Author's Note:
Continuing from last time, the content is exactly what the title says. Once again, the section after the *** mark contains some rough parts, so please be careful if that's not your thing. ...Actually, this whole chapter is pretty much like that... Also, I've been getting a lot of messages and comments asking "How much longer will the torture scenes go on?" so let me address that here. This is just tentative, but among the chapters in this Impel Down arc, the ones containing torture scenes, including the ones focused mainly on torture, will probably... maybe wrap up by the end of this week at most, I think. If you'd prefer to skip ahead or read it all at once, waiting until the weekend or early next week might get you past the worst of it. ...Again, this is just tentative (second time saying that). Anyway, here we go. Chapter 155.
---
The first day after my first "torture," my back just hurt. Endlessly.
Stinging, throbbing, aching... I couldn't even settle on the right word, or rather, all of them jumbled together seemed to apply at once. Point is, it hurt.
Lying down was too painful, so that night I slept sitting up.
Every time I shifted, my clothes rubbed against the wounds and the pain was bad enough that I considered just taking them off. But the act of removing them would hurt too, and it was far too embarrassing, so I gave up. I think I mentioned this before, but the cells here are visible from the men's cells, and male guards make regular rounds.
The other women in my cell gave me looks that said, "Yeah, we know the feeling."
The first time's the worst, they said.
But honestly, more than the pain itself, what terrified me was the realization that I'd have to keep enduring torture like this going forward.
It scares me and makes me sick just saying it, but this was only the introduction. There are far more types of torture waiting, and they have all the time in the world.
How long? Until I say "yes" to the Government's proposal. Or until I die.
That's what Sadi-chan had told me at the end of the last session, while I lay there unable to even speak, all strength drained from my body, face a mess of sweat and tears.
And true to those words, from that day on, my grueling days of torture began.
As a rule, torture was administered every other day.
On torture days, it would be conducted in a block of time during the morning or afternoon, with the rest of the day left free.
The following day would be completely empty. Eat, sleep, let the wounds and exhaustion from the previous day heal.
Then the day after that, torture again.
That was the basic cycle. With some exceptions.
The content was different each time, and of course the degree of suffering varied too.
None of them were easy, mind you, but the Whipping on the first day might have been the worst for me personally. The shock of experiencing pain like that for the very first time probably had something to do with it. And, well, the nature of it too.
Among the other tortures, some I could endure with relative composure, while others had me screaming and crying.
Let me introduce a few, shall I?
Some of the ones I've been subjected to over this period.
***
[Torture No. 1: Water Torture]
Even the single term "water torture" apparently covers a wide variety of methods.
There's the primitive kind where they grab your head and shove it into a large basin filled with water, holding you under until you're on the verge of drowning before yanking you back up, over and over.
Then there's the more elaborate version where you're restrained with handcuffs and shackles attached to a pulley system, hoisted up and suspended over the water, then lowered in and out to make you suffer.
Or there's one where a prisoner is locked in a small room that's flooded with water, leaving only a tiny gap near the ceiling with a sliver of air, and left like that for hours on end. Apparently this one is only used on non-Ability Users. If an Ability User's body is submerged in a large volume of water, their strength drains away, making it impossible to even stand, and they'd simply drown.
So there are various kinds, but the water torture I received was different from all of those, though closest to the first.
Imagine the setup at a barber shop or hair salon where they wash your hair after a cut. You lie back in a reclining chair or on a table, your head extending over a sink basin, and they wash your hair with running water. Now replace the sink basin with a water trough and the reclining chair with a restraint table.
Strapped to the table with my limbs immobilized, I was lowered headfirst, face-up, into the water.
Because I was face-up, it wasn't simply that I couldn't breathe. Water poured relentlessly into my mouth and nose, and the suffering was immense. I tried to lift myself up, but between being held down and the Seastone draining my strength, I couldn't raise my face out on my own. The agony just went on and on.
Water flooded into my stomach faster than I could possibly swallow it, filling not just my stomach but forcing its way into places water was never meant to go. When my body finally started convulsing uncontrollably, they'd pull my head above the surface at last.
"Guh, bweh! Hack, cough... hkk...! Haah... haah... blrgh!?"
But before I could even catch my breath, back under I went.
Nearly drowned, then allowed to breathe at the last second, over and over endlessly.
I couldn't breathe. The back of my nose burned.
Tears spilled from my eyes, only to dissolve instantly into the water.
And sometimes, right when I was desperately holding my breath, trying to endure...
A fist slammed into my stomach.
"Gh, GLRB!? Blb, blrblrblrb...!"
Punched in the gut, forced to expel whatever air I had left.
It was relentlessly agonizing, but at the same time, this torture apparently served a dual purpose, targeting "humiliation" as well.
As I mentioned, with this method you end up swallowing massive quantities of water every time you're submerged. Your stomach swells to bursting. You drink liter after liter, enough to worry about water intoxication.
That alone is miserable, but the ordeal continues for hours.
And they don't let you use the bathroom.
The result...
The dam breaks.
A grown woman wetting herself, dignity and all, a stain spreading across prison clothes while the surrounding guards watch and laugh.
And at those moments, and only those moments, they don't submerge you. They just leave you there, exposed to their stares for what feels like forever. That's when it really hit me that this was a type of torture designed to degrade your sense of dignity.
***
[Torture No. 2: Bondage Suspension]
A torture where you're bound with sturdy rope and suspended in the air.
Of course, it's not just about being immobilized. You're tied in a calculated position designed to maximize pain and suffering when hoisted up.
Unfortunately, I don't have much knowledge in that area, so I can't name the specific tying techniques, but the bindings already caused pain in my arm, leg, and shoulder joints even before I was lifted.
Then a rope extending from my back was threaded through a pulley, and I was hauled up and left hanging.
The weight of my own body drove the ropes deep into my flesh, and my joints screamed as force was applied in directions they were never meant to bend. It wasn't my imagination; even breathing became difficult. Was my diaphragm being compressed?
Creaking, grinding sounds came from all over my body, making it painfully clear I was being pushed right to the edge of breaking.
On top of that, the jailers would add weights, or toy with me by grabbing my body and yanking downward. Each time, searing pain shot through both the bound areas and my joints.
And this one was humiliating too, not just painful.
Because of how the ropes were tied, and I'll say it again, I don't know the name, the rope dug into my crotch and rear, feeling like it would split me apart, chafing and cutting in. Meanwhile, the binding forced my chest forward, each breast prominently emphasized and pushed outward.
For an erotic torture, the actual agony seemed way too high...!
And while I had my clothes on for this, looking around, I could see several other prisoners, men and women alike, who'd been stripped naked before being suspended.
Same as with the water torture, no bathroom breaks. Some had already lost that battle too.
It felt like they were telling me: be grateful we're still letting you keep your clothes on.
And honestly, I think that was exactly the message.
Meaning that eventually, I too would be up there like that, stripped of every last piece of clothing...
***
[Torture No. 3: Beating]
A torture where you're tied to a thick pillar or bound to a horizontally suspended wooden rod and beaten.
I've seen this kind of thing in my past life, watching period dramas on TV. You know, when a kunoichi gets captured by the Wicked Magistrate or a shipping magnate? ...Does anyone even get that reference?
Beyond the obvious pain, unlike a whip, the blows are blunt rather than sharp. The impact doesn't just affect the surface; it reaches deep inside. Muscles ache. Bones ache.
The fact that they managed to calibrate their strikes to avoid actually breaking bones might, in a twisted way, speak to their skill.
Still, they didn't limit themselves to areas with bones. Strikes to soft areas like the stomach knocked the breath right out of me.
Internal bleeding left bruises in multiple places. Visually gruesome too.
It wasn't just striking either. They'd jab with the rod, or grind it into me with a twisting motion to inflict pressure pain. It worked on both body and mind.
The one mercy was that it ended relatively quickly, perhaps because the direct physical damage was greater than other methods.
***
[Torture No. 4: Electric Shock]
Exactly what the name says: a torture that delivers electric shocks.
First, I was strapped to a heavy chair, completely immobilized. Arms and legs locked in place. The only things that could move were my fingertips and toes.
In that state, a metal rod crackling with sparks was thrust in front of me, then deliberately, slowly brought closer so I could see it clearly as it approached my body.
The instant it was about to make contact...
"Ah, guh... g-g-g-g. G-g-gah!?"
The sensation of electric current tearing through my body turned my mind blank white.
At the same time, my body tried to thrash in response to the violent stimulus, but bound as I was, all I could do was jerk and twitch in place, bouncing against the restraints. That was all I could do.
You don't get many opportunities to be hit with electricity, so I'd had no idea what that kind of pain even felt like. Couldn't have imagined it.
This was brutal. Painful, and searing hot.
Enel's lightning... would it have felt like this if I'd actually been hit?
I'd deflected every last bolt. Never took a single one.
Worst of all, the shock ripped through my insides, an overwhelming wrongness ballooning outward from within. And I felt my heart lurch, slamming against my chest with a violent thud.
Did the rest of my organs go haywire too, even just for a moment?
Even after the rod was pulled away, my body kept trembling for a while. I couldn't breathe properly, and strange gurgling sounds rose from my stomach.
Spots flickered behind my eyes, cold sweat broke out everywhere, and my body refused to cooperate. The sheer parade of discoveries about how the human body reacts was almost overwhelming.
...So overwhelming that the pain itself barely registered. Silver lining, I suppose.
More than anything, I was scared of cardiac arrest or arrhythmia.
I'd never before heard, or felt, my own heartbeat that loud and that clear.
The damage lingered, though. After I was released, every part of me burned and ached, and it was miserable.
***
[Torture No. 5: Poison Gas]
Without any explanation, I was locked in a small room, and then white smoke came blasting down from the ceiling.
The room was too small to escape it. I inhaled it. And the instant I did...
"Ugh... hack, cough, hrkk... urgh, URGHH!? Guh... it hurts... can't breathe... haah, haah... GWAAAH...!?"
My eyes, nose, and throat all screamed in pain, and I was racked with violent coughing. The coughs came so fast there was no room to breathe in between. Absolutely agonizing.
Shortly after, nausea hit. I couldn't hold it in and threw up the breakfast I'd just eaten.
Then my stomach started cramping, and I collapsed, curling into myself.
Gurgling sounds rose from deep inside my body. What was this gas? What was happening inside me? The worry was overwhelming.
My body reflexively gasped for oxygen, taking huge breaths against the agony, but that only drew in more poison gas, making it worse. A vicious cycle.
Sweat, tears, snot, all streaming freely as I writhed in misery. Left like that for well over an hour before it finally ended.
But even after it was over, the pain in various parts of my body lingered, and the chaos in my stomach continued.
It took nearly a full day for the poison to work its way out of my system. Even on the rest day that followed, it felt like the torture had never stopped.
***
[Torture No. 6: Poison]
This one wasn't the kind where you're taken to a separate room.
One day, I ate the food they brought as usual, and the taste was off.
At the time, I figured they'd just used old ingredients or something. But a while after finishing the meal, my stomach started hurting, and it became unmistakably clear that something was wrong.
When I asked one of the women in my cell, she told me matter-of-factly: "They probably put poison in the food."
The idea that they'd go so far as to weaponize daily meals as another form of torture sent my head spinning with shock and anger, but the cramping and other sensations surging up from my stomach quickly shoved those thoughts aside.
That day, I ended up needing the toilet far more times than usual.
And those kinds of days came around every few days.
There was no way to predict when. Sometimes it fell on a torture day, sometimes on a rest day.
And when it hit on a torture day, the scheduled torture still went ahead as planned. Double the suffering. No, far more than double. And humiliating on top of it.
When it coincided with water torture or Bondage Suspension, the results were especially catastrophic. I'd rather not describe exactly how.
***
[Torture No. 7: Bathing]
Prisoners are occasionally permitted to bathe.
Apparently this is because letting hygiene deteriorate to the point of spreading disease would be problematic, so it's done as needed. Many prisoners genuinely looked forward to bathing as a chance to refresh themselves.
But this was nothing like a normal bath where you soak in hot water and leisurely wash your body.
It wasn't even a bath, really.
Just a long, narrow corridor. Showerheads lined the ceiling, raining down not hot water but cold. Prisoners had to strip naked, line up single file, and wash themselves as they walked through the corridor, scrubbing off the grime under the cold water. You had to get as clean as possible before reaching the other end.
Like some Underground Kingdom. I couldn't bring myself to call this "bathing."
And yet even that felt like a welcome change of pace. That's how bad life here was.
But even this so-called bath time could be turned into torture.
On bathing days, I'd sometimes be told, "Not you. You're separate," and led to a different room alone. Stripped naked there.
Then blasted with scalding hot water from a shower.
Not the overhead kind either. A jailer would hold a hose with a showerhead attached to the end and spray me down as carelessly as watering a flower bed.
They said it was the same 100-degree water as the "Hell's Lukewarm Bath." It came at considerable force. Painful, scalding, absolutely brutal. When it hit my face, I could barely breathe.
Other times, it would be cold water instead. The same punishing force.
The temperature wasn't ice water or anything, just regular cold water, but being blasted with huge volumes of it at high pressure drained my body heat fast.
My hands and feet went numb, and the chill lingered long afterward.
I'd read somewhere that cold showers flush out fatigue-causing substances and are actually more effective for recovery than warm water, but there are limits.
Even when the "bath" was this miserable, the need to stay clean didn't change. I had to grit my teeth and somehow manage to wash my body.
Scrubbing every part of myself while being tormented, while being watched.
When it finally ended and I was allowed to put my clothes back on, the relief was overwhelming.
***
[Torture No. 8: Public Spectacle]
Not much to explain. The name says almost everything.
In terms of the experience: roughly zero percent physical pain, one hundred percent humiliation.
This seemed to be a torture primarily for female prisoners. Makes sense; nobody would care about putting men on display. Besides me, other women from my cell and from other cells were subjected to it as well.
The procedure is simple.
All your clothes are stripped away, and you're restrained in a highly visible, high-traffic area. Then left there.
That's it. But being unable to hide your bare body, exposed to the constant stares of guards, jailers, and other prisoners, the vast majority of whom are men...
Every inch of you is on display, top to bottom. Vulgar catcalls fly your way.
What's more, while this particular torture is being carried out, the guards and jailers do almost nothing to stop the heckling or other crude behavior.
No dignity left. A torture that digs into your heart and leaves scars.
The methods of restraint varied. Sometimes your arms were pulled up and you were suspended like during the Whipping. Sometimes you were tied with legs spread apart. Sometimes you were handcuffed behind your back and lashed to a pole. Sometimes one leg was hoisted up to leave you completely exposed.
The worst of all was the Guillotine Restraint. Know what that is?
A board with three holes in a horizontal row for your neck and both wrists, locking them in place.
Your hands can't move at all, so you can't cover anything. And when they fix you in that position with your head lowered, in exactly the posture of someone about to be guillotined... things get truly awful.
Which is to say, they did.
The posture naturally forces your rear end to jut out behind you. Everything exposed.
Meanwhile, your upper body is held nearly horizontal, so from the side, your breasts are completely visible. The slightest movement makes them sway.
I felt like a dairy cow in a milking stall. Miserable and mortifying.
The audience seemed to find it cause for celebration, though. Was my naked body really that thrilling?
Horrible as the humiliation was, I was told this still counted as mild since it stopped at just being looked at.
In the extreme case, you could simply not care and that would be the end of it. Some of the female prisoners stood there with total composure, an attitude of "It's not like I'm losing anything; look all you want."
But when it escalated further, it would shift to something more directly degrading. Using several conveniently selected male prisoners.
That was among the things I'd been shown during my initial tour.
In other words, for now, I was getting off with just being stared at. But if I kept being stubborn...
A jailer told me, with a mocking smile, that they were waiting for a favorable answer before it came to that. Said it while I was being watched.
☆☆☆
So that covers the basics.
There are plenty of other types of torture, and I even heard about kinds I haven't experienced yet from the women in my cell.
Every single one sounded horrible. Branding irons, sleep deprivation...
So far I've managed to endure, but I can feel my spirit being worn down, little by little.
This cycle of alternating between torture and rest days is well designed.
Rest days don't mean I can relax with a clear mind. Quite the opposite. Spending the day knowing that tomorrow brings more torture means my heart gets little rest. Maybe none at all.
I've read somewhere, in a book or manga, that pain you know for certain is coming is most frightening while you're waiting for it. Absolutely true.
Even so...
'Hang in there, hang in there... I'm okay. I'm still okay. Don't break, my heart.'
I can't abandon the resolve I made when I decided to become a writer. I can't forget it.
It's painful, it's agonizing, but I have reason to believe I can win.
Given the current timeline.
It's a meta reason, but...
'Before I was captured by Akainu, the Enies Lobby Arc had already concluded and the whole crew's Bounties had been updated. So after that comes Thriller Bark, Sabaody Archipelago, and Amazon Lily, then it should lead into the Impel Down arc and the Summit War Arc...! Once we get there, a chance to escape will come!'
I didn't know the exact duration, but it should be a few weeks at most, maybe a few months at the longest.
If that's all it takes, then I won't lose. No matter how much pain, no matter how much humiliation, I'll endure it all.
And when that time comes...
'I'll pay back everything they've done to me. A hundredfold...!'
To be continued...