The pain in Susan Mitchell's shoulders and arms was becoming almost too much for her to bear. She pulled down on the chains holding her arms over her head, trying to alleviate her agony. With her wrists tightly bound together, with ropes and knots crisscrossing each other, there was no chance of her getting her hands free. Her roped wrists were resting on a large metal hook. Heavy metal cables, at least a 1/2-inch thick, attached the hook through a pulley fastened to the ceiling of the cold school basement.
Today's contraption, like most of headmaster Stephen Krutz' creation was complicated and designed to humiliate and torture her. Susan wondered whether today's creation was his own idea or stolen from some perverted website or story like many of his others.
The other side of the cables around the pulley was attached to a large plastic rain barrel. When Susan had first been placed here several hours ago, the barrel was empty and probably weighed less than 20 pounds. It had dangled in mid-air behind her and she had been able to pull her arms down and relieve any strain on her shoulders. She had even been able to move around a little, although the foot-long spreader bar chained to her ankles limited her ability to walk much.
The barrel had not remained empty for long. Another similarly sized rain barrel was suspended from the ceiling nearby. A hose ran from the bottom of that barrel into the one connected to Susan's wrists. Slowly the first barrel was being filled with water from the other, weighing down the one attached to the woman's bound wrists. The original 20 pound weight had already increased significantly and the barrel was barely half full.
Susan pulled down on the chains again, trying to get some relief from the strain in her arms. The water in the barrel had probably increased to 100 pounds or so. This allowed Susan just to be able to get her wrists down to around the level of her eyes. But her arms soon weakened and she had to let the barrel move downward again, causing her muscles to ache once again. The young woman lifted herself up onto her tiptoes for a little while, which relieved the pressure in her shoulders, but that also only worked for so long before she had to allow all of the weight to pull on her shoulders and arms. And the barrel continued to fill.