West Valley High cheerleader Susan Mitchell remained suspended hogtied in mid-air for what seemed like an eternity for her, but in reality was only about 15 minutes as the teachers' wrapped up their professional development session. Several of the teachers were tasked with undoing the bondage they had placed the young girl in and then she was sent off for class for the day. Headmaster Krutz informed her that her new school uniform would be no clothes of any kind unless he provided them and that the steel handcuffs would remain around her wrists permanently unless he removed them. Susan was happy to get to attend her classes that day, although walking around naked in handcuffs in front of everyone was not how she had hoped to spend her senior year.
She reported to the headmaster's office as required on Tuesday morning and Krutz told her to report to Mr. Rydberger's classroom, where he informed her she would be helping him with a history lesson for his classes.
Mr. Rydberger greeted her at the door and informed her that he was starting a unit on medieval history and needed some assistance showing his classes life in medieval times. The young girl didn't think this sounded that bad until she saw some of the devices laid out on the teacher's desk.
When the first class came in and was seated, the history teacher began with a brief overview of the lesson plan, which was to focus on medieval torture devices. "The device I will demonstrate in this class is known as the 'brank' or 'scold's bridle'. It was supposedly used primarily on women who slandered their husbands or otherwise could not keep their mouths shut."
Rydberged picked up the device and showed it to the class. It was a metal cage with a metal peg sticking out from it. He picked it up and placed it over Susan's head, and the metal peg pressed down on her tongue as he tightened the device around her head. "As you can see, the bridle makes it impossible for the subject to move her tongue," he said. "If we had wanted to inflict pain upon our subject, we could have used a peg, or curb plate, with spikes or barbs on it, so if she tried to speak, it would injure her tongue and mouth". Susan was relieve the teacher hadn't pursued this option.
"In medieval times, once a shrew was restrained, she would be led through town wearing the bridle to enhance her humiliation. Mr. Jennings, could you come forward and take Miss Mitchell over to Mr. Kylie's history class so they can see our victim and her punishment?"
Jack Jennings came up and grabbed Susan's handcuffed wrists and pulled her toward the classroom door. With the bridle in place, she couldn't resist and show she plodded along beside him to the classroom down the hall. Mr. Kylie showed them in and Jack pulled Susan up and down each row so the students could get a closer look at the scold's bridle. He then returned to Mr. Rydberger's classroom, where he did the same. Rydberger lectured for the rest of the period on various medieval history topics with Susan standing naked and silent in front of the classroom.
For the next period, Rydberger introduced another device. This one was a large metal rod with two large forks on either side. He explained that it was called the heretic's fork. This particularly fork's tines were rounded, but he explained the real device would have had sharp spikes on both ends.
He placed one end of the device under Susan's chin and the other against her chest and used a piece of leather to tie the rod around the girl's neck. In this position, she was forced to hold her head up in the air.
"As you can see, Miss Mitchell cannot lower her head," the teacher explained. "A person wearing this device would usually be restrained in some way, perhaps suspended in air. They could not fall asleep or else the sharp points of the forks would penetrate their chest or throat. Now obviously here we have rounded off those points so as not to kill Miss Mitchell..." Susan was relieved once again, although the device was causing her quite a bit of agony all by itself. As the bell rang for third period, Susan was hoping for some relief, but didn't get any. She still wore the bridle and the fork and now Rydberger had produced a rather insidious looking device.