Mr. Rydberger came out to visit Susan at 7AM on Tuesday morning. The sun was rising as he approached the naked girl in the pillory. A female student was hard at work tickling Susan's bare feet and Susan was writing in her wooden prison, laughing and crying at the abuse, her head flailing back and forth in the wooden stockade. Susan's senior classmates had begun to gather in the courtyard to see how the witch trials would continue on this second day. The teacher waived the student away from her victim and approached Susan with a water bottle and held it to her lips. She slurped down the water quickly, her first sustenance in over 24 hours. She was exhausted, mentally and physically, and contemplated again using the safe word she had been provided. But after a second bottle of water, fortified with vitamins, she found herself feeling better and declared to Rydberger that she was ready for the day's demonstration.
The teacher released Susan from the pillory and pulled the burlap dress back over her head and arms. The girl was grateful for the cover as it had gotten chilly overnight and she was shivering, despite the small heater that had been placed near her. Rydberger turned to face the class. "Today we are going to discuss further humiliations that were used against suspected witches, both in the colonies and throughout Europe. We are going to start with a rather simple one. Susan, if you could hold your arms out to your sides, please?"
The girl did as she was told and the teacher placed a glass cup in each of her upturned palms. He filled the cups to the rim with liquid. Susan stood still, trying to keep the cups upright. Her arms were already straining having to hold them out to her side. "You might ask yourself, why wouldn't the victim just dump the liquid out? Well, that was the test. The solution would be ice cold as you have here, and again, witches could not handle ice cold water. So if the witch simply dumped the water, it would be obvious she was a witch. So he or she was expected to hold the cups in his or her hands for as long as possible. You see, though, the cups are not filled with ice water but instead a caustic lye solution. So as the solution drips onto her hands, it will burn. This would be seen as another sign of a witch, supposedly cold water burning her hands. She would, of course, likely spill the cups once the burning started, proving she was a witch."
Rydberger turned to the class and began his lecture on the Salem witch trials. Susan tried to stand perfectly still, determined not to spill the liquid. Even though she was fairly sure her cups were not filled with acid, a part of her still worried. She slowly lowered her arms so they were no longer aligned with her shoulders which gave her shoulders some relief although her biceps were still burning. The teacher was halfway through his discussion of one of the trials when Susan couldn't handle the pressure any more and she dropped her arms, the cups clinking to the ground as the liquid spilled out. A few students yelled out 'witch' at her.
The teacher turned and smiled at her. "That was pretty impressive, Susan. I didn't expect you to be able to hold that position for more than a minute. I guess it is those strong cheerleader arms."
"The next punishment for our witch doesn't require much in the way of strength, although endurance shall be required," Rydberger said. He brought out another large burlap sack and asked Susan to step into it. He told her to sit down, and she did, and he pulled the sack over her head and tied it tight, cocooning her in darkness inside it. She shifted as the sack was lifted into the air and she felt herself being carried across the courtyard. Rydberger and two male senior students had picked her up and carried her to a large oak tree in the courtyard. With a rope thrown over one of the branches, the sack was lifted into the air so Susan dangled from the branch, her knees up against her chest, her butt dropping toward the ground.
"Class, we call this the 'witch's cradle'," the teacher said. "It is a simple punishment, as the witch simply hangs from the tree branch. As you might expect, the sun will make it quite warm for our witch. But the real punishment is what the townspeople would do." Rydberger grabbed the end of the sack and pulled it up then let go, causing it to swing in a long arc, twisting as it swung. Susan's body shifted inside the sack, spinning around and back. "This punishment was designed to drive the witch mad, you see."
The teacher added some extra torque to the next swing, causing the sack to rotate all the way around and then come spinning back as it returned towards him. Susan could feel herself getting dizzy already as the teacher continued to spin and swing her body inside the burlap cocoon. She was already sweating profusely and being stuck in the claustrophobic sack was causing her breathing to be labored. The sack was being pulled in different directions, which caused her move inside it to the point she was almost upside down now. Or was she? She couldn't be sure which way was up or down. She tried closing her eyes but that only made the disorientation worse.
Around and around and back and forth she went, being swung higher and higher by students and teacher alike, batted around like a cheap piñata at a child's birthday party. She was glad she had not eaten much because she surely would have vomited by now. Rydberger mentioned to the students this was a possibility and then the witch would have spent the day in her own vomit, adding to her humiliation and discomfort. Susan was willing herself not to succumb to that.
The students eventually tired of the game, or maybe the class bell rang, because Susan felt herself slowing to a stop and just hanging in mid-air from the tree branch. The bag was lowered to the ground and untied and she slumped out of it as it was released. The world was still spinning and she had a massive headache and she finally could resist no longer and retched onto the dirty ground beside her. Luckily, only the teacher was present to see her. He came over and helped her to her feet and led her away from the tree to one of the chairs in the courtyard.
"Are you okay, Susan," he asked, genuine concern in his voice. The girl couldn't do much more than nod. "I have one more demonstration planned for this afternoon, and I am afraid it is quite diabolical. Are you going to be able to handle it or should I go get the headmaster?"
Susan spoke slowly, "If I can just rest for a little while, I'll be ready to go this afternoon."
The teacher nodded and told her to lie down on the ground nearby while he went to get her some food from the cafeteria. She hadn't slept or eaten in a day and she felt dazed and weak as she lay down on the grass beside the courtyard. She curled up into a fetal position and closed her eyes, trying to get a few small moments of rest.
Mr. Rydberger was gone only a little while and returned with a plate of food, some soup and several bottles of water. He woke Susan from her short nap and encouraged her to eat the offered food while he left to prepare for the afternoon ritual.
He returned a short while later with a large iron frame in the shape of a human body, with metal arms and legs outstretched in an 'x. A long metal pole extended from the lower end of the frame. Rydberger lay the frame down on the concrete courtyard and removed several bolts and Susan saw the unit split into two pieces. "It's commonly known as a 'gibbet'," he said, seeing that the contraption had caught her eye. "This one has been specially made to your exact measurements. Why don't you come over here?"
