How long, she wondered. How long the torment? Two hours was common. Four nothing unusual. Six, even. Once, at least, a woman had worn one more than a day – "so that the blood was forced out of her mouth," she thought, seeing the words on the fading page where she'd read them. A farmer's wife. She'd been driven through the streets with the bridle on her head and a rope about her neck like a dog.
"And that is the punishment which magistrates do inflict upon chiding and scolding women; and I have often seen the like done to others." She murmured the words aloud before she realized that she had spoken, and startled as Richard crowded in at her elbow.
"Yes," he said, "and look. Have you ever seen that before?"
Bridget shook her head as he touched the long metal rod fixed to the back. She'd noticed it already. She'd never seen anything like it, in person or in pictures. It was a straight, heavy bar nearly three feet in length, with leather straps and an iron buckle at the middle. The leather was cracked and nearly perished with age, so brittle that she didn't dare touch it – but the bar looked ancient as well. Original construction. She was sure of it.
"A ramrod," breathed Richard, running his finger lovingly down its length. Bridget felt a prickling discomfort as he caressed the thing. She would have stepped back, but there was nowhere to step; he'd crowded in behind her at the table, and now she felt with a sudden chill how close and tight it was in the corner. She forced herself to respond calmly as she looked for a way to edge out around him.
"Really? I've never seen one on a bridle."
"Oh yes," said Richard. "This is a very special piece. I don't think you'll see another like it." He looked, Bridget realized, much too interested. And in an instant, she didn't give a damn about that bridle. She never wanted to see it again. As a symbol, an historical artifact, a metaphor for the devoicing of a minority discourse community, it was a fascinating concept. But here in all of its ugly reality, it was starting to make her sick. It drew her eyes like a hideous corpse, and she wanted nothing but to be out of that house.
"You know, I really don't feel all that well –" she began, trying to slide past him. Richard carried on quietly, never looking up from the bridle – but never moving out of her way, either.
"The rod attaches down the woman's back," he said, stroking a squat, stubby finger along the metal brace. "Then she can't speak or bend. Or sit, even – see? It's too long. Down past her spine. She'd have to stand." His eyes took on a distant, dreaming look as he petted the obscene thing, and Bridget pressed back into the corner. In a moment of cold, clarifying fear, she realized, as her eyes darted about the room, that she was looking for a weapon. Richard's blank, mild eyes came up to meet hers, and he gathered the bridle up from the table as he stepped toward her into the corner.
"They used to hang the bridle by the chimney to let her know what to expect," he said, raising it slowly toward her face. Bridget shook her head, her mouth silently framing a protest. "I wonder if they chained her to that hook – once they had it really on her."
One tiny, sickened corner of Bridget's mind noted his straining erection, the dark spot of wetness spreading where his pants were tented by the press of his cock. Then, with a convulsive effort, she threw herself past him toward the door.
He struck her hard in the small of her back, and she tasted dirt and carpet as she slammed into the floor. It knocked the sense out of her; he'd hit her like a linebacker, driving into her body in ruthless, brutal blow that shot the breath from her lungs. She tried to crawl out from under him, but he slapped her hard, open-handed but with all of his might, so that her head rang with it. Her hands gripped and clawed at the floor, but he jammed his knee between her shoulder blades and crushed her to the ground. His hands closed on her neck, fierce and brutal, and a moment later, with a frantic struggle that ended in a scream, she felt the bridle slip over her head.
The bit jammed into her mouth. She tasted iron and ancient blood. She screamed again, but the pain was instant and searing, lacerating her tongue. She choked and tried to pull back, but Richard forced the cage shut around her head and shot the lock into place. As screams of desperation welled up within her, he forced his knee into her spine, grinding the sharp, iron-cold pain of the ramrod into it. Then he shot the leather bands under her. He was buckling them, she realized, her mind reeling. She struggled, but feebly; she could hardly draw breath now, with his weight crushing down on her chest and her mouth crammed with the dead, heavy thrust of the iron.
It was done. Bridget lay sobbing. She could feel him over her, feel, even, the nauseating stab of his erection jamming into her back. The sick fucker. She tried to crawl away from him and he let her, standing with his back against the door. Weeping, pawing helplessly at the wall –
you sick, fucking bastard!
– she somehow dragged herself to her feet, feeling the fierce welt of the rod all down her back and the bite of the leather straps on her body. They gripped her waist, digging in cruelly.
That's not right,
she thought muzzily.
They ought to be falling apart.
But when she clawed at them, they were strange and terrifying beneath her touch. Slick. Smooth. Unyielding.
She turned, backing into the wall behind her. What else could she do? She shuddered as she looked up to find Richard watching her intently. He had unzipped his pants and had his thick, stubby cock in his hand, jerking it. His mouth was half-open, his expression almost glazed as he watched her.
"Why?" She wanted to ask it, but the mutilated gulp of her words left her gagging with horror and choked-back speech. She tore frantically at the cage, staggering against the walls as she fought the thing in sheer blind panic. Then, suddenly, she froze.
She'd felt it.
A moment later she felt it again.
It was moving.
The heavy bit stifled the scream that tore from her lips. Richard watched, unchanging, fisting his cock with tense attention as Bridget beat the iron with her fists and tore hopelessly at the straps. It was moving. The grip about her waist was cinching, getting tighter, and then, with a bloom of utter horror, she felt the bit twitch and writhe in her mouth. Shuddering, crashing against furniture and clawing for purchase, she staggered across the room. There was a mirror over the mantelpiece. She found her own image in it, and what she saw stifled all screams together.
Demon. Imp, homunculus, devilkin – a hideous, reptilian thing with long spidery arms, wicked black bat wings, and a writhing tail that hung and lashed the length of her back. It was crouched and wound about her head, grinning a deep, evil grin that split its jaws open in saw-ridges of bone. Shrunken. Wicked. Eyes gleaming with a rapacity beyond all speech – beyond all that it had torn from her.
Its arms were wrapped around her head, the bars of the cage that had held her. Its legs gripped her waist, the cruel scaly spurs of its heels digging into her flesh. And as she stared, shuddering, it raised its head, grinned to her in the mirror, and then shot its thick, forked tongue back into her mouth, jamming it deep and stabbing its barbs into her tongue.
Her screams were swallowed in the demon's assault. She clawed and beat at it, trying to tear it from her back, but it only sank its talons into her hips and shoulders and jammed its tongue down into her throat, lapping and flickering, barbed and vicious, until she felt the blood flowing over her lips. Its tail curved tight to her body, writhing up between her legs, and in a daze of horror she felt its remorseless intent. The tip of it twitched, darted, then shot up under her skirt and thrust blindly at her hose and panties. Bridget screamed, but her cries were smothered in its burrowing snout as she clawed frantically at her body. She fought for breath, panic rising as she struggled to inhale and the demon's grip dug into her flesh, its obscenely writhing tongue pressing ever deeper until there was no breath, no strength, no help as a cold and coiling length slid supple between her thighs. Bridget's eyes rolled slowly up as the agile tip of it wormed against her, tore through her hose, slithered around her panties, and rammed hungrily into her.
