The Promise

"It won't be that cut and dry. I'll be haunted by the last two years until the end of my life."

"Will you always be bitter?"

"Yes I will I'm afraid."

"How bad does a woman have to be to be burned as a witch? Would casting a few spells do it? Or would she have to be seen riding a broomstick?"

"I think it was all or nothing. If one was caught practicing the Dark Arts, the punishment was death by burning. They kept it simple during those times. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, and humans either served Satan or the Almighty. The Two were at war and no prisoners were taken. Once you were caught, that was it for you."

"Let's see. My sister could accuse me of bewitching her husband who has fallen in love with me. Or it was I who made it stop raining because some young man spurned me. And it might have been from a spell I cast that the cows stopped giving milk. And of course who else but me would have been seen riding on a broomstick across the last full moon!"

"I had some other things in mind," he replies, his face now serious.

"Let's get into character. I'm going to dress up exactly the way you imagine your victim and put on lots of makeup, just like a movie actress!"

Evan takes a seat at the kitchen table and watches me shed my tank top and panties. He sips on his Corona as I don the black body hugging ankle length gown with bare arms and plunging neckline I have been informed is the get up that he has fantasized me wearing as I stand amidst the flames. The neckline plunges almost to my naval, with laces holding the edges together while still exposing a good bit of my cleavage. I step into a pair of high black leather soled shoes and pull the laces tight, hoping they will provide some insulation from the heat of the fire.

I then move to the bathroom to prepare my visage for the scene. I wash my face and then inspect my visage in the mirror. I outline my orbs with black eyeliner, coat my upper lids with blue shadow, and fill in my eyebrows with black pencil. My makeup base then goes on to cover my blemishes and give my skin a brighter hue. A little blush to my cheeks I hope will make saving me a little more appealing. I adorn my lips with purple lipstick and hope that I look sinister enough to merit being burned as a witch but alluring enough to be saved from the flames by which I will soon be surrounded.

I emerge from the bathroom and give my lover a toothy smile. I see the clothes line he sued to tie me up last night on the floor next to the kitchen table.

"It is your duty to tally my deeds in service of the Great Lord before my immolation," I insist.

He takes the final sip from the bottle of Corona and sets it down hard on the kitchen table. He grimaces in pain and then looks away from me. I think I see a tear in the corner of his right eye, but then he coughs as if he has something caught in his windpipe. He then bites his lower lip. I can tell he is holding back tears, but he refuses to show his sadness to me.

But I know something is wrong. My lover is in pain; but why at this moment of his triumph? Has his cancer come back? Or is he remembering his agony?

He gets up and retrieves a bottle of Jack Daniels from the cupboard next to the kitchen sink and brings it along with a shot glass back to the table. He sits down, pours himself a shot, and downs it.

"Of course, you must confess your crimes. One such as you would never betray your evil deeds willingly."

"The daughters of the Great Lord can never be made to admit the deeds done in His name! You will never break me!"

He pours himself another shot of whiskey and downs it. I look at the bottle, wondering why he hasn't offered me any. He moves the bottle closer to himself and laughs as I stand before him, clad as his fantasy girl, again suddenly afraid for my safety.

"We'll see."

He stands up, takes off his belt, folds it in half, and strikes the table, making a loud crack.

"There is the lash!"

He takes another swig of whiskey from the bottle as I shrink away from him.

"I confess! I am a servant of the Great Lord. But to reveal the secrets my sisters have taught me is forbidden. Allow me to join the Great Lord in his realm with my honor still intact. I implore you; do not put me to the test to make me reveal His secrets. Please spare me the pain of the lash!"

"No temptress, you must confess every one of your evil deeds! If you must be put to the test, so be it!"

I grab my bottle of Corona and throw the amber liquid down my throat, nearly emptying the bottle. Suddenly inebriated, I stagger to Evan and throw my arms around him. He stiffens when the cold beer bottle touches his back.

"Good man, I am frightened. My sisters and I never hurt a soul. I know I must be punished. But please don't torture me!" I plead.

He pushes me away, spins me around, seizes my arms and pulls them together behind me. I feel a rope being wrapped around my wrists and emit a grunt as he pulls it tight. Stunned, I offer no resistance as he wraps one of the ends transversely between my wrists and knots it to the other strand, cinching the ligature. I struggle to free my hands as he looks on, inspecting his work.

I turn around to face him, frowning, pleading with my eyes not to be tortured; hoping to be spared the pain I know a sorceress must face before she is delivered to the One She Serves. But my binding holds. The rope trailing from my wrists leads to a heap next to me on the floor. My executioner throws the end of the rope over one of the rafters and I watch the heap disappear.

"The strappado may help clarify some things that have been troubling me since you think today I should clear the air and start anew," Evan explains. He pours another shot of Jack Daniels into the glass and downs it as he I glares at me.

I now realize that my arms are to be raised above my head behind my back until excruciating pain in my arms and shoulders weakens my resolve not to betray the One whom I serve.

"Great Lord, take me now! Do not let this one who knows not Your benevolence torture me! But punish not this one who has me in his power!"

I hear the rope grinding as he pulls the free end over the rafter and I quiver in fear over the emotions that have overtaken my lover. Just as the rope tightens, I realize I can run and jerk the free end out of his hand, but I remember I have given myself to him to fulfill his fantasy.

Trusting that he loves me, I still do nothing to resist as my arms are jerked up into the air behind me. Sharp pain shoots through my shoulders as they bear my weight unnaturally and I cry out as I am forced to stand on my tiptoes.

"Oh god, this hurts so much! Great Lord, save me!"

"Save yourself! In whom have you put your faith?"

He jerks on the rope, forcing me to stand on my tiptoes. I know it will not be long before my muscles tire and my forefeet will be unable to bear my weight, after which the load from my sagging body will tear my arms from their sockets.

"OWWWW!" I shriek.

"Save your soul! Admit whom you serve!"

"Never; my lips will remain sealed! They shall never betray the secrets of the Great Lord!"

He loosens the rope and I sink to my heels. The pain becomes bearable.

He stands before his helpless prisoner and places his finger below my chin. He lifts my head up. Fear is in my eyes. I sense that he is reveling in my pain.

"When will you put an end to your suffering?"

"Sir, I have done nothing to deserve this. I am just a poor servant of the Great Lord of my mother. If I answer your questions, she and the other good spirits will shun me once I reach the Great Lord's Realm."

"Then renounce whom you have served! Become a servant of goodness and enter the realm of light after your sentence has been carried out!"

I have been acting the part of a witch being put to the test but Evan is not performing. He is torturing me to have his question answered. But I don't know who it is he thinks I serve. So I defend my legacy.

"My mother refused the poisons doctors would have given her to prolong her earthly existence so that her body would be pure when the time came for the vessel in which her soul dwelt to be returned to the Great Lord. As she lay dying, I admit it. I promised I would see her in the Great Lord's Realm. You cannot expect me to break such a solemn vow."

"The souls of those who forsake the gift of life are consigned to Hell. She is surely burning there along with those who have taken the lives of others!"

The pain in my arms has been bearable, but he now uses all his strength and hoists me up into the air so that my toes are off the floor. I kick my legs, instinctively searching for footing, as I slowly swing back and forth, shrieking at the top of my voice.

"What do you think of me now? Was I worth saving?" he shouts.

"A hundred times over," I reply, my feet now having been permitted to return to the floor

"Did you ever wish me dead?"

"Never!"

"Not even the day I shit all over the bed you had just changed?"

************************************************************************

I remembered Evan's first admission to my unit. It was the third straight day I had taken care of him. I had a headache. My lunch break was an hour overdo. I had just quit smoking and I needed a cigarette. And there was nobody to help change the young man's bed. I was having difficulty starting an IV on another patient and the unit secretary repeatedly called on the intercom, imploring me to hurry and get to Evan, that his mother was driving everyone crazy.

None of us thought Evan had a chance at that point. He was new to the hospital but already close to death. A year after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma, his bones were ridden with cancer and his doctors had pleaded that he forgo life sustaining treatment. But the young man had changed hospitals and doctors in hope of a cure. Two weeks before he entered the clinical trial that provided him the drugs that saved his life I almost killed him.

That afternoon I did wish to be allowed to hang the morphine infusion that would send him to the Great Beyond, and then go home grateful that my nursing skills had allowed me to end another's suffering. Instead of feeling empathy, I felt anger when I opened the door and confronted the stench of Evan's excrement. My time and the hospital's resources were being wasted on a stubborn young man who was terminally ill and in need of hospice care.

His mother exited the room and I pushed the door closed, harder than I had intended, nonverbally expressing my displeasure. Shut in a room surrounded by the malodorous aroma of his stool, I roughly pulled my stuporous patient on his side, oblivious to the possibility that I had just added to his misery.

"Oh god, make it end!" he groaned.

"You can make it end. The doctor said you can have as much pain medication as you need to be comfortable once you tell him you're going to stop."

"Just give it to me now!"

"Your Dilaudid isn't due for another hour."

"Just give it to me now. Nothing will happen. I promise."

"I'll call the doctor if you tell me you want to stop, but I could lose my license or go to jail unless you tell me that that's really what you want to do."

We exchanged no further words while I finished changing his bed. I went to lunch and another nurse gave him his narcotic. He was somnolent for the rest of my shift and I thought nothing of our exchange.

"No, I never wanted you to die!"

My voice must have betrayed uncertainty.

Evan jerked on the rope. I shrieked as pain shot through my shoulders.

"Oh god! Stop!"

He pulled harder. I stood on my tiptoes.

"Let me down! Let me down!" I wailed.

"You lie!" Evan shouted.

"I love you, Evan Tyler! I love you more than anything in the world! You cannot demand more of a woman. Let me down! Oh please let me down!"

"Do not deny what I know to be true!"

"Don't make me say it! Oh god, don't make me say it!"

"Say it! I know how you do it. I heard other nurses talking about it when they thought I was too delirious to understand them. They inject morphine into a bag and let it drip into your veins until you stop breathing.

"If they're tired of changing your bed or hearing you scream and moan, they can just end it for you. And no one gets in trouble. They just tell everyone the person said they didn't want to suffer. But what if the person wasn't ready?

"I wasn't fucking ready! I wasn't ready to die. I just wanted my shot a little early to get rid of the pain. You could have given it to me.

"But you wanted me to say I was ready to die, because you were ready for me to die. Admit you thought it was my time. Tell me you knew I would be better off dead. Say you would have hung the morphine drip if I told you I wanted to stop!"

"I cannot say it! I am a good nurse! I just never wanted to see anyone suffer!"

He lets some slack into the rope, allowing me to sink to my heels.

"When you pulled on that sheet to move my limp carcass that night one of my vertebrae cracked. My tenth thoracic vertebral body-I know, because I saw the X ray-just crumbled like a piece of paper. It hurt so fucking much. And you picked that moment to try to bribe me with the narcotic so I would just give up and die and not be a pain in your ass anymore."

I let out a scream as my butt exploded in pain as it made contact with the strap.

"If I would have given you that shot of Dilaudid early you really might have died! Admit it! You just wanted the pain to end. You wanted that pain shot more than you wanted to live."

"How many other people took your bribe to give up?"

"Nobody!"

My ass explodes in pain as he strikes me again with the strap.

"How goddamn sure are you?"

"Nobody; I'm a good nurse!"

I shriek as the leather strap strikes the tender flesh of my rump.

"How fucking many?"

"Evan, forgive me!"

"Confess!"

I remember my mother's tales of the brave women who died for their faith in their deity, the One who gave them life, the One who made the world a beautiful and wondrous place-the Great Lord of Nature. They experienced great pain, but it was tempered with joy as they eagerly awaited reunion with their sisters in the Great Lord's realm.

But there is no joy for one who is guilty. There is only the hope that one's pleas to a higher power will be answered. I thus cried out to the only Entity I knew but, faithless, felt unworthy of His mercy.

"Oh Great Lord, make him stop! Make him realize how much I love him! Enlighten him so that he realizes how sorry I am! I don't want to tell him! Oh, make him stop!"

"Why didn't you just put one of your spells on me to make the pain go away?"

My arms sink as he lets go of the rope. I think I should run away, but I know I will lose his love if I do.

"Because I was an arrogant bitch who thought the only way for a patient to get better was by giving them the right cocktail of poisons! And if we ran out of poisons, that was it for you.

"One must have faith to cast a spell or work a miracle. I never believed in anything-God, Allah, Buddha, the Great Lord-they meant nothing to me then."

"Then what do you believe in now?"

He unties my wrists and I rub the macerated flesh into which the rope has dug.

"I don't know. I'm confused. I called upon the only one I know-the Great Lord of my mother."

"You better find something to fucking believe in. Your time is running out. But I still need to find out some things."

"Oh mother, forgive me! Forgive me for scorning you," I cry out as he drags me over to the kitchen table.

The bare table is a solid oak rectangle about eight feet long and a yard wide.

"Lie down!" he commands.

I climb onto the table and lie supine, my insides quivering; praying to whichever god or saint or angel watching over me that my tribulations will soon end. One by one, he seizes my limp extremities and ties each one to a table leg as my lips move in silent prayer. When he finishes, I lie before my tormentor spread eagled.

"Please don't hurt me! Please, please don't hurt me anymore!" I beg.

"Admit that you wanted to kill me! Admit that you've played god with the lives of those entrusted to you!"

"Oh Evan, if you had died I would never have felt your love. Seeing you survive has changed me. Isn't that enough?"

"You will rue lying to me!"

He leaves the room and returns with a vise. I wince, imagining the pain I will feel as my bones are crushed.

"No more pain! Have mercy on the woman who loves you! I beg you, no more pain!"

"Did you love me when I shit all over the bed that afternoon?"

"Don't make me tell you! I didn't know who you were! Great Lord, make him feel my love! Make him stop!"

I hear a thud as he places the vise on the table next to my left ankle.

"Confess your misdeeds, my lover!"

"Mercy! Have mercy on me! Great Lord, take me! Spare me the pain!"

He lifts my left ankle and puts it into the jaws of the vise. I shiver as the cold metal touches my skin. I hear the grinding of metal against metal as the screw turns. He stops just as the jaws touch my skin.

"Did you want me to die that night? Both of us know which night I am talking about."

I shake my head no, whimpering as I prepare to experience more pain.

"Great Lord, help me!"

I try to lift my leg out of the vise, but he his grip on my shin is firm. He rotates the handle on the vise two times. My ankle begins to hurt and I realize he can break as many of my bones as he desires until I give the answers he knows are true.

"What will it take? How much pain will you endure before you confess?"

"You know what is true. I just cannot say it. I love you Evan. That will never change. You don't need to torture me to prove that."

"Nevertheless, I must hear it from you."

He turns the handle of the vise and the jaws tighten around my ankle.

"OWWWW!"

"Confess!"

The pain is excruciating. It is sharp and unrelenting. I fear my ankle will break.

"Stop, please stop! Let me think!"

He loosens the grip on my ankle but I am unable to free my foot.

"What do you have say!"

"I did some terrible things!"

"You did terrible things? That's really enlightening. So what were they? Was one of those terrible things almost sending me into the next world before I was ready, just because I wanted some pain medicine a little bit early? Just because you decided it was my time, and you didn't want to waste yours dealing with me? Because you thought I was a coward, someone who couldn't accept the death you had decided was inevitable?

"That it was your ethical duty to make me see it was time for me to give up? And then you would triumphantly send me on my voyage to the Great Beyond and congratulate yourself that night on a job well done?

"I hope you never have to endure pain like that-every waking hour, seven days a week, even on weekends and holidays. There's not a goddamn person to give the pain to, so a person can have a little break and maybe take a little vacation or go out on a date and tell whoever they're with how hard a day they've had. Tell me what you did!"

"I can't!"

I hear the metal grinding as the screw turns and the metal jaws tighten. The metal bites into my soft skin and crushes my bone.

"Oh my god-it hurts so fucking much! Oh god, make him stop! Great Lord, make him stop! Make him realize I'm not a bad person!"

"How many people did you kill with morphine?"

"Would you rather that they all had suffered?"

"You had no right to try to make me choose between pain and my life!"

He turns the screw and the jaws of the vise grip my ankle even tighter. I am broken. I can no longer keep the truth hidden from my lover.

"I thought you didn't have a chance. That night, to me you were a dead man! I didn't want to see your mother at the nurse's station one more time saying, "Evan needs a pain shot," or "My son's bed is dirty."