contritious, but not penitent

Are they kept locked away? So deep underground that they have forgotten what the sun feels like on their skin, forced to beg for each new torture session or else be left alone in the silent, empty, darkness? Or are they at the mercy of the public? Left in the pillory, paraded through the streets, traded between people's homes for "private sessions"? Burning with shame at being constantly seen, always exposed to the hungering glances and wandering hands of those ready to torment their defiled, broken body.

Even if they managed to escape their prison, there would be nowhere for them to run in a city full of jailers. Anyone they would have the strength to reach has already committed to causing them nothing but pain.

Every day whumpee is met with a new torturer delighting in their agony, new forms of pain they can neither predict nor escape. There is no single master they can learn to please, no gentle soul to grant them a reprieve. Each person brings their own creative sadism to their "obligatory" sessions with the whumpee, trying to show each other up, trying to prove that they are worthy of the boon earned through the whumpee's suffering.

Interrogate your whumpee with the strappado.

Drag him from his cell in the middle of the night, strip him bare and bind his wrists behind him. Tell him that all you need is a confession.

Pull his arms up slowly. Let him feel the tension build in his shoulders, each creeping inch echoed by his soft gasps as discomfort slowly creeps towards pain. Tell him that you don't want him to suffer, that he could make it all stop with just a few words.

When he grits his teeth and says nothing, tell him that his silence will not save him, that pain will rend the truth from him no matter how deep he has buried it.

Wait as the hours tick by, as the ache in his shoulders grows to an acute, shrieking agony. When he starts to tremble from exhaustion, when he can no longer hide the reedy whimper in the back of his throat, when he can't help but beg for mercy, ask if he has sufficiently contemplated the cost of his silence.

Let the scrape of metal drown out his pleas as the relentless mechanism guides his bound wrists higher and higher. Force him to double over to keep his shoulders from being wrenched from their sockets.

Savor the pained, choking cry when his feet finally leave the ground and the immediate silence that follows as every muscle strains, desperate to save his grotesquely twisted shoulders, to shift the weight straining them to their limit.