The prisonner looked grimly hopeless. He lay, sprawled in a corner, 
on a pile of louse-ridden straw, shackled with heavy iron chains that chafed
and hurt his poor peasant's hands and wrists. Awaking from a deep and
disturbed sleep to find a rat staring at him from across his small tin dish of
tepid water, he waved it away with a lethargic motion of his restrained hand
and tried to push all thoughts of what lay ahead to the back entrance of his
mind. The rat looked at him hungrily, as if in morbid expectation of the meal
to some soon. Not soon enough, unfortunately, thought the calloused man. 

        He was here to die. Sooner or later, preferrably sooner. He had been
branded a witch, a fate from which there is no escape. After the Church had
slaughtered his children and seized all of his property, setting the
cottage alight to consecrate the unholy ground, his only wish had become
to join them as soon as he might, though he'd as surely have to travel
through Hell before he could reach Heaven.

        The muffled padding footsteps of the gaoler, in his soft sheepskin
boots, roused the man from his existential ponderings. With a barely audible
jingle, thick keys unlocked the crude cell door. "Get on your filthy feet,
warlock!", muttered the gaoler, his words puncuated by a swift kick to the
side delivered by his previously soft-seeming boots. The frail prisoner was
borne across the cell by the momentum before having an unfortunate encounter
with the far wall, but he grit his teeth and bore the pain, for there would
be much, much worse all too soon.

        Painfully, the prisoner stood up on his long spindly legs, and he
leaned against the wall for a few seconds to catch his breath and to try to
wipe up the dribble of blood that was forming out of the side of his mouth.
A few seconds too long, evidently, as the gaoler yanked the chain and the
prisonner agonizingly fell into line behind him, the sores on his wrists re-
opened. The grim procession, with the overstuffed, cross-wearing gaoler in
front and the shambling mockery of a man coming up in the rear, leaving a
slight trail of bloody droplets, marched down a stoney corridor that was lit
only by flickering pitch torches. Up spiral staircases and through several
cool lightless antechambers they went, until the peasant's bare feet began
to turn numb. Several times the accused witch could hear unfinished strains
of choirs, echoing through the polished rock subterrania, the bass singers'
notes reverberating through the floor, and the soprano castrati's ringing a
little TOO youthful in his ears. 

        Finally, a breeze of fresh air touched the nose of the man, and he
knew that they must be returning to ground level. To confirm his suspicions,
he caught a refraction of sunlight through an artificially dark alabaster
window, the veins of the mineral seeming to throb and pulse organically. He
shook his head wearily, dismissing correctly this vision as having been
induced by several days of muddy water and maggoty bread. Abruptly, he walked
into the gaoler, who had stopped in front of a large arched doorway. The
tough religious man turned around and removed the metallic bonds, letting
them fall to the ground with an ominous clank, and slowly opened the huge
marble doors. Scenes from the Bible opened towards the witch, and sculptures
of long-dead saints glared at him reproachingly from the arch. The gaoler
regarded him for a long minute, without saying anything, with the slightest
hint of pity in his eye. Then, demeanor restored, he said, "The Grand
Inquisitor doesn't 'ave all day, ye know. For some raeson 'e's in a mad mood
today, and you'd best humor 'im. Get thy arse in there, warlock!" With
a rough shove and the spatter of a scornful loogie, the witch entered the
darkness.

        He walked slowly, hearing the booming of the doors close behind him,
but couldn't see anything in the lightless channel. He could hear a low
murmured conversation in the distance up ahead, but couldn't make head nor
tails of which way to go. The dilemma was solved for him as two crusaders
in full armor hefted him suddenly out of the darkness into a hallowed chamber
resplendent with candles, braziers, a large chair, and an astonishing variety
of sharp pointy objects. The chair, or rather, its occupant, was the most
interesting of the above, but the sheer viciousness implicit in the
instruments was most curious. No matter. He would have more than enough time
to find out about them soon.

        The crusaders marched him up to the chair and forced him to prostrate
himself before the curiously small man in the large chair who was wearing an
uncharacteristically bloody robe. The inquisitor, for it was he, noted the
accused warlock's gaze, and said, "None of it is mine, I can assure you. Now, 
the formalities. Name, please?" He brandished a large quill of some exotic
bird, a peacock probably, and dipped it in a small black enamel inkwell
expectantly. "David," said the witch clearly and perhaps a with an ounce of
pride behind it. "How sad, " said the inquisitor, with a resonating quality
in his voice, "that a name once used by the King of Judea be sunken to this
level, to the depths of perversion that you have brought it into, is it not?"
David, uncertain as to how to respond, hesitated. His moment's respite was
brought to a fuzzy halt as his head met the floor, and he just barely made out
a growled, "Answer ye when the Bishop asks thee a question, swine!" coming from
the crusaders behind him. David, spontaneously, nodded his head vigorously, a
trickle of blood dribbling down his forehead into his eyes. "Better," the man
in the chair declared, "In fact, this will all be made much easier if you
agree to cooperate. Of course, we still must engage in a spot of the
preliminary torture, but I don't think that anything too permanent need be
done to your lovely face, do you, David?" David could but agree, his head
still ringing from the blow to the stoney floor. "Good then... let us begin..."

        "We have alerady established that you failed the test of the cross,
did we not, David... David?" David was at this point in no shape to respond
intelligibly. "David, now, you remember what we said. It all lies in how
cooperative you are... all right, but you brought this on to yourself."
The Bishop walked past the wooden frame on which David was suspended, and
wound a crank a few times. Various poppings could be heard from David's 
splayed-out body, and he managed a few frenetic grunts of pain. "I see you've
decided to join us, have ye? All right then. Let's look at this report... oh
my. Witching marks, even? Let's have a look at ye, now..." The Bishop tottered
around the frame, poking and prodding David's stripped shell in search of
moles, insect bites, or birthmarks with which he could suckle the agents of
the devil with human blood. Unfortunately, David's body was suspiciously free
of any and all such marks. This displeased the inquisitor immensely, as could
be ascertained by the seven lashes of the cat-'o-nine-tails which followed.
The sadistic little man came around back again, and seemed genuinely pleased
by the blood flowing richly down David's back. "Ah, yes. A veritable system
of witching marks... you must've been one of the devil's favorites... I say.
We haven't gotten to the unpleasant questions yet, have we?" David's head
jiggled indeterminately. "No, we haven't. All right, then. Describe to me, in
detail, your carnal relations with Lucifer and his minions." 

        "Well, now, I believe that is all the questioning we shall conduct for
now. Thank-you for your cooperation, and we shall extract you from your cell
after the preceptor's lunch for further confessions." David's body was covered 
in a fascinating network of small negligible cuts and abraisions by now, but,
as promised, no permanent damage had been done to him, no disfigurations had
been performed upon his face, which, in another time, had been used to attract
many a peasant girl for a quick roll in the hay, so to speak. He was left in a
dripping heap back in his cell, and the hounds of oblivion came swiftly to
devour his conciousness.

        "All right, David, we have a rather special surprise for you. Please
follow this way... mind your feet, these are sharp..." The Bishop's bizarre
sense of humor was matched only by the literalness of his two silent goons,
who took every opportunity to pinch, beat, and make life generally unpleasant
for David. David was by now, developping an slight immunity to physical pain,
which, several hours ago, would have saved him the trouble of the more
innocent tortures, but which would now only demand more terrible retribution
for the crimes that he did not commit. "What we have here is a devilishly new
machine, brought here by the... the Turks, was it not? Yes, yes... Elegant in
its simplicity, the concept of a simple reel has not been used in such
efficiency since the disembowelling wheel... let me explain it..." David had
recovered after a few hours of tormented sleep, enough to stand at least,
and had considered himself lucky up to the point at which the messenger had
ushered in the new article of equipment, which the Bishop was apparently very
eager to test on David. The afore-mentionned displeasure of the inquisitor
had been apparent at his first entrance, but his eyes had lit up at the
thought of a new victim. The quaintness of the artifact in question was in
the way it pulled your intestines right out of your bung-hole. A most filthy,
gratuitous, and, of course, extremely unpleasant way to die. Of course, this
meant that the Bishop would be going back on their little agreement, but
David had expected this. As the crusaders attatched the hook to the rope
and began lubricating the spring mechanism, David silently made the sign of
the cross and closed his eyes. He was careful to make this gesture unseen,
for such an act would surely bring an extra punishment for blasphemy against
God Almighty and His Great Design. 

        The hook was smeared with pig lard, to facilitate the initial
attatchment. His torn slacks were removed. He was set into a sort of reverse-
stocks, preventing him from moving his abdomen. He closed his eyes, gritted
his teeth, and waited.

        This is the point at which, with an angelic choir singing, the Hand
of God Himself tore the roof off of the chamber in which they resided. The
blinding light of overpowering Goodness drove the Bishop, piggy little man
that he was, and his thugs, scurying out of the chamber for cover. The choir
reached a climax, and Gabriel blew his horn. The foundations of the cathedral
where they were installed shook, and blood seeped out of the walls. His Hand
was ready to smite the great building into rubble, but, as the devil cannot
create, God cannot destroy what he hath created. The building and all its
inhabitants remained unharmed, though the white marble walls were now
black with soot, and a stock-like apparatus remained locked yet empty. A hook
dangled uselessly by its side, and the whole affair suddenly looked to be
very silly indeed.

        The Bishop took survey of the situation, snapped his fingers in dismay,
and said, "Shit! That's the third one that's gotten away today!"

---

my my, I feel that I shall be sick now.

Morals: No one expects the Spanish Inquisition
       or
       I'd rather have a just God than an angry God.

Greets go out to Inquisitor the elusive, and Inquisidor the bad speller.
Oh, and to all the "Sinner"s out there.

SAUCE00The Inquisitor                     Cthulu              Mistigris           19950402×-

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