Heads I Lose, Tails I Lose

7 in the morning, Day 2

Joxer was awoken by a kick in the side. He grunted in pain and looked up to see a Guard holding out a cup and some bread. Joxer saw a booted foot aimed for his side again and sat up quickly.

The Guard grinned and kicked him anyway, before sauntering over to wake up the next person. The hungry young man gratefully took the proffered food. Joxer drank eagerly and tried not to gulp the scant cup of water. The bread was moldy and green.

Try as hard as Joxer could, he just couldn’t make himself eat more than a couple of bites. Joxer gave the rest of his bread to one of his cellmates who shoved the food in her mouth. The emaciated young girl hunched over her meal protectively and ate it as fast as she possibly could.

Joxer noticed that the rat’s carcass had disappeared sometime during the night. He tried not to think about that. It wasn’t that he was disgusted. All right, yes he was. More importantly he was sad. Joxer knew what it was like to be that hungry and while he had never personally eaten a rat, he had eaten some pretty reprehensible things in his time.

8 in the morning

The Guards came back and hauled him to his feet. Joxer winced at the tight grip they had on his already bruised arms. They pushed and prodded him down several long corridors, back to the Questioners. The men took the opportunity to rub their hands over his body as they went. Joxer tripped several times on the way. Not because of his natural clumsiness, but because the men kept putting their hands between his legs.

Joxer was tied back in the chair, in the same painful and humiliating position as the day before. One of the Guards reached down and picked up Joxer’s balls. He held them as if weighing them and then he juggled the sensitive scrotum back and for the between his rough and calloused hands. Then the Guard squeezed his balls until tears formed in Joxer’s eyes. The man grinned and tightened his grip once more before letting go. He made sure to position Joxer’s penis back on his leg before he moved back.

The throbbing between his legs distracted Joxer from the noise and the questioning for a while.

They questioned him for 4 hours.

“…and then this otha soldier said, ‘yeah, but ya shoulda seen his head. It looked just like Hercules.’” Strife giggled and waited for his uncle to laugh. That was the funniest joke he knew and anything funny about Hercules was generally good for at least a smile.

Ares snarled as he continued to pace in the throne room.

Strife watched his uncle pace and fought the urge to join him. He didn’t though, because Strife knew his agitation would only feed Ares’. The young god squirmed on the step he was sitting on. Sitting still made his hips and back hurt something fierce. That was why he was always on the move. It hurt too much to sit still.

Strife jumped as Ares punched a statue.

Strife sighed and with a wave of his hand, he reformed the crumbled marble. This was going to be a long week and damn he missed his friend.

12 noon

They had chained Joxer to the wall. His aching arms were pulled high above his head. His face was pressed against the rough plaster. Joxer stood precariously on his tiptoes trying to alleviate some of the pressure on his abraded wrists.

Just minutes earlier he had been slumped in his chair, facing the Questioners. Several of them had been haranguing him when abruptly one of them had said, “Take him to the Torturers.” There was blessed silence for a short time and then here he was.

Someone came up to stand behind him. His captor was standing so close that Joxer could feel the man’s breath on the back of his head. Joxer shivered in fear. The man didn’t say anything. He just stood there, for several long minutes. Joxer was unnerved by the quiet. After the endless noise from the Questioners this silence was scary.

Joxer jumped when he heard a loud crack. It was a whip! ‘Oh gods, no, not a whip.’ There was another crack and then fire erupted across his shoulders. Joxer cried out in pain. Another lash hit on his bottom and he arched forward into the rough wall. Plaster dug into his bare hips, making an angry scrape.

“Stop! Oh gods, please stop.”

The Torturer heard Joxer’s reference to “gods” and was disgusted. He pulled his arm back as far as he could and hit harder.

Joxer’s screams echoed through the silence.

The blows continued until Joxer passed out. When he came to, they started up again. Joxer was left chained to the wall, barely conscious and whipped off and on for 3 hours.

3 in the afternoon

Joxer was brought back to the chamber where the Questioners were and shoved back down onto the chair. A rough rope was looped around his waist and another at chest level, just under his arms. They were tightened until he gasped for breath. Only then did the Guards loosened the ropes a little bit before they were knotted. Not out of pity. No, they just didn’t want him passing out…too soon.

The young immortal could breathe, but the ropes dug into his exposed torso. Cutting it. Little bits of rope broke off and worked their way into his skin. Being tied like that pulled Joxer back firmly against the chair. This ensured that his striped back and bottom were in constant contact with the rough chair. His arms were tied behind him again and his legs were pulled apart.

Joxer was in agony.

“I’m not a witch, I promise.” Joxer moved around, trying to get comfortable. The widely spaced slats of the chair kept pinching his damaged bottom. “I swear I’m not.” Joxer looked at the grim men beseechingly. “*Please* let me have something to drink.”

The Questioners ignored his pleas. The tears of pain streaming down Joxer’s pale face only brought nods of satisfaction. As devout Christians it was their jobs to save this wretch’s soul. No matter how long or by what means that they had to employ to do it.

They kept him there for 3 hours.

Ares watched Bliss flying around the room. He looked like a pale little bumblebee, buzzing from one spot to another. His little blond curls bounced as Bliss twirled and tried to do a somersault. Ares’ grandson was just learning how to fly and had been eager to show his grandpa how good he was doing.

Ares tried to smile at the tiny winged boy, but it came out as more of a pained grimace. All he could think of was Joxer. Joxer’s straight brown hair bouncing as he tried to drag Ares over to look at some interesting new rock or flower he’d found. Ares wondered where Joxer was, what he was doing and if he missed Ares half as much as Ares missed him.

Cupid saw his father’s preoccupation and sighed. He’d been pretty sure the diversion with Bliss probably wouldn’t work. His dad was too worried about Joxer to be cajoled into a better mood.

The winged god wondered if he would ever find someone that he could love that much. He thought about his ex-wife, Psyche and shuddered. She was as cold and unfeeling as a block of marble. Cupid wanted somebody warm and loving, like Joxer.

Why couldn’t he find somebody like Joxer?

Cupid looked over at Ares and sighed again. He hoped his father hadn’t messed everything up. Someone as special as Joxer didn’t come along very often. God’s know he knew that was true. Cupid had been looking for several hundred years and hadn’t found anybody yet.

The only reason that he’d married Psyche was because he was clumsy and got stuck with one of his own love arrows. Even under its spell he had realized what they had wasn’t really love, but he had been lonely and had decided to go along with it. The only good that that had come of that union was flying around the statues.

The two lonely men watched the little boy flying around the table. One was missing his love, the other was just missing love.

6 in the evening

A trembling Joxer was taken back to the Torturers. The hard faced man yanked Joxer’s arms back and tied them together behind him. He ignored Joxer’s scream of pain as his painfully swollen shoulders were twisted around. The Torturer’s tight grip on his arms the only thing that was keeping Joxer upright as his vision wavered and dimmed.

‘I don’t understand why they are doing this. Obviously I’m not a witch. If I were, I would have done something magical and gotten the Tartarus out of here before now.’

Joxer felt something scratchy slide across and then slither between his bare buttocks that snapped him awake. He started to panic, until he realized it was a rope that was being tied around his wrists, over the ropes already there. He vaguely heard the Torturer say “strappedo” before he walked away.

Joxer was left naked and trembling in the middle of the chamber. Now he was panicking again. ‘Gods only know what they’re going to do know.’ Joxer tried to think positively. He’d survived being whipped, he could survive whatever this was.

Then the Torturer began turning a crank and the rope started going up. So did Joxer. He gasped as his arms were pulled up and back. The Torturer didn’t stop his torment. Joxer’s feet left the floor and the pressure on his arms increased tenfold as all of his weight was concentrated on his wrists and shoulders.

Joxer cried out, “STOP! Pleasepleaseplease stop.” The Torturer’s impassive expression never changed and he kept cranking.

‘Joxer, stop begging. That only makes it worse; they like to see you beg.’ Joxer closed his eyes tight. ‘Please,’ he prayed, ‘please let it be over soon.’

Finally he realized he had stopped rising. Fearfully, Joxer opened his eyes and gave out a panicked shriek.

He was suspended 30 feet in the air.

The man standing safely on the ground watched the young man twisting in the air. Then the Torturer let the pulley go and Joxer dropped. Joxer screamed in absolute terror as he plunged towards the ground. The Torturer stopped the rope when Joxer was halfway down. The abrupt stop wrenched Joxer’s shoulders up at an even more unnatural angle and he screamed again. When he ran out of breath and stopped screaming, Joxer was dropped again, almost to the ground this time. Joxer dangled, a couple of feet above the ground.

The Torturer came over and stood in front of the sobbing immortal. The man’s emotionless face never changed as he reached down and put both hands between Joxer’s legs. The Torturer gazed off into space, seemingly bored, as he began to knead the exposed flesh. Joxer had to endure being fondled as his arms and back were in agony and he hung, suspended in mid-air.

After a few minutes he was raised back up. Joxer was dropped again and again and again. For an hour.

7 in the evening

A barely conscious Joxer was brought back to the Questioners and his chair. They restrained him again and questioned the young man, unceasingly for hours.

The zealous Questioner’s didn’t seem to notice or care that their “blasphemer” was incoherent and barely conscious. That didn’t matter to the men. They were saving his soul after all.

In one corner of the room, several of the Guards played a game of chance. Their cheers were oddly interspaced with the haranguing of the Questioners.

3 in the morning

Joxer was unceremoniously tossed into his cell. He rolled bonelessly and was left where he lay, in the middle of a pile of moldy straw and excrement. The feces was smeared across his back and into the open wounds. By the next morning infection had already begun.

The young immortal couldn’t even cry. His throat hurt from all the screaming and pleading he had done.

Moans could be heard from the other prisoners. Despair hung heavy in the air. Nobody expected to leave the castle alive. There would be no rescue; after all, Queen Isabella herself had sanctioned these acts of redemption. Their only hope was to die a little sooner.

“Joxer the mighty…he roams….through the ………countryside….”

The weak, painfully cracking voice was as comforting to the people there as a lullaby.

“…..righting wrongs……and singing songs….”

Thus ended Day 2