at my ruined toes. What now? I see the nail on my big toe is intact. They have ended my torture. Now will they kill me? Let me go?

Rosie pulls back on my hair. Luis is still holding the knife, and under it, a cigarette lighter. The flame licks the blade. The blood on the knife bubbles. I stare dumbly not understanding. He has to stop. The handle is too hot. He picks up a rag to hold it with. Heat shimmers off the blade. I hear Rosie panting excitedly behind me. Reality dawns. I scream "NO! NOT THAT!" I find sudden strength and begin a wild struggle against my bonds. Rosie's fingers slip from my wet shoulders and the chair almost lurches off the truck with my impossible attempts to free myself from the ropes. Then Rosie grabs the chair, Luis seizes my toe and I am left writhing helplessly and sobbing "Ohgodohgodohgod..." as the heated blade nears my bare toe.

"What do you think?...I don't know...What time is it?...Call Miguel...What do we do with her?...Almost noon...Let's get some lunch...Just leave her here?...Miguel won't be here for hours...She's not going nowhere...Just make sure...Go call him for Christ's sake...Tie her feet...Come on, I'm hungry..."

I am lying face down on the barn's earthen floor, cut loose from the chair but with my wrists still bound behind me. The voices come to me from miles away through a veil of pain. My toes feel as if they are buried in hot coals. I can't distinguish one from the other. It is as though there is one fiery nerve from all ten running directly to my brain. The words barely register..."almost noon..." my God they have been torturing me for less than three hours. It seems like a lifetime. "Miguel..." from the city, I know that name. "Tie her feet..." my legs are bent up as I lay on my stomach groaning and my ankles are lashed tightly together. I see boots and Rosie's sandals and the old woman's shoes as they walk away from me and hear the motor of the pickup start and drive away.

The coolness of the earth caresses my cheek and soothes my battered breasts and belly. I just want to lie here and fall asleep. I can't. I can't be here when they return. The thought of more torture energizes me enough to roll onto my side and curl into the fetal position. Even that gentle movement causes waves of pain to rush up from my feet. With a loud groan I pull my legs up until my thighs touch my breasts and hook my ankle ropes with one hand. The other searches for the knot. I have no plan. I'll untie my feet, then look around for something in the barn to saw at my wrist ropes, or run naked with my hands still tied behind me as far as I can from here and hide. All I know is I won't die without a fight. My fingers start to work at the knot. It is tight but simple, there is some hope. I am concentrating fiercely, biting my lip to stifle my groans, which is why I hear nothing before the toe of the boot crashes into my spine.

He drags me by my hair across the barn floor and orders me to get to my knees. He still has me by the hair and I am tilted back looking up at him and the beam I had hung from earlier. "I can't," I gasp.

He lets go of my hair and as I am falling back kicks me hard in the side below the ribs. "Up!" he commands, "Up, up, up," punctuating each word with a kick. I roll to my stomach and even with my wrists and ankles still bound manage to get to my knees, bent forward so my head and shoulders still rest on the ground. That's as far as I get. He ties a noose around my arms just above my elbows and pulls it tight.

"Luis said restrain you but he didn't say how," he snarls and pulls my head up so I can see the rope running over the beam. "This is for trying to escape." A moment later he is pulling on the rope. I am forced upright, still kneeling but with my back straight and my arms pulled away from my back.

Now I know what is going to happen to me. "Stop it!" I cry out but my arms are jerked up pulling my elbows above my shoulders. "Stop it you bastard!" but my only answer is a peal of laughter and another jerk of the rope that almost dislocates my shoulders. My arms won't go any higher. The next pull will start to lift me off the ground. But first the pressure begins to tighten the noose drawing my elbows in toward each other and arching my back. Oh Christ the pain the pain the pain the pain. My elbows touch but still my upper arms creep toward each other until my back is arched as far as it will go and my arms can move no more and the rope starts to lift me by my tortured shoulders, pulling on my stomach, tightening my belly, my thighs until my knees are just free of the ground. "Stop it! Stop iiiiiiiit…" I wail. And it stops.

He is standing in front of me. I manage to lift my face. "Stop this," I groan at him through clenched teeth.

He is staring down at my breasts, bared and shining with the sweat of pain and lifted to him like a sacrificial offering by my tightly arched back. "As long as you are on your knees," he says and unzips his fly. I turn my face away from him. "It will go easier on you," he says.

"Fuck you."

He slaps me across the face hard enough to spin my half-suspended body 90 degrees to the right and send fresh knives of pain down my outraged arms. Without another word he walks to the post where the rope is wrapped around a cleat and unfastens it. My knees touch the ground for a moment and then I am being hoisted upward as he backs away holding the rope.

"Having second thoughts," he calls to me. The pain is blinding. My breathing is a rapid succession of gasps and grunts. But I don't scream, not even when I am lifted clear of the floor, not even when he starts tugging on the rope to make my body jerk up and down, each bounce sending fresh agony tearing through my shoulders. My new torture is so intense I no longer feel the throbbing pain from my toes.

"You're quite a sight," he says casually, "Hanging there naked and sweating. I've done a pretty good job I think. I especially like your ankles, the way you twist and rub them together in the ropes trying to free them without even knowing you are doing it. I don't know what turns me on more – your pain, your beautiful naked body, or the fact that you are helpless and totally at my mercy."

"You bastard," I gasp at him.

"Well I'm going to give you a break." He lets me down until my toes reach the floor before tying the rope off on the cleat. The moment I put my weight on them the pain shoots up my legs like liquid fire. I shift my weight between my shoulders and my toes, trading one agony for the other, finally gritting my teeth and balancing on my toes to give relief to my tormented shoulders.

"I'll be back in an hour. Perhaps you will be a little more friendly then."

He walks out leaving me to torture myself. But it won't work. I will just let my weight hang on my shoulders as though he had left me suspended. I can't. Almost immediately the pain is too much and I am scrambling my feet underneath me to let my toes take up my weight. Two minutes later I collapse from the pain of my tortured toes and am once again hanging by my shoulders until I can stand it no more and I am once again balanced on my toes. It is diabolical. The sweat runs down my body in rivulets forming a tiny muddy puddle at my feet. My toes lose their purchase. I manage to get back on them only to give up a minute later, unable to bear the pain. I am moaning and sobbing, calling out to God for help and mercy.

I am in such agony I don't even know he is with me until I hear his voice. "Are you ready for me now?" Oh God I would do anything to escape this hell, even for ten minutes. Spread my legs for him, suck his cock dry. But I hear my voice tell him, "Never, you disgusting pig."

His broad belt does not break the skin but leaves an angry red welt everywhere it lands. He swings it with as much force as he can, pausing a few seconds between strokes. He pays special attention to my breasts, lashing them over and over while I hang there helplessly, but every inch of body between my neck and my knees feels the lash. The whipping, on top of my earlier beating is too much and I cry out in pain with each blow, the noise somewhere between a squeal and a wail. He finishes me off with three lashes across my nipples that leave me barely conscious.

He lifts my chin up with his forefinger, his face six inches from mine. "Any more wise ass remarks Chiquita?" My eyes flutter open. I work my mouth for a few seconds and manage to get up enough saliva to spit in his face. He simply wipes it off and walks over to the cleat and hauls me up another meter. But he is not done with me. He douses me with cold water. Still I am barely aware of what is going on. When he comes back to me he has a half-meter of nylon filament. Rather deftly he makes a small noose in either end and slips them over my large toes just above the joint. Oh God, I think, not my toes. No more with my toes. But there is nothing I can do to stop this final outrage. He has the ten-kilo weight they hung from my ankles a lifetime ago, which he now fastens with another length of nylon to the line that binds my toes.

The pain is immediate and total. It is not only my toes that feel like they are being severed, it is also my shoulders carrying an extra ten kilos. I can no longer bear it. The scream I have been holding back for an hour bursts from my throat like the shriek of a banshee. He waits until my screams have died down to pitiful whimpers.

"Remember while you hang there praying for someone to take you down, that that person will be Miguel, and he will want to know for himself who you really are." He casts a long look up at my face. "You are really the unluckiest girl in the world."

"I...still...wouldn't...touch...you."

He shrugs, lifts the weight and swings it, and leaves to the sound of my tortured shrieks.

I do not know how much time passes. For me it is an eternity measured solely by the drops of sweat that roll down my naked body and drip one by one off the ends of my toes. My toes have stopped bleeding, but the tips are still mottled red and pink where my nails used to be. Flies flit around my feet drawn by the dried blood, as well as to my face. At first I jerk my head when they light on my lip or twitch my feet at their touch. But even the slightest of movements is enough to send a wave of pain down my arms and up my legs. I try to let them crawl on my skin without moving which adds to my misery. But the pain destroys my concentration and I cannot totally control my reflexes. How often I fail can be determined by my groans of pain.

The bondage is diabolical, even my breathing is painful. My anguish is complete. I can't stand anymore. There is just too much pain, too much pain for too long. They are going to break me. Tears flow from my eyes and fall on my breasts. My poor breasts, the smooth olive skin marred by ridges of red welts, my nipples swollen to twice their size by the beating with the belt. I know that is only the start, they will torture my breasts until I tell them what they want. What will they do to my nipples? Oh God, if they hurt my toes so much what will they do to my nipples? I shake my head trying to chase the thought of pliers and a hot knifepoint on my nipples and yelp in pain. Don't move. Don't move. But they can make me move. More pain. What if they spread my legs? Oh God. What will I do when they spread my legs? I am sobbing in despair, my breasts heaving, then crying out in pain. Don't move. Oh God I can't do this, I can't do this.

When I open my eyes Rosie is standing in front of me with her right hand down the front of her open jeans, staring up at me with an almost beatific look on her face, masturbating to my agony. Her gaze runs up and down my naked body, lingering not on my breasts and belly, but on the ropes that bind me. The cords that bind my wrists and ankles as well as the rope I hang from – the rope that forces my elbows together, the rope that pulls my shoulders back so agonizingly far, the rope they are using to torment me past the limits of human endurance – my torture rope.

I have never felt so naked. Not even when my three captors strung me up and denuded me and ran their hands over me before they started my torture. Then I was terrified, but steeled against talking. Now I am utterly humiliated by my total helplessness in front of this woman who taunts me and uses my anguish for her pleasure. I can not bear to watch as a smile slowly starts at the corners of her mouth and she runs her tongue around her lips.

"I wanted a little time with you alone," she says, her voice husky with lust, "Before Miguel gets his hands on you. He will be here in a few minutes. Then I will have to be a little more discrete about masturbating. Still...you know I must have come ten times when Luis was pulling out your toenails. But I wanted you to see me and know what I was doing. That way maybe knowing the pleasure you are bringing me will relieve your suffering at least a little bit, hmm?"

As she speaks she reaches out and lifts the ten-kilo weight with her left hand, her right moving more vigorously inside her jeans. She lifts it until it pulls up on my toes. I can feel her hand shaking from holding the weight.

"Beg me not to drop this," she moans, her voice so thick I can hardly understand her.

"Oh God...oh God," I gasp.

"Beg me."

I am whimpering in fear, but I will not beg her.

"Then I'll get off on your scream."

I have barely stopped screaming when they enter the barn. Miguel leads the way, the others following close behind. Miguel is dressed in a dark blue suit with an open collared white shirt in stark contrast to the work clothes worn by my previous torturers. He is tall and slim and carries himself with an arrogant air of self-confidence. He would probably pass as a record company executive back in the States.

"Oh baby, look what you've done to yourself." He speaks as though we are old friends, but I have never seen him before. "Now why don't you save yourself a lot of pain and tell me what I want to know." He says it with a smile, an easy lilt in his voice and a glint of light in his eyes.

"I'm not..."

He holds his hand up stopping me and walks next to me.

"Don't tell me that," he says his voice now firm but not angry, "If you tell me that I will hurt you very badly."

"Please, I sw..."

"Shhh," he hushes me and holds his finger up to my lips." His voice is once again soft and he speaks with an upper class inflection. It is a pleasant voice that in other circumstances I am sure I would find quite charming. "Don't say anything that will make me hurt you. Please."

"I already hurt so badly. Please, let me down. I can't stand any more pain." I am trying to hold my voice steady, trying to reach some humanity in him, as stupid as that might sound. But I have nothing else. "Let me go."

"How long has she been hanging like this?"

Luis answers "Two hours. Maybe a little more."

He places his right hand on my hip. "Lower her," he says to Luis who begins to unwrap the rope from the cleat "Gently." For an irrational moment I wonder if he is really going to release me. When the weight is flat on the floor and my toes millimeters above it he calls out for Luis to stop. "I don't think she can stand. Do you think you can stand?"

"No," I whisper, "Please, let me go."

"No, Maria, or whatever your name is, that is out of the question until you tell me who you're working for. Last chance."

I groan. I am afraid to answer. He slides the palm of his hand from my hip across my belly and down to the dark thatch of my pubic hair, his fingers pointed down so they follow the lower slope of my mons. He curls his left forefinger under my chin and lifts my face so I am looking into his eyes. The light is gone and they are as dark and cold as onyx.

"You have no idea," he says in a flat voice. I can't hold back a moan that grows louder as he digs his fingers into the thick curly triangle and pulls me until I am against him, my nude body a tight arch formed by the nylon line anchoring my toes to the weight and the rope hoisting me by my elbows. "You have no idea how you are going to suffer. Take her up."

I rise off the floor. The first real pain hits when my toes are forced once again to lift the ten-kilo weight. As soon as the weight is a hands breadth off the floor Miguel orders Luis to stop and tie off the rope. Then he tells him, "Take her up another meter." He says it in the same voice he would use to instruct his tailor on the length of his sleeve. As he talks he wipes his hands on a handkerchief, then flicks a drop of my sweat from his lapel.

"Do you know what happens now?" I'm afraid I do but I don't answer. "I give you two minutes to talk. If you don't, Luis lets go of the rope. You don't reach the floor. Your fall is stopped by the rope...and your arms and shoulders. It hurts like hell. Oh, and the weight, it will almost pull your toes off. When you stop screaming I give you the chance to tell me who you are working for. If you don't – we take you up again. This time higher. Comprende?"

I shake my head in horror as he talks. That small movement brings arrows of pain shooting into my shoulders. What will it feel like when he drops me?

"One minute forty-five Luis."

"For the love of God I am not an agent!"

"One minute thirty seconds."

Oh God how will I bear this. God help me bear this. Oh God help me not talk.

"One minute Luis."

I won't beg. I won't beg. I won't beg. I won't beg.

"If you are interested this is called strappado. But I bet you knew that."

"Stop this! Stop this you sadistic bastard!"

"Thirty seconds Maria."

He's laughing. He's enjoying this. I'm in the hands of a madman. And I'm helpless. I hang here twisting at the end of my torture rope naked and helpless waiting for him to drop me.

"Ten seconds. It's coming now Maria. Only eight more seconds seven six..."

"Nonononononononoooooooooooooooooooo..." My voice is a continuous wail until I start screaming at two. When I hit my breath is knocked from me and I make a short squeaking sound. Then my screaming begins in earnest.

"Who do you work for?"

I hang there in front of him my pain racked body still twisting slowly from the force of the fall. With all my strength I hang on to my one truth: I will not talk. I will not talk. "Take her up Luis. A meter higher."

Luis pulls me up and I watch the ground recede below my bare feet. Miguel is counting. The earth looks so far away. The sweat that rolls off my body falls into the void. My blood too. My toes are bleeding profusely. The nylon cord has disappeared into the flesh. The ten-kilo weight swings back and forth pulling the nooses even tighter. I manage to choke back my screams but cannot stop moaning in pain. And I can't tear my eyes from my bare feet and the torturing weight and the rope that binds my ankles together. I start to weep. My roped ankles and bare feet bring home my utter helplessness in a way that rends my spirit. I am helpless – and hopeless. I will be tortured endlessly, tortured until I die. I am sobbing pitifully when Luis releases the rope.

Miguel waits patiently for my screaming to stop. But I can't. The pain raging in my shoulders doesn't stop. It doesn't even lessen. My chest too feels as though the muscles have been torn apart.

I force my head up to look at him. I'm going to beg. I can't stand anymore. I will never talk but I'm going to beg. I manage to choke out one word, "Stop." He is talking on his cell phone, bent a little at the waist with a finger stuck in his ear to block out my screams of pain. I grit my teeth and quell my shrieks. I need to hear what he says. I might need it when I get out of here.

"Ah that's better. I can hear you now...That? That was my new girlfriend." He laughs, "Yeah, a real screamer...I don't know but I'm pretty sure she's federal...It's just that she has taken a lot and...Oh no no no, I'm not done with her. I've hardly started." With that he looks at me and smiles. "A couple of hours maybe...OK man. Later." He flips the phone closed and calls out to Luis, "Take her all the way to the top."

I scream again, this time in terror. All the way up I scream and cry, "No more, please, no more...I'm begging you stop...DON'T DO THIS TO ME!...I'M BEGGING YOU...I CAN'T STAND ANYMORE!...STOP...stop...oh God stop stop stop..."

My arms touch the beam.

"Two minutes Maria, and then we drop you again."

I will spend those two minutes begging him and swearing I am not an agent.

"You think you are in pain now? This next drop will bring you pain you couldn't dream existed. And then we haul you up and do it again."

I have lost control of my body. I struggle mindlessly against the ropes, heedless of the increased pain it causes me. My writhing sets the ten-kilo weight to swinging. The nylon has cut down to the bone and the cruel pendulum adds even more stress to my already distended shoulders. But the pain is nothing compared to the terror I feel at the prospect of being dropped from this impossible height. It will tear my arms from my body. I scream at Miguel to have mercy on me. He laughs.

"This is strappado Maria. There is no mercy."

"It's too high! You'll kill me!"

"No my dear I am not going to let you die. I am going to torture you until you talk."

I am not totally helpless. Bound and hanging naked meters above the floor I can still save myself.

"Talk Maria."

So simple. So seductive. End my agony and save myself from a future too horrible to think about. But in this moment I know that I really am helpless because I know I will never betray my comrades. They will never make me talk. I can only pray for a quick death.

"Ten seconds."

At the moment my shoulders fall away from the beam I have a vivid image of my naked body plummeting through space – wrists and ankles bound, the horrible weight falling before me on its nylon tether, my body bent forward by the rope that forces my elbows above my shoulder blades. My scream is cut short by the impact that wrenches my arms from the shoulder joints with an audible pop.

The agony is indescribable. All I want to do is scream out my pain. My mouth gapes open but all that emerges is a series of short high-pitched grunts. My eyes are wide with wonder that anything could hurt this much. I need to tell him to stop. I can't pick my head up. I can't move. I can't speak. I hear a pitiful mewling sound and know it must be coming from me.

I twist slowly on the rope until he grabs me by the hair and pulls my head back and I finally manage to scream. He jerks my head by the hair again and again. I can't bear it. I am staring into his eyes and screaming uncontrollably. He pulls my head back further and I scream even louder.

"Who do you work for?"

All I can manage is to gasp, "Ah...ahhh...ah."

Still bending my neck back by the hair he waits watching me closely. "Who do you work for?"

"Not uh uh an uh agent."

"I don't believe you."

"Nooooo," I wail at him, "It's true."

"I don't believe you."

"Then kill me. Please. I beg you. Kill me."

"I'm afraid I can't do that Maria. But let me explain how I am going to torture you instead."

I start shrieking at him, "KILL ME KILL ME KILL ME!" until he claps his left hand over my mouth, and still holding my hair with his right starts to talk to me in a low monotone.

"I will have Luis take you up and drop you again. Then while you hang there with your hands tied behind your back I will pull out your fingernails one by one very slowly. When that's done I will untie your arms and wrists and hang you by your thumbs with nylon cord. I will have a very leisurely dinner with a lot of wine so you can have a lot of time to think about what ten centimeter needles and a soldering iron will do to your pussy."

All I can do is cry into his hand and stare up at him and try to beg him with my eyes.

He releases me and motions to Luis to pull me up once again. "Talk Maria."

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BELIEVE ME!" I shriek at him as I rise toward the beam, "I CAN'T TAKE ANY MORE!" He doesn't respond, doesn't speak. He simply looks at his watch and then up at me. The pain in my shoulders is crippling and the thought of having them torn back again by my falling body is more than I can bear. I hang above him sobbing and screaming and begging him not to drop me. And then I do something I haven't done in years – I start to pray. I stop screaming and begging Miguel and start begging God silently to end my trials, to take me if he must, but to end the pain. And as if in answer Miguel has me lowered to the ground.

"You win Maria, you get your wish. You get to die."

"Please let me go."

"Don't get greedy dear. You aren't going free. I could just as easily have Luis take you up again and continue the interrogation."

"No...no."

"Just for the record, I still don't believe you."

Luis starts to ask "Then why..."

"Because this won't make her talk. And I don't have the time to hang out here in the boonies. This is a woman with cojones. You would have given me up, and your wife and everyone else you know long before now." There is laughter from everyone except Luis, especially from Rosie. "Besides she might talk yet. It isn't going to be an easy death. Put her in the truck."

The one who I had refused to suck does the job and he relishes every minute. He hog-ties me in the cruelest way imaginable. Instead of tying my ankles to my wrists he loops the long rope that has been torturing my shoulders under the cords that bind my ankles and pulls them up toward my head. My legs bend, my back arches and my shoulders and my feet are forced toward each other. By this time the pain has started me sobbing and pleading again, but he keeps pulling until I am bent in a tight bow with my feet touching my arms and only my hips and stomach pressing the ground. I do not have enough breath to scream. I feel the ten-kilo weight bang against my shins but there is no pain in my toes. They have gone completely numb. Someone cuts the weight free as at the same time Miguel lifts my face to him by pulling up on my hair.

"Stop. Stop," I wheeze at him, "If you're going to kill me, just do it. Don't hurt me anymore." He doesn't acknowledge my plea. He stuffs a rag in my mouth. It is large enough that he can barely cram it all in. It stinks of motor oil and I start to retch immediately. I am sure I will die in moments, suffocated on my own vomit but my stomach is empty and I bring nothing up. Still I can barely breathe with my mouth full and my nose stuffed from all my crying.

A heavy stick is inserted underneath my roped ankles and wrists and Luis and the thug who bound me each grab an end and lift me off the ground, putting even more strain on my tortured shoulders and pulling my belly and chest even tighter. I can't breathe. The agony in my lungs is added to the pain already hammering relentlessly at my shoulders. I can't bear anymore. I think I want to die. Still I struggle for air and life.

The short trip out to the truck is an ordeal in itself. Each step swings me sideways against my captors' legs as well as forward and back. Each step brings more agony to my tortured shoulders. I am less than cattle, less than meat. They lift me above the tailgate of the truck and slide me in. A bungee cord is hooked to an eyelet on the side panel and run to my ankle cords. Another lashes my wrists to the wall behind me. The two men rope me down to the truck bed as though I were a bale of scrap they don't want bouncing around loose. Which is what I am. I am dead to them. My agony elicits no response; my tightly bound nudity no longer excites them. A heavy tarp is thrown over me and the tailgate bangs shut.

The heavy tarp presses down on me like a canvas funeral shroud. Within minutes the temperature climbs to an oppressive level and I am basting in my own juice. There is little air, what there is fetid from the stink of my sweat and fear. Every bump sends bolts of pain through my shoulders. The gag is its own torture. I can't breathe. I will suffocate soon. I don't want to die. Not like this: naked, helpless and frightened. We hit the highway, but minutes later are bumping again over unpaved road, or no road. Soon we will be far enough away from the road so they can take me down to torture me some more and kill me. I don't want to die. I don't want to die.

The truck stops, the tailgate opens and the tarp is pulled off of me. I lay there shivering uncontrollably in the heat. Someone climbs into the truck and stands over me. I can't lift my head but I see the shoes, the slacks – it is Miguel. He just stands there staring down at me, planning how to torture me, how to kill me. Then he slips the toe of his shoe under my jaw and carefully tilts my head so I am looking up at him. The expression on his face is serene. And why not? He is in total control. I feel so little, so helpless. He could leave me and return tomorrow and I would still be waiting for him right here – still hogtied, still naked, still roped to the truck.

"I love you Maria," he says, "I love your face, your body, your courage. I love your pain. How much pain has that beautiful body taken? How much more pain before your lovely face is a permanent mask of fear? How much more before your courage breaks?" He reaches under his jacket and takes out a thirty-eight, which he balances in his palm. "I love you Maria but I am going to kill you. There is nothing that can be done about that. It is your choice whether it is fast, or slow and painful. There are worse things than the strappado."

I get no chance to answer. My gag remains stuffed in my mouth. He reaches down and unhooks the bungee cords that hold me to the truck. Then he jumps down and pulls me out of the truck by my trussed ankles. When my shoulder passes over the edge my head hits truck and I plunge toward the earth. The last thing I am conscious of is the searing pain through my back and arms when I hit.

When I come to I am seated leaning against the side of truck. The first thing I am conscious of is the pain. It has become my unfailing companion, but I realize now one never "gets used" to it. It is always pain, always demanding to be ended. The gag is gone, and I am pretty sure the rope above my elbows has been cut away. My wrists and ankles are bound as before. There is music on the truck radio.

"Here. Drink this." Miguel holds a liter container of water to my lips and tips it back. I swallow as much as I can before he removes it, then when I have taken a breath he holds it to my lips again. When the liter is empty he fetches another and lets me drink half of that.

"Thank you," I stammer, and I immediately realize I am thanking a man who a half-hour ago was torturing me without mercy. But that is the depth to which I have fallen; I am truly grateful to him.

"Don't. You were dangerously dehydrated. I want you alive and conscious for as long as possible." He stands up and sweeps his hand in front of him indicating the wasteland around us. "Here is where you die. Not very pretty, eh?" We are in a large depression, shallow enough to drive the four wheel drive truck into but deep enough to be hidden from anyone more than fifty meters away. "The only question now is how. You interested?"

"Just get it over with," I say, finally getting angry. It is the first time since my capture I realize that I am angry. Perhaps because I am going to die.

"Rosie wanted to tie your ankles to the rear bumper and drag you around a bit over the sand and rocks. I think she liked the idea of watching the flesh torn in strips from your naked body." I can't stifle a moan. "But too dangerous. And even if you did survive it, it did not fit into my plans. I still want you to talk. There is no reason for you to suffer anymore."

There is no reason to deny my "guilt" anymore, so I simply shake my head no.

Miguel shrugs his shoulders and calls out, "OK. Turn off the goddamn radio and get out here. The stakes and the rope are behind the seat."

Rosie appears from the cab with a half dozen broad metal stakes and a coil of hemp rope not much thicker than clothesline. The stakes have metal oval holes at the top.

I watch as they each pound a stake into the earth on either side of my feet about a meter apart. "We'll leave the other two until we've done her arms," Miguel tells Rosie. In my pain befogged condition it is not until Miguel is standing above me that I realize what they are going to do to me.

"No. Not like this. Please." In answer Miguel pulls me by my ankles down to the ground and drags me into position over the rough rock strewn ground so he and Rosie can start the process of staking me out in the desert to die.

They roll me onto my stomach and cut the ropes that have bound my wrists for so many hours. My hands are dead; there is not even the tingle of returning blood. They waste not time in rolling me back to face up and pulling my arms out from under me. The pain which has been pounding at my shoulders and making me groan with every movement now spikes as they stretch my arms toward the stakes. The screams come unbidden from my lips until the oily rag is shoved back in my mouth.

I can't fight them. I am totally helpless, my muscles so stiff from the prolonged bondage a pitiful wriggling is all I can manage. Flat on my back with my arms stretched full span I toss my head from side to side, grunting into my gag, watching first one and then the other of my wrists lashed to its stake. The cord is first looped around my wrist and then wrapped around it tightly seven or eight times, leaving a half meter of length to be stretched up to the stake. But before they are tied off Miguel takes the water bottle and pours it over the remaining cord that will run to the stakes. Now it dawns on me that my bonds are not rope but rawhide, and that as the rawhide dries it will shrink.

Miguel inspects Rosie's work, smiling approvingly, before they move to my feet.

Rosie cuts my ankle ropes and ties a new cord around my right ankle while Miguel pounds in another stake. I manage to kick and flail my legs enough that she has to kneel across my shins in order to get the new rope knotted. I manage to lift my head to see Miguel pull the long cord through the large eyelet in the stake, stretching my right leg and pulling my body taut. My head falls back and I scream again into my gag at the further outrage to my shoulders. He wets the rawhide cord, then pulls it still tighter and even as he is tying the cord to the stake Rosie is hammering the last pale into the ground.

In another minute it is finished. I try to lift my head to see what they have done to me but I am pulled so tight that I can't raise my head to see anything more than the rise and fall of my bared breasts on my heaving ribcage. I really don't need to. I have a clear picture of myself spread-eagled naked on the sandy ground, the thick gag protruding from my gaping lips, unable to move anything other than my head which rolls slowly back and forth in agony and despair. The only parts of my body that I can see are my taut arms and my fettered hands. Or someone's hands. They can't be mine. They don't look like mine, swollen and blue. I can't feel them. When I close my fingers the fingers I see don't move.

And of course this hasn't been enough for them. No, they have arranged it so the drying rawhide will stretch me further, an improvised rack pulling on my outraged limbs, slowly increasing my agony. I am stretched so taut I can't imagine being pulled any tighter, but they can.

The two of them stand over me looking down at me – Miguel above my head and Rosie between my legs. I have never felt more helpless – staked out naked with my arms and legs splayed wide, opening me up to tortures I will myself not to think of, while my captors, my torturers stand above me.

Miguel squats down next to my head. "Now I will tell you how you die. Just like this. Staked out here alone and naked and with a filthy rag stuffed in your mouth. With the drying rawhide slowly pulling you apart until you can't even lift your head an inch off the earth. The agony will be terrible and it will not stop, just get worse. What will kill you I do not know. Since it is winter it will not be the sun. You will sweat and maybe burn a little, but not too bad. It does get cold at night, but not cold enough to kill you, even naked and unable to move. It will not be the insects, the ants, the sand crabs, the wasps and chiggers. They will bite and sting, but they will not kill you. Even a scorpion sting. More than four or five...maybe. But that would hurt like hell and you would still be a long time dying."

"A rattlesnake," says Rosie helpfully.

"Yes that would do it. Or coyotes. Or wild dogs. Don't know if there are any in these parts. If there are they will put you out of your misery once they are sure you are helpless. They will smell you and circle around for a good while. You will hear them out there in the darkness. Maybe see their yellow eyes. And smell them. You will scream trying to scare them away and even with that gag in your mouth it may keep them off you for a little. They are afraid of humans, but not I think a human who is spread-eagled on her back. It will be a long time before one of them makes a quick lunge at you. Then another. When they are sure you can't move they will gather around you and smell you, push their snouts against you and paw at you before the first one finally sinks his teeth into your flesh."

I try not to think of what it would be like staked out like this with wild dogs slavering over me, saliva dripping on my bare skin from their fetid mouths, waiting, waiting...

"And after a day of being staked out like this you will pray for the dogs to come get you. It's not about pain Maria, although there will be enough of that. It's about dying slowly, inch by inch, staring up at the sky, naked and alone.

"I told you there are worse things than strappado."

I raise my head the few centimeters I can and scream at him through my gag. How can he do this to me, leave me to die like this? Why? Why?

"What if she gets loose?"

Miguel laughs at Rosie. "How? Pull up the stakes? Even if she were strong as an ox she couldn't do it, and she's got two dislocated shoulders. She couldn't pick up a peseta. Uproot a stake? No, she's going to die right here like this. Unless..." Miguel bends down and pulls the gag from my mouth, "She wants to tell me the truth."

I beg. I plead with him to let me go, to kill me, anything but not to leave me like this. I am half crazed with fear, but I will not talk.

Miguel stands up and walks away. Rosie continues to stand between my legs and look down on me with an evil smile. But then she too is gone. I hear the tailgate of the truck go up and Miguel's footsteps to the cab. I scream in terror over and over, "DON'T LEAVE ME LIKE THIS! DON'T LEAVE ME LIKE THIS!"

They don't leave me and it takes but a moment to realize that I would have been better off dying slowly alone and naked. Miguel carries what looks like a large salesman's sample case and drops it with a thud next to my side. From my vantage point stretched flat on the ground it looms there like a black tower. He opens the top and I crane my neck to get a glimpse of chrome and glass. I have seen this before but I am not sure where until I feel the wires run across my stomach and the cold steel clips drop between my breasts.

"Oh God not that. Please not that. Please no more pain." I moan at him. All thoughts of a slow death staked out in the badlands are gone as they prepare me for electrotorture. He grabs my left nipple and pulls it, twisting it, squeezing it until it is engorged with blood and the teeth of the alligator clip have something substantial to bite into. My scream is more in fear than in pain and is repeated as Rosie does the same to my right breast.

They ignore my screams and pleas and go about attaching clips to the flesh where my armpit meets my breast, one on each side, Rosie watching Miguel and then duplicating his actions.

Rosie starts to laugh. "Look at her eyes," she calls, "They are as big as saucers," but Miguel simply grunts and finishes attaching the last two clips to my middle toes. He throws a switch and my body is suffused with tingling pulsing sensation that radiates from my breasts and feet. I give a gasp of surprise but it is not painful. I am aware of the fine down on the inside of my thighs standing on end.

Rosie's hand has been stroking my hip. "She tingles," she says puzzled, pulling her hand away.

"Current leakage," Miguel explains. "This equipment has been banged around pretty good. Must be broken insulation somewhere." He then starts to detail for Rosie how he – how they – are going to torture me. How there are three circuits and the separate paths the electricity will follow as it courses through my body. I don't need to listen. I have heard it all before. At Langley during a two day interrogation training. I spent two days handcuffed and blindfolded in a cell, hanging by my wrists and tied to a chair. They made it as realistic as possible. A good deal of the time I was naked. They had attached me to a machine that looked very much like the one I am hooked up to now. The shocks were painful, but no worse than root canal when the novocaine wears off. And I knew I wasn't going to be really hurt. Or die.

"Ready Maria," he says and a second later I am slammed so hard I bounce off the earth. The duration of the shock is only as long as it takes him to flick a toggle switch up and down rapidly. I am more stunned than hurt. The jolt knocks the wind from me and it is a long moment before I remember to breathe.

He hits the switch again. And again. Three more times leaving me battered and exhausted and unable to even think. Only then does the real torture begin.

Miguel turns the voltage down and isolates the current to the clips fastened to my toes. It feels like someone is shredding my legs with broken glass. It doesn't stop. The pain grinds at me, scraping my nerves until he turns the current up a notch more. My thighs and calves twitch and flex and my breath comes in gasps and grunts. A flick of his wrist and it hits my breasts and my nipples become the center of my pain. I am making strange mewling sounds more with my nose than my mouth, which is clenched tightly against the pain.

Rosie is bent so close to my face I can feel her breath. "God that must hurt," she whispers, "Now scream for me."

"Stop. Stop. Stop." I gasp, not to Rosie alone but to Miguel, to anyone, to God. Miguel is slowly turning up the voltage and I am writhing as much as the stakes that spread-eagle me will allow. The pain seems to radiate from my belly down my legs and through my breasts. It doesn't stop. It grows. I start to scream, then howl. Rosie covers my mouth with hers but as soon as our lips touch she jumps away, reaching up to touch her lips. "Wow," is all she says.

There is no release, no pause, no mercy. There is no more electricity, only pain. My howls are now high-pitched metallic shrieks. I am in spasm so violent that only the metal stakes keep me from flying off the ground. Rosie is staring at me in awe. He cuts the current. I lay there panting and whining, my body still trembling uncontrollably. I try to beg him to stop, to tell him I can't take anymore, to tell him that I will tell him...that I...I...

"Who are you working for?"

I manage to lift my head the few inches the ropes allow. I can't stop shaking. I have to speak to him. I have to make him stop. But all that comes out of my mouth is "I...I...I..." before the strain on my neck muscles is too much and my head falls back on the sand and I lie there weeping and wait for him to run the current through me again.

Miguel removes the clips from my toes. Rosie clamps her hands on my temples while he attaches the contacts to my earlobes. I strain with all of what is left of my strength to shake my head free but in a matter of seconds the job is done. Rosie lets go and I roll my head from side to side trying to dislodge the clips by rubbing them on the ground. I can't. I realize I am screaming for Miguel not to turn on the current, then begging Rosie to stop him, then shrieking it will kill me.

Miguel turns the voltage running through my breasts up until I once again writhing and bucking against the stakes, screaming in pain. He holds it there until my voice is a hoarse croak then turns on the circuit that runs to my ears. I feel my brain frying. That is all I can feel. I don't hear. I don't see. I don't know anything but that someone is driving a chisel into my brain. I don't know if I am screaming or silent. I don't know how long it lasts. When it stops I let out a shriek of pure agony. Miguel keeps the current burning my nipples, turns it up until I manage to scream "I'll talk! I'll talk."

I tell him everything. I babble on like an insane old woman. I don't know what I tell him, I just try and tell him everything to be sure that he will have no reason to torture me any more. When I pause, not knowing what else he might want to know, he fills in the blank space with questions. I give him names. I give him names without hesitation, never considering that these are the names of real people, people I know, people who will now be killed or end up like me, tortured to the brink of insanity. Understand, please understand, that none of this is a conscious decision to make the pain stop. I have stopped thinking, stopped reasoning. I cannot control myself. I have no say in the matter. If I could I would never have talked. I would have suffered forever rather than talk. But I can't help it. I can't help it.

Finally Miguel, who has been crouched by my head stands up and smiles. "You see," he says, that wasn't so hard."

"Let me go," I beg him, "Please let me go."

"Oh Maria, you know I can't do that."

Of course I know that so I don't ask him again. Instead I ask him for that one last favor. "Then kill me. Kill me quick."

"Wait!" It is Rosie. "Leave me alone with her. Just for five minutes. No ten. Just give me ten minutes with her."

"NOOOO!" I shriek. "NOOOOOO!"

"Please," pleads Rosie, "Think of all the things I do for you. Just this one little favor, hmmm?"

Miguel looks at her and one corner of his mouth goes up and he tilts his head to the right just a little. "NO NO YOU CAN'T!" I scream. He is going to do it. He is going to give me to Rosie for more torture. As a little favor! Oh God no! I start to sob. "Don't do this to me. I talked. Now just kill me. Please oh God please I talked no more no more…"

"Sorry babes. Hate to do it to you but…" and he shrugs his shoulders.

I start to struggle against the ropes that spread-eagle me on the ground, screaming and begging like a child, "NOOO! YOU PROMISED! I TALKED! YOU PROMISED!"

Miguel squats by my head once more and grabs my face in his powerful hand, squeezing my cheeks until my mouth is forced open and I am crying with the pain. "I promised you nothing except you would die. And you will…eventually." With his other hand he crams my old gag into my mouth forcing it in deeply so it fills my mouth completely.

"I admire you Maria. You are a brave woman, perhaps braver than any man I know. That is why I love you. But you are also my enemy and you would kill me if you could. So I hate you too. Hate you more than I love you. So I give you to Rosie."

He lets go of my face and I stare up at him shaking my head violently side to side, begging mutely no no no, imploring him with my eyes, my shrieks and cries now nothing more than muffled grunts. He steps away and Rosie is standing over me, smiling with her tongue stuck obscenely between her teeth, licking her lips. I give one last cry of despair into my gag, close my eyes and let my head fall the few inches back to the earth.

I feel Rosie's breath on my cheek as she removes the alligator clips from my ear lobes. I expect her to be laughing at me, gloating over her victory, her good fortune at having me staked out naked and spread-eagled at her disposal. But there is no sound from her other than her breathing, quicker now, and heavy. I hear her move off few steps and shuffle around for a moment. Then I hear her voice, "Ah, this is perfect," and I open my eyes to see what it is she has planned for me.

Rosie kneels over me. In her hand she has a stick maybe an inch in diameter and over a foot long. At the end it branches off into two thinner branches which she now brakes off leaving a small vee shaped notch. "Miguel," she calls out, "Miguel bring me some tape." I hear his voice from somewhere beyond my head, "Get it yourself. I have no interest in this. Why do you think I gagged her? I don't even want to hear her screams."

"Son of a whore," Rosie mutters under her breath and gets up once again. She is back in a minute with the roll of duct tape. I stare at her wondering what horror she is going to inflict on me while I lie here naked and helpless. She takes one of the leads from the generator and tapes it so the alligator clip rests in the crotch of the vee at the top of the branch, the metal tip protruding a couple of centimeters past the wood. She closes her eyes and sighs as though in some sort of trance and it is at this moment I realize what she is going to do to me.

I feel her hands on my belly sliding slowly down to my crotch. Then her fingers on my labia spreading them just a little before she inserts the stick with its electric contact taped to the end. I feel the rough torture device pushed into my pussy. Deeper. I roll my head in disbelief and terror. The end strikes my cervix hard and I scream. I manage to lift my head a few centimeters and see Rosie. It takes all my strength just to hold it there for the moments I need to shake it back and forth and cry out for her not to do this to me. She is not looking at me, just staring between my legs. My head falls back a moment before the next alligator clip snaps onto my clit, the metal jaws crushing me, the jagged teeth cutting me. Again I scream into my gag, half from pain and half from terror. I jerk my head up again and this time Rosie is staring at me as though she has been waiting for my head to rise. I shake it desperately back and forth trying to cry out for mercy from behind the dirty cloth that gags my mouth.

I hear Miguel call out, "Come on Rosie. We haven't got all day."

"In a minute. In a minute," she yells back. Then lower, almost in a whisper, she says to me, "I am enjoying this so much. I wish it could go on forever. Just watching you wait for me to fuck you with the electricity."

I know it is hopeless. There is nothing that can save me from this final obscene torture, this ultimate violation of my womanhood. Still I scream into my gag, begging for mercy. She laughs. The only thing these swine have not done is rape me, and now this vile woman going to do that for them with electrodes clipped onto my pussy.

The pain is like nothing I have ever felt before. That does not seem possible; after the ripping out of my toenails, the strappado, the whipping – everything that has been done to me, even the electro-torture of my breasts which finally broke me – that this could be worse by far. But it is.

Despite the fact that they have staked me out with pitiless brutality, so taut I cannot lift my head more than an inch, my body somehow manages to rise off the ground in a tight arc. There is so much pain I can not breathe. My body vibrates, my hips thrust upward in a parody of passion. But it only lasts a second, then Rosie cuts the current. Before I can even inhale, she hits the switch again. This time she holds it longer. The agony is beyond description. I cannot think. At first it tears at my pussy. She is right. I am being raped by the electricity. But it goes deeper than that – to the very core of my being – somewhere deep in my belly. She plays with me like this for what seems to be hours but is probably only a minute or two. All I am aware of is the pain and her insane giggles until I pass out.

When I come to I am alone, still staked out naked on the rough desert ground, the sky quickly darkening at the end of the day. The rawhide has shrunk, pulling my spread-eagled limbs past their limit. The pain is all encompassing; I can't even distinguish where on my tormented body it originates. There is no part of me that doesn't hurt beyond belief.

I try to lift my head. I can't. Even that miniscule effort costs me in pain that makes me scream into my gag. Rosie has left me gagged, my mouth filled with the vile tasting cloth. She would not even give me the insignificant comfort of being able to scream out my pain and fear, of being able to breathe without strain. A small horror compared to everything else, but it strikes me to the core. I begin to weep.

The gag is not all that Rosie has left inside me. I can still felt the branch deep in my pussy, the electrical contact pressed against my cervix. The alligator clip still crushes my clitoris. I think, Miguel will be pissed when he finds she has left them behind. A reminder. Then in absolute terror I remember. She slapped me hard two, three, four times when she had finished torturing me. For a moment I came out of the fog that enveloped me. She was kneeling by my head and she whispered in my ear, "I am coming back later. Alone."

My panic spurs me to almost superhuman heights and I pull at my bonds with strength I did not know I possessed. Immediately the pain lances through my shoulders. I scream again into my gag. I scream but I do not stop pulling. I pull mindless of the agony, the thought of being staked out like this for Rosie to find spurring on my effort.

It is useless. The stakes do not budge. I can't move an inch. I give one last heave at my bonds, one last scream of pain, then pass out.

When I awake it is pitch dark, no moon, no stars. I have no way of judging time in the blackness. Tomorrow morning I will have the arc of the sun to follow and show me the passing of time while I wait bound and gagged for the end of my slow dying. But for now there is no time, just an eternity of pain and fear.

My tears have clogged my nose with mucous and I have to inhale with all my might. I blow out as hard as I can trying to clear my nose so I can breathe. I start to work on my gag by pushing with my tongue. I feel I will suffocate if I can't breathe through my mouth. Not a pleasant way to die but almost certainly a whole lot better than what awaits me. I should probably give up the struggle to dislodge the gag but the pain in my lungs and the panic in my heart spurs me on until somehow a manage to get enough of the filthy cloth dislodged to be able to suck in some air. Another ten minutes and the gag is out.

There are no sounds other than my labored breathing and moans of pain. I cry for a while but my ability to shed tears seems to have disappeared. My sobbing is no more than a heaving of my chest and pathetic moans. I hear no insects, although I feel them. There tiny scratching and scuttling along my flesh would probably drive me insane in other circumstance, but my agony is so complete it allows no competition from such a bland torment. If there is a breeze I can not feel it stretched out as I am on the floor of the depression.

Then I hear it. A car engine. No, of course not, a truck engine. A pickup truck.

It's heading straight for me. No, of course I can't tell that, only that it is coming closer. Fast.

As the noise grows louder I panic, and even though I know it is hopeless and will only bring me more pain, I struggle wildly to free myself. But I can do no more than writhe pathetically in the bonds that spread-eagle me taut.

The engine is idling, then stops. She is close enough that I can hear the door of the cab shut but far enough that I can't hear her footsteps. There seems to be a faint glow from her headlights over the rim of the depression. How close is she? I can't tell for sure. And then I hear her voice.

"Maria. Where are you?" She is calling out to me but not yelling. She has to be close. Her voice is slurred. She has been drinking. "Maria. I want to play with you. I have your favorite toy in the truck. Maria."

The thought that I might be better off dying in agony than a slow death staked out in the desert never enters my mind. But the memory of the electricity tearing into my sex is worse than anything I can imagine wild dogs or scorpions doing to me.

I see the flashlight beam hit the other side of the depression. She can be no more than ten meters away and she is walking right toward me. I hold my breath and pray.

"Where the fuck are you Maria?" She yells it, no screams it. "Where are you, you pitiful cunt!" Her voice is no longer coming at me, she is no longer coming at me, she has turned. Now she is in a drunken rage, and by her voice I can tell she is turning around in a tight circle. "When I find you I am going to hook you up bueno. I am going to fry your pretty little cunt you cunt."

She is so close I can hear her breathing, no panting would be a better word. In my mind's eye I see her standing at the side of the depression looking down on me staked out, spread-eagled taut and naked, while I look up at her helpless to stop the coming torture, unable to move an inch, begging for mercy I know she does not have.

And then she is gone. The next thing I know I hear the truck engine rev up and move away. I begin to shake uncontrollably and weep. I am safe. That is my first thought. I am safe. And then I begin to laugh. I am safe to die a slow and painful death.

The rest of the night is spent sobbing with short interludes of sleep. It is so unfair, unreal. That is why I sob. A beautiful intelligent woman should not die like this, staked out naked in the desert. When I doze off, I of course don't know how long I actually sleep, but I do know it can't be very long. It seems as though when I nod off I immediately have dreams, or perhaps more accurately, hallucinations. I see and hear Miguel striding toward me to release me, untie me. Even after the image disappears and I realize I am still staked out naked on the desert floor, I believe it – he did say he loved me. I hear the pack of coyotes circling around me, growling and panting. I see their yellow eyes. I even smell their mangy coats and fetid breath. In terror I struggle weakly to free myself, my heart bounding in my chest. But they never come for me and eventually disappear.

I am afraid to sleep, afraid of what will come to me in my dreams. I struggle now not to escape but to stay awake. To stay awake? To die slowly and horribly? If I could only sleep forever with no dreams, but to sleep means the chance of dreams.

Then there is the cold. My body sets up a continual shivering that is a torture in itself.

With dawn the hallucinations disappear. Now it is now just me, the desert and the unending sky. And new torments.

The pain has lessened to a dull throbbing as long as I don't struggle against my bonds. If I do my shoulders shriek in agony. I have to content myself with rolling my head from side to side, which I do almost constantly while I sob softly in despair. That is the only movement which doesn't bring me agony. If I try to even lift my head the pain is immediately unbearable.

The anguish of not being able to move is indescribable. Picture a beautiful woman, naked and open, on her back, waiting for her lover. Now picture a beautiful woman, naked and open, on her back but with wrists and ankles bound to stakes that stretch her lithesome body so taut she can't move a muscle, waiting. Not for a lover. Waiting helplessly for whatever horrors the desert will bring, waiting for a slow painful death.

So I roll my head slowly from side to side. This feeble movement is all I am capable of, but it gives me the pathetic illusion that I am not totally helpless. In my clearer moments I wonder if Manuel knew how horrifying was the death he had sentenced me to. Was he now having a drink and imagining my nude body staked out in the desert being feasted upon by a thousand insects?

They were there at night of course, but only the crawling ones, and not in legion strength. But with the sun the newest horror come to me. It started with the buzzing wings of a huge fly. It landed on my belly. I tried to shake it off. It was a reflex – with my limbs pulled taut and bound to the stakes my efforts were of course futile. Its bite was no more than an annoyance.

More insects landed on me. They bit and stung me. Annoyance became pain and pain became torture. Soon my body was covered with a thousand black specks. Their pincers tore at me with maddening insistence. No matter how I struggled and writhed I couldn't throw them off. I had never known that a torture could be so cunningly conceived.

The minutes dragged into an hour. I twisted and turned, ignoring the pain from my outstretched limbs, trying to dislodge the growing swarm of insects that feasted on my nude body. I screamed and pleaded with God to make it end. They were everywhere, in my ears, my mouth and nose, crawling into my vagina. I couldn't take anymore.

Everything blended into one giant world of torment. My mind began playing tricks on me. I saw Miguel standing over me, but this time not to release me from my ordeal, but to laugh at my unmitigated suffering.

I knew then that before I died I would be stark raving mad. It couldn't happen soon enough for me. It was the only chance I had to end my anguish – if I were out of my mind perhaps I wouldn't know what was being done to me.

The first drop of rain I felt was on my forehead. Then another and another and in no time at all it was a torrent. In a moment the little torturers were washed from my skin, and the water cooled the burning they left. I opened my mouth and gulped down the tepid liquid, almost choking on the life giving water as it surged from the heavens.

I felt the ground become slippery beneath and minutes later the water had risen to the point I was lying in a shallow lake two inches deep. The rain was still pouring from the sky as it can do in the desert. I turned my head and saw the water cascading down the sides of the depression. In a panic I realized it wouldn't be long before the crater I was lying in would be filled and I would be drowned.

In wild desperation I pulled at the stakes. They responded to my effort – not a lot, but for the first time since I had been spread-eagled and left to die, there was some give. Of course – the rain had loosened the soil. But the water was rising rapidly and the depression was filling up like a bathtub. The water was almost covering my ears. I pulled and strained at the leather thongs which by now had stretched, giving me more leverage. I pushed past the incredible pain tearing at my shoulders, arching my back and bridging on my neck while I strained at my bonds until suddenly my left leg was loose.

The rest was simply a crazed struggle of my will to live against my bondage, the rising water and unbelievable pain. After I clambered out of the depression I remember almost nothing, only staggering on and on hoping I was headed toward a road and not deeper into the wasteland.

I am told I was dumped in front of the local infirmary. Whoever it was that picked me up deduced I was the latest torture victim of one of the drug cartels and, although they wouldn't leave me to die, didn't want any thanks.

So Lewis, that's pretty much it. And after I have recovered enough strength to find you and thank you for all you have done for me, I plan to take a little trip down south and settle up with some friends who I never had the chance to wish a proper good-bye.