My Family History - A Halloween Tale
Ahhhhhh. Welcome my pretties. You are the ones chosen to know the secret. The deep, dark secret of my family history.
As some of you who read my blog regularly know, my grandfather inherited a castle in England. He considered the offer, but eventually declined. Now you will know the REAson he declined.
The Edgar Allen Poe story of “The Pit and the Pendulum was based upon the tale of one of my ancestors in the 1860s. You know I never lie and that eventually I reveal everything. Well, this is no exception. The story, as outlandish as it seems, is much more gruesome than even Poe could have written. As a matter of fact, some of you have seen parts of the story already in one of my compositions when I was nearly driven mad by the escapades of my ex-fiancee'. Yes, there was a pit and there was a pendulum, but there was more. MUCH more.
You see, the tortures were multiple, long, and severe. Yes, there was a doctor involved, but the doctor was there to keep the victim alive through all the tortures. The doctor assisted because the man did not commit adultery with my ancestor's wife. Here is the story:
A foreigner who worked for the Levant Company who had befriended Alexander Wood, noticed her shining beautiful features and her grapefruit breasts. He noticed her dazzling intelligence that had so drawn my ancestor to her. He was jealous that my ancestor was much older than she, so he seduced her with promises of riches. He convinced her that he was old and weak and would soon be unable to please her or care for her and her children. He told lies to her about my ancestor, to make her fearful of him and paid others to tell her lies as well. When she finally agreed to meet the Levant employee, he drugged her, kidnapped her, and forced her to work in his very unusual Gentleman’s club where men paid high prices to mistreat the women he provided in any sadistic manner they desired. He wanted her as a sex slave and vowed to make her bend to his every will.
She was very strong willed, so he started by locking her in a closet for days without food or water, then beating her, then injecting her veins with just enough morphine to kill the pain. He then would rape her and fill her veins with more morphine… enough to give her a pleasurable rush. He would rape her again as she started passing out from the drug. He did this repeatedly over a period of time while my ancestor relentlessly searched for her. As she became more submissive, he brought her out of the closet and bound her. He would start using harsher and harsher sexual methods with her... beating her... thrashing her with a cat o' nine tales... suspending her and raping her... each time, rewarding her with morphine flowing through her veins until she was addicted to both the morphine and the pain. He then started bringing in other men to have their sadistic way with her. He then introduced her to being pleased by women. More and more. Each time he rewarded her with the pleasure of morphine. Each time equating the rush of the pain and fear with the rush of the morphine flowing through her veins. She had tried to escape once, but he forced her to believe that if she ever escaped again, her husband and her whole family would be killed. Finally, she was broken.
After a time, he started easing her off the morphine letting her feel more and more pain. Soon, the pain would feel like the morphine and the morphine was one less expense for him. Sometimes he would give her a choice between the morphine and the pain. When she started choosing pain, he no longer gave her the pleasing drug.
My ancestor sent out the detectives as he watched for her. By the time my ancestor found his wife and had uncovered what all the man had done to her, his wife was near death and her addictions severe. He finally re-captured her, but at her pleadings, he let the Levant company employee go. She thought she was in love with her captor and my ancestor knew it. He had a large enough task trying to get her back to somewhat normal and did not feel that destroying her captor was the best use of his time at the present.
It took my ancestor many years to get her back to some semblance of normal and free her of the horrible addictions that she suffered at the hands of her captor. She never was nor would she be the same woman she once was, but he loved her so deeply that he would not turn her away. To prevent her going mad, he allowed her captor to live because she felt that she had loved her captor. He knew that she was unstable after her harsh, abusive treatment. He had to give her what she needed when she needed it, which was pain. Cruel pain. Over a period of time, he was able to get her back to some semblance of normalcy. Each time he had to hurt her, it turned his stomach, but he continued until she was weaned of always having the need for intense pain for sexual pleasure. He stayed with her and cared for her until her death.
Filled with anger against his wife's captor, there was nothing to stop him for seeking vengeance against the man who had treated his wife so. He would find the man again. His wife would never tell him the man’s name, but did reveal that his name started with an R. Speaking it over with the doctor, they agreed to find the man and set upon him a tortures until he revealed and apologized for all he had done to her and to other women. Rather than going to the authorities and having him put on trial, my ancestor sent out detectives to discover the man's whereabouts.
They discovered one of the man’s handkerchiefs the man had left at scenes where he had abducted a woman. The initial was “R.” One of the detectives was so brilliant that he quickly found her captor by the type of cloth of which the handkerchief was made. It is said that tales of this detective reached Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote about some of this detective‘s cases.
The detective discovered the man’s name and found the woman, but the woman made him promise never to tell my ancestor the name of her captive for fear of what might happen to her family. The detective reluctantly agreed, but told my ancestor that women taken captive in such a manner often think they are in love with their captor and that her mental condition was too unstable for her to see or hear of the man being harmed. This was torturous for my ancestor as he would have loved to wring her captor’s neck right there in front of her.
They tracked the Levant employee back to his lair and watched his movements for a year before they made their move. They wanted to be sure this man did not suspect that he was being watched. When they were sure of their plans, they sent a maiden to offer him a drink. The drink, of course, was laden with morphine... in a large enough quantity to induce sleep... the very drug he had used to addict my ancestor's wife. When the man awoke, he awoke in a very dark place filled with grotesque paintings derived from the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition. He found himself bound and chained, unable to move or to free himself. This picture will give you a little more insight into what it was like when the man awoke in my ancestor's dungeon:
My ancestor started by parading beautiful, naked women in front of him, each one teasing him, then touching him, then pleasing him just enough to make him want more.
"Enjoy this," my ancestor said. "I want you to remember this, the greatest pleasure you will ever know, for it will be your last."
He had the women please each other in front of him over and over until he was groaning for mercy. Then the women started fondling him and caressing him. Then, when he was so tired that he was shivering and shuddering, he had all the women do all they could to please him and send him into the highest state of orgasm he had ever achieved.
My ancestor then paid the women and sent them out of the room, telling them to never speak of the incident. He paid them well enough that they all vowed to keep quiet the rest of their lives. My ancestor then locked the door behind them to prevent anyone from entering or exiting.
"Now," said my ancestor, "remember. You are about to pay for everything you did to my wife and to every other woman you ever laid your scum-laden hands upon."
You can fathom some insight to the tortures that were unleashed upon the man who abused my ancestor's wife as written in my poem:
The Warning
by Cal Jennings
If you should cause one I love harm
You shall be blown like ant from arm
No place shall you be safe and free
Never look back, or you'll find me
No weapon will be strong enough
To protect you from a fate so rough
Nor through time can you escape
I'll be there, too, thou simple ape
No price too high or distance far
No iron gates, nor supercar
Shall let you escape fast enough
Punishment severe, unkind, rough
No cries to Kr'shna, nor Allah will save
Your punk posterior, I'll enslave
I'll torture your mind, body, and soul
No demon god will make you whole
Scorpion stings upon your flesh
Your heart will pump, your tongue will thresh
Then with pliers, your tongue pulled out,
Shall justice punish your evil clout
As you scream unearthly cries
Honey and ants go in your eyes
In your ears, your privates as well
Let you experience your own evil hell
That you have forced on one I love
This only a start from hand of my glove
Within the pit the pendulum swings
One notch closer, it clunks and sings
Its shiny razor in candlelight glitters
Closer and closer it swings and jitters
As river rats tear your ghastly skin
Some candiru to spine from within
Each lash you've given, each threat you spoke
Taken in account for your punishment, bloke
No voodoo spell nor evil eye
Shall protect you from justice's cry
More torture shall your soul endure
Than you thought possible from the pure
Your soul into a black hole cast
It's searing heat, your soul will lash
Existing for eternity
In a place it cannot flee
Many punishments I've left out
I'll let your mind wonder and doubt
But know that volumes do exist
For each lash given, not one shall be missed
Your flesh shall be ripped from your face
And each and every private place
These warnings, heed, I do implore
If you think Braveheart suffered, you're wrongly sore
A warning I give only once
Especially to abusive runts
If you think these words seem sad
Just don't anger me, I'm not even mad
My ancestor had studied ancient secrets and methods of torture from every country and had planned them out so that each torture built upon the next. Each time he felt that his wife's captor wasn't suffering enough from the torture compared to how he imagined his wife felt for the offense my ancestor was stating, he would stab the arm of the man on the table with an ice pick, something the doctor had suggested. This took careful supervision by the doctor to keep the man alive through all the tortures he was to receive.
Each torture was delivered slowly, painfully, methodically, agonizingly as my ancestor described each thing that his wife had told him that her captor had put her through. So tortured was my ancestor by his wife's agonizing tales, that he wanted to be sure that each part of this man's being suffered as much as my ancestor's heart suffered for his dear love. All the tortures in the poem and more, many too excruciatingly painful to describe here, for the sake of your sanity... if it's not already too late... but each of these tortures and more were dealt unto his wife's captor.
Since then, as a penance, it has been tradition for the male members of my family to seek out and help recover one sex slave in his lifetime. In seeking for her, they often helped many.
You see, I didn't make all these things up. These things came from part of the history of my ancestor's tale which was passed down through generations. I don't make threats. I make promises and not promises on which I cannot deliver.
The full story of the tortures has never been told after the tale was told to Edgar Allan Poe. The tale drove him mad. The chilling tale of the man's torture was so explicit and so vivid that it haunted Poe for the rest of his life.
Poe wrote to try to relieve his mind from the torture and nightmares the tale evoked. He wrote many tales based upon what my ancestor told him trying to relieve his troubled mind. It is said that Poe finally escaped the torture of his mind from the tale by writing “The Lighthouse,” his final attempt to free his mind. It was said that as a price for his mind's escape was the death that kept him from finishing the piece. Since then, the story has only been passed down in fragments and never told all at once to another human being, though it is suspected that a few of my ancestors bypassed that rule as evidenced by the onset of their insanity. Do you think I would bypass such a rule? It makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Pleasant dreams.
MuuuuUUUAHAHAHAHaaaaa!
Copyright © 2009 Cal Jennings
