Cloisters – Castle of Torture

After suffering blows to my head, face and body from a fierce thrashing the night before, I awoke to utter darkness permeated only by a shaft of light coming from a small window high above my head. I attempted to move my arms and legs only to find that I was shackled to a contraption that can only be described as a type of restraining hospital bed found in mental institutions.

Realizing the severity of my situation my muddled mind sought clarity; my first coherent thoughts were, “Why and how did I get to this place; where was I and how can escape. Gradually my eyes became accustomed to the limited light and since the bed was at an angle I could discern implements of upcoming torture, my torment that would be inflicted upon me if I did not escape or was not rescued.

Heavy measured footsteps approached and I could discern the voices of my captors. The door to the torture chamber opened and my persecutors became visible.  They were Dagmar and Agra.

 The underbelly of the castle where I was held against my will was actually a building reconstructed in the 1920’s from the elements of several European medieval abbeys. The upper portion where through which troops of tourists slogged five days a week was used to exhibit art and architecture from Medieval Europe. It had been disassembled brick by brick from five French abbeys in 1910 but was not reassembled in Alexandria, Egypt until 1922 due to the brief interruption of WWI.

The surviving expatriate doughboys put down their British Enfield Rifles taking ups spades, hoes and rakes, landscaping the area surrounding the castle with beautiful gardens belying the horrors committed within. Alexandria, the second largest city in Egypt is known as “The Pearl of the Mediterranean but we were assigned to the underbelly or rather the armpit of the city.

More bohemian than Mohamedan the backstreets echoed every type of sin known to modern man. Alexandrian subculture housed every deviant temptation that satan’s demons could offer and then some.

Initially my arrival on a curatorial artistic mission seemed like the ultimate adventure for a newly anointed Assistant Curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. Our operatives in sister museums in London and Cairo had informed me that there were fantastic artifacts and relics to be scavenged from Alexandria itself as well as my alternate mission to arrange loan of curiosities from the National Museum of Alexandria and my cultural institution.

I and the Research Director for European Art Conservation made the trip from New York to Alexandria. Stepping from the filthy foul smelling streets we were ushered into exotic elaborately decorated quarters decorated with expensive Persian rugs, medieval tapestries, silk draperies hung upon windowless walls, tables adorned with Tiffany lamps. A subtle scent of incense permeated the airways.

The decorations seemed incongruous yet harmonized together in an irregular yet pleasing manner. Palatial taste a bit ostentatious like a Renaissance bordello. The furnishings were highly articulated and faceted Baroque/Rococo objects, many with deep gouges and gashes suggesting transparency and interior penetration. This room and much of the house as well as the street urchins who passed through seemed to us an Orientalist fantasy.

At the far end of the living room hung a painting of a Minotaur raping a woman, this predilection of things to come. Within this underworld in the Gumrok district known to westerners as the Turkish district we met our sardonic intermediary, who unbeknownst to us dabbled in white slavery, the mirthless dwarf called, Apep Angra Mainyu aka “The Snake”.

Angra had the face of Peter Lorre and the heft and bulk of a miniaturized Sidney Greenstreet. Apep Angra was scurrilous and scrofulous. His rough skin was spotted with scabies and his body emitted a sepulchral odor.

Angra’s manciple Alva Ahriman was the bodily opposite of his master. Ahriman was six feet tall of bulging muscles, narrow waist and sculpted buttocks. His lack of moral fiber and somewhat limited intellectual faculties innate in most normal human personalities could be easily perceived in his cranial structure and his overall physiognomy. The shock of wild reddish brown hair closely cut on the sides of the head, the high sloping forehead, prominent brow ridges, receding nostrils and thin lips, these features put one in mind of a simian head attached to the body of Atlas.

Alva’s nature embodied the seven deadly sins from head to foot. Despite stunted academic capabilities that could be called into question, Alva had been well trained by Angra and daily attempted to enhance what little he had been granted through unholy experimentation by careful observation of Angra’s hidden lifestyle and techniques.

 Alva’s bedchambers which were divided into three sections one being the actual room where he slept on an ornate Italian Renaissance canopy bed replete with seraphim, cherubim, and putti on the ceiling looking down seemingly blessing the lewd acts committed in that bed. However outside of Angra, the conservator and myself and the poor unfortunate girls who had the bad fortune to see this mockery of sex and religion, Alva barred even the household servants from entering that portion of his rooms.

In fact he took responsibility for cleaning his quarters and putting outside the door soiled bed sheets and remnants of any meals partaken within. Upon entrance it at first resembled an Italian studiolo. Scholarly books that he never read, save those dealing with what he felt was the “new science of photography” lined the bookshelves along the walls.

There was a collection of opera records beside the Victrola, which he played incessantly even during he was engaged in some vile sexual act with any of the young girls that came to the bawdy house. In fact during those escapades the music became louder more than likely to mask his grunts and groans plus those of his victims. Angra seeing how fascinated Alva was with photography gifted him with an old fashioned camera and outfitted the third segment of Alva’s rooms with a photography studio and darkroom.

Alva was creative in the sense that he stole items from the main bordello in order to outfit his photo studio into period pieces where he photographed the girls before he had sex with them. After developing the pictures he would catalogue each prize in a book complete with a name he gave her in addition to her measurements and any outstanding physical features. The girls were pretty much always naked save for sparse clothing items that Alva felt made superior her breasts, buttocks or genital area.

Alva often requested and received more than one girl from the bordello and had them pleasure each other in the pictures while he shot them in various poses. Another one of Alva’s prized possessions in addition to his camera was his stereopticon or “magic lantern” in which his bevy of beauties were preserved for eternity on slides which at first Alva just arranged randomly but over time he began to place the slides in logical order to create pornographic narratives. The stereopticon was for his personal pleasure but even that proved not enough and eventually Alva convinced Angra to give him rudimentary film equipment that he rigged up next to his bed to document his demented exploits with the accursed young women.

Often while Alva was arranging the photos in his scrapbook or creating slides from them for the stereopticon he would play his favorite three operas from Richard Wagner; The Valkyrie,Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal.

Little did I realize before making my ill-fated trip that the conservator had an unholy alliance with Angra who becoming dissatisfied with the typical young maidens normally lured to this Moroccan bordello and now wanted a woman of higher intelligence and learning to take part in the sex slave trade initiated by Dagmar the enchantress who operated behind the scenes funding this illicit operation.

Dagmar who served as Angra’s personal secretary lulling me into a false sense of sense of security by creating a safety zone, escorting myself and the conservator around the city, accompanying me to in progress archeological and to student academic trainings at the local university for the first three weeks of my assignment.

I was feted, perfumed and outfitted like the odalisques in Orientalist paintings from centuries past. Then the ordeals began. By the time the fourth week of my stay began, I noticed many young women pass through the heathen portals and I began to question the nonstop exodus of young improverished women.

 Dagmar and Angra put off my entries by saying that these young women were just student anthropology interns from the University there to make us of Angra’s extensive library and study center.

Angra’s home was a labyrinth of tunnels, hidden passages and chambers; doors leading into rarely used rooms. One day I discovered a secret room that adjoined the cellar where Alva committed various atrocities upon the female victims imprisoned therein.

All Angra’s and Alva’s sexual exploits were taped, transcribed to disc and catalogued for further warped enjoyment by this evil duo when victims were not readily available.

Housed in Angra’s cellar were separate quarters for the miscreants created by Dagmar. Xenotranstology. This meant her area of scientific expertise could best be described as trans-species genetic engineering.

Dagmar capitalized on genetic mutations to form species normally outside the realm of human thought or natural existence.

One such hideous creature very much resembled the Minotaur in the living room painting. His bovine features did have some human qualities but his hindquarters from the knees down were hooves. He emitted a horrible musky order a sign that he was in musk. The first victim had to endure his febrile couplings for hours.

Once selected from the harem the victim was doused with pheromones and thrown naked into the enclosure to be sexually devoured by the beast. Though horrified I was transfixed as I watched through a panel in the door that separated the adjoining rooms, as the beast entered her again and again, from behind and on top forcing her legs into an unnatural position above and over her head almost beyond the bounds of flexibility. She screamed in agony as his organ nearly ripped her apart. His thrusting seemed endless and ineluctable. His clawed hands dug into the tender skin on her breasts, squeezing, fondling, and sucking almost pulling them from her body. Finally satiated he grunted, released his grip on her and cast her to the other side of the containment cell.

The unfortunate woman was pulled from the containment cell and sent  back to the women’s quarters to recover as best she could. At the finality of this exercise in debasement I uttered an audible gasp heard by the Minotaur. He caught my scent and hurled himself against his enclosure calling attention to my heretofore unseen presence.

I was quickly captured by Angra and Alva and beaten senseless only to awake hours later in another secret dungeon located in the bowels of the castle. Dagmar looked at my bruised and battered face but pronounced me well enough for the next step in her repugnant experiment.

The medieval hospital bed was being elevated into a semi-sitting position and an IV attached to my manacled left arm. Slowly an intravenous solution dripped into my veins as I watched powerlessly.

Next as I drifted into a hallucinatory sleep I felt my upper body being lowered and my legs were briefly released from their bonds only to be secured into a gynecological position and a speculum forcibly thrust between my legs. I could feel a warm solution being injected into my cervix.

All the while Angra laughed at this “entertainment” this “sport” as he called it. Watching it was like theatrical pornography for him, making this severed half man lustful himself. Like every sexual encounter that went on in this house of horrors the proceedings of mutant/human couplings were taped to be later used for singular or mutual masturbation with one any woman unfortunate enough to be held captive.

Many of the young females were forced to give Angra and his manservant oral succor. Dagmar reasoned if she injected the sperm of mutant males into human ovum, brought them to embryo form under specific sterile conditions and implanted them into human wombs to complete gestation they would live. Not just live but be the embodiment of all her twisted desires.

 After the ghastly trial I was once again chained, caged then shipped out on the next vessel bound for Felicite one of the many islands that comprise the Seychelles. This picturesque and steep granitic island was a coconut plantation up to the 1970s and supported a population of some fifty people. In the late 19th century, Felicite was home to many colorful exiles, most of whom spent five years on the island before moving to the big island of Mahe.

Arriving in port I was blindfolded and transported to an unknown destination. Once we arrived at our destination the blindfold was removed, my eyes stung from the sudden infusion of daylight. I hobbled out of the carriage into what was once a monastery built long ago by missionaries to the island.

A grand foyer flanked by two long hallways of Byzantine art leading into Medieval Sculpture Hall filled with statues of Madonnas, Catholic Saints and Mystics, Relics, and tombs from Egypt, Europe, Greece, Cyprus and South America. Each international tomb had a goddess from the respective ancient culture at the head and foot of the sarcophagus. Venturing further into the monastery subterranean chambers were overturned ossuaries, bones bleached white scattered throughout the tombs.

Alva arrived at the castle shortly after my delivery to receive his gift. Like the unfortunate whose desecration I had witnessed and brought me to my current situation I was doused with pheromones designed to further ignite Alva’s evil desires.

Something within my soul, my innermost being was inflamed and I became a Pantheress released from her imprisonment spitting, hissing, biting and scratching Alva’s face and body as he attempted to force me into submission.

My violent outrage increased his desire for me. When he tried to enter my writhing twisting body I attacked him at every turn, frustrating his deranged wishes for unnatural copulation. I felt my bones cracking and growing with razor sharp claws suddenly extending from my elongated fingers. Alva’s fevered groping became epileptic as I slashed into his exposed skin.

We separated, rolled on the floor, he enraptured with convulsions caused by a sexual epiphany, I with a hate and vengeance exhibited only by a corner feline fighting for its life and dignity.

With the strength of a Tigress I impaled Alva with my claws, lifted him high overhead running over to the fountain just outside the hall and threw him into water whose source was an underground active geyser boiling his flesh in then depositing it upon ancient tapestries depicting holy stories.

Deftly I broke open Alva’s steaming chest cavity, tore out his still beating heart and consumed it with triumphal relish. At that moment I experienced desire transported me to another realm more satisfying than conjugal bliss. My body was seized with orgasms as the blood from his torn flesh ran down my face over my now feline transformed female body.

The faces of the sculptures lit up with a bright pink or red radiance that seemed to eminent from within their stone hearts. Catholic mystics glowered lecherously at the woman envious of the woman/beast.

Gregorian chants, dirges and cries for absolution filled the room along with the intensity of the ultimate mating. Agra who had come to watch the proceedings was aghast with horror however Dagmar just smiled a sweet sardonic smirk well knowing that within that previous night’s IV solution was a serum designed to transform me into a feline/human hybrid empowered with preternatural strengths and powers coupled with character and cerebral flaws yet to be unmasked only through time and observation under somewhat controlled circumstances.

Agra turned to his boss and superior timidly asking, “Why?” Dagmar spoke of her scientific art thusly, “From ancient times we have all heard the ancestral tales of fauns, satyrs, centaurs, even the abomination of werewolves. Heretofore modern science has considered all these human/animal combinations to be mythical in basis; however I using the latest gene therapy techniques have been able to splice human and animal DNA to create creatures normally reserved for fairy tales.” Using the humble Petri dish along with centrifugal force I have opened the portal that once allowed only God and/or Evolution, whichever one you desire to believe to imbue new species with life. Not only life but to give the better powers and forces of intermixed species with the human line being naturally dominant.” “Using artificial insemination of male/female gonads I’ve been able to speed, contrast and reconstruct the evolutionary process with some limited success. To date your manservant Alva, whom I lent you for a time had been my greatest treasure and prize.

Unfortunately the females I created through my innovative processes are not only sterile but dwarfs unable to mate neither with the created virile males nor of any use in other ways. I soon realized that I was using inferior female stock however when she came with her superior intellect and bearing I knew I had hit upon success.”

With a quick turn of her dainty heel Dagmar, she of the fiery red hair; pale translucent skin with hints of ochre undertones; luminous green eyes; and full ruby red lips left the room. Angra was left to dispose of what was left of his former manservant, co-conspirator and friend.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

 Pinky: “Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?”

The Brain: “The same thing we do every night, Pinky—try to take over the world!”