Chapter 53
Dec. 10th, 2005 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seymoure“Spoils of Endless War”
Ethel Muntz couldn’t move. Her hands and arms were stretched over her head, going in opposite directions. Her legs were stretched likewise, with the effect being that she was suspended in an “X” form.
It was not a restful position.
It wasn’t, she thought, pulled to the point of being torturous, other than having her own weight pulling on her arms. It wasn’t like a drawing and quartering. In fact there was a harness around her torso that held most of her weight. The harness went from the far wall ahead of her and, she thought, to the far wall behind her.
The chamber lighting around her did not allow her to see anything farther than ten feet away from her. She was in a sphere of blue light, encircled by a darker room that felt totally disconnected from her.
“Is there anyone there?” she called to the darkness.
“Do you come to spy?” came a voice from the black.
“I don’t keep secrets well enough to ever be a spy,’ She admitted, “I told everyone at my eleventh Thanksgiving dinner that Aunt Elizabeth was having electrolysis. I was never invited back.”
“Do you work for the Enemy?” said a nearing woman’s voice.
“I have tried my whole life not to have enemies,” Ethel looked around hopefully, “Although there are some literary critics that I no longer send Christmas Cards too.”
The giant woman with blue skin that she had seen before came out of the shadows.
“We know nothing of you, and these are dangerous times,” she said to her captive.
“I know about the dangerousness of the times,” Ethel said with a tinge of anger, “I was the one brought her and attacked, and then strung up like a prize goose.”
“I must look into you waking mind to truly see your intent,” the blue woman said, “But I can only do so if you allow it.”
“Will I be able to get my feet back on the ground after you do that?” Muntz responded.
“If you are not a spy you will be treated as a guest,” was the answer.
At that moment a searing ax of pain cut through Ethel Muntz’s skull and threatened to cleave the top of her cranium into diced carrots and toss them on the pot roast of her over-cooked brain.
© 2005 by C. Wayne Owens
