“I want the thumbscrews handy,” Mandrella said. One of the technicians nodded and went to fetch them, but Mandrella had already spun away to supervise someone else. “The rack,” she said. “Get it ready. In the center, I think, so he can see it waiting the whole time.”

The technicians, dressed all alike in shapeless black robes with cowls and long, dragging sleeves, moved in the heavy equipment. “Don’t forget the excruciator. And the chains. A whip. Somebody get me a whip! Where’s my robe? Dammit, I’ll roast the lot of you if—ah, okay, here’s the robe.”

Swiftly, with quiet, practiced efficiency, the technicians laid out a gleaming array of knives, and artfully arranged them on black velvet under a blood-red lamp. They wheeled in the excruciator, the iron maiden, the sprocket of pain, and an entire rack filled with alembics, flasks, tubes, wires, bubbling retorts, and vials of smoking, colored liquids. Others carried in the socket puller, the helmet of agony, and the gloves of truth.

“The fire, dammit! We need hot coals. And the poker, don’t forget the poker.” Mandrella donned her cloak and gave the whip a few practiced flicks against the wall. The technicians brought in a brick firepit on a forklift, set it against one wall and arranged a facade of paper-thin fake bricks on either side. One technician filled the firepit with charcoal briquettes, another doused them with lighter fluid, and a third threw on a match.

Mandrella looked around and nodded to herself. “Okay, let’s set up the backdrop and lighting. I want Dark and Gloomy Number Seven for this one.” The technicians covered the windows with thick hangings of black cloth, then erected the hand-mortised stone facade of D&G #7. “Kill the overhead,” Mandrella said.

A moment later the room darkened. Lighting specialists swiveled small spotlights concealed in the stone facade, focused them on the torture implements.

“All right. Places, everyone.” Mandrella assumed center stage the way a queen assumes a throne. “Bring Johnson in.”

Two technicians started toward the door.

“Wait, dammit! Where are the sound effects? I want water dripping on stone in the distance. Plug in a couple of scurrying rats, too.”

The sound-effects specialist selected a cartridge, plugged it in, and brought the fader up. Somewhere off in the distance, water dripped on stone, and rats scurried.

“Perfect. Now, let’s have Mr. Johnson.”

Technicians escorted Emile Johnson into the room. Emile appeared to be around thirty-five. He was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and wore his hair in a long, shaggy pony-tail. He looked around the room carefully, then focused on Mandrella.

“All this really isn’t necessary,” he said.

“Shut up! I’ll decide what’s necessary.”

“I just mean, I’ll be glad to talk—-”

“Oh, I know you will.”

“Ah, I meant right away. I’ll tell you anything.”

Mandrella folded her arms inside the sleeves of her robe and nodded at the technicians. Two of them grabbed him by the shoulders, lifted him clear of the floor, and then threw him down.

Emile’s nose and jaw smacked into the cement floor. “Hey!” He levered himself up, rubbing at his chin. “Was that really—?”

A technician kicked him in the middle of the back and sent him sprawling again. This time when Emile came back up, there was blood streaming from his mouth.

“You broke a tooth!”

Mandrella shook her head. “You just don’t get it, do you?” She glanced at the technicians and waved her hand. All but one of them quietly left the room. The remaining technician helped Emile to his feet and guided him to a chair.

Mandrella approached, noiselessly gliding across the floor in her black robe. “You will talk,” she said.

Emile wiped at the blood on his chin with the back of one hand while gesturing with the other. “I said I would. You don’t need to—hey! Let go!” The remaining technician calmly fastened Emile’s wrists to the arms of the chair, then bent to arrange leather straps around his ankles, knees, and thighs.

“That chair is called an excruciator,” Mandrella said. “At the moment, it is merely restraining you. It has other features you’ll discover later on—when we become better friends.” She bent in close, so that even in the dim lighting Emile could see her face under the cowl. “You’d like to be friends with me, wouldn’t you, Emile?” She smiled and waited until the shock on his face told her that he’d noticed how her eye-teeth had been filed into needle-sharp fangs.

“I’d rather skip this whole thing,” he said.

“Oh, it’s much too late for that,” she said, almost purring. “You have something to tell me, and I’m most anxious to hear it.” She straightened, tucked her hands back into the folds of her robe. “You may begin talking now. If you hesitate or stop, the pain begins. You are in control of the pain from now on. There is nothing in your world except the pain and your words, and the two cannot co-exist. As long as you talk, the pain won’t come. But the moment you stop, the pain will fill you until, at last, in agony, you scream out more, to hold the pain away. The session ends when you have told the entire story or have died, whichever comes first. Do you understand?”

Emile raised his head, stared off into the distance. “Yes, I understand.”

“Then begin.”

“I, um, ah....”

“This is a thumbscrew. It works like this.” Mandrella fitted a thumbscrew to his left hand and gave two initial twists.

“Ow! Stop that!”

“You are in control,” said Mandrella, tightening the thumbscrew again.

“Ahh! Dammit, that hurts!”

“When you talk, the pain goes away. The choice is yours,” said Mandrella, giving the thumbscrew another twist.

“Ow! Ow! Okay! Once....”

Mandrella loosened the thumbscrew and waited.

“Upon...shit, you’re making me nervous.” Emile paused again, his breath ragged, sweat beading up on his forehead.

Mandrella frowned. “Don’t jerk me around, Emile. I don’t like it.” She fitted a thumbscrew to his other hand, tightened it down, then twisted both at once.

“Ah! Ah! Okay, here it is. There was a man, see, a friend of mine.”

Mandrella loosened the thumbscrews. “Go on.”

“He said, he said I had this thing—this thing, you see, which not everybody had. I didn’t even know I had it. He said I was using it already, to make me powerful. It’s like a talent, you know, like being able to hear music, but you still have to practice, work on it, learn how to use it....” He trailed off.

Mandrella sighed and twisted the thumbscrews down until Emile’s nails split. Blood gushed forth.

“Ah! Ow! Shit!”

“You stopped talking. This is the result. It’s under your control, Emile. Why do you make me hurt you?” Mandrella crossed the room, pulled the poker from the stand and set it into the coals.

Emile writhed in the chair. “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you the rest. I started using my talent consciously—you know, working with it, trying to achieve....” He broke off, eyeing her nervously. “What are you going to do with that?”

Mandrella rolled the poker carefully in the coals, making sure that it was heating evenly. “Burn you,” she said without turning around. “Unless you keep talking.”

“I, ah, okay, um, I found out that the more I used my talent, the more I understood how much I didn’t know about it. I mean, I’d been using it without knowing before, but once I knew, it suddenly got harder. Well, not harder to use, but harder to use the right way—This isn’t making sense. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Learn,” suggested Mandrella, lifting the poker and gliding back to him. “Hold his head,” she said to the technician.

Vise-strong hands clamped on Emile’s temples. He strained and twisted, but couldn’t break free. “Don’t,” he said, “don’t...you don’t need to...ah, shit, please! Please don’t—“

Mandrella waved the glowing tip of the poker around his nose, letting him feel the heat, anticipate the pain.

“You will now continue talking,” she suggested brightly.

“It’s, ah, dammit, don’t—ah, goddamit, OW!”

“He fainted,” said the technician. “Before you touched it to him, I think.”

Mandrella smiled. “That’s a bonus, then. It’s in the contract.” She turned and raised her voice. “Somebody check the videotape!”

“He’s coming around again, ma’am.”

“Hold the playback, then. We’re back on stage.”

She turned back to Emile and smiled sweetly. “Why, hello, there! Glad you decided to stay with us. Now...you were saying?”

Emile blinked, trying to get everything back into focus. “I, um, forget what....”

“The arms of the excruciator can be repositioned,” she said, demonstrating as she talked. “They can swing back and forth, and be clamped into just about any angle. This crank—” she gave it a few turns— “pulls them forward, away from your body. If your chest weren’t strapped, you’d lift right out of the chair. As it is, I’ll stop just before your arms pull out of the sockets.”

“That’s quite...uncomfortable,” said Emile.

“Oh, give it a few hours. In the meantime, this other crank turns the long, horizontal screws between the legs. Notice how, when the ankle cuffs move apart, the seat moves up and forward, so you can do a perfect suspended splits. Now this third crank moves your right leg backward and up. Did you know that your heel can actually touch the back of your head before the hip breaks?”

“You’ve lost him again, ma’am,” said the technician.

Mandrella peeled back one of Emile’s eyelids, then waggled a finger at him. “You’re faking, Emile. There’s a penalty for that.” She looked up at the technician. “Fingernails, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am, I believe so.”

“Well, we’ll give the thumbs a miss this time, but the other eight nails will have to go.” She smiled at Emile again. “Which would you prefer—peel and yank, or insert and pry? Or would you rather continue talking?”

Emile began to sob.

“Oh, that won’t do,” she said. “Look, here’s the first nail.” She ripped it off with a pair of pliers and held it up for him to see. “I’ll put it in your shirt-pocket as a souvenir.”

Emile suddenly began to babble, picking up right where he’d left off. But Mandrella interrupted him. “That won’t do. Autobiography is all well and good, but it’s not what your editor wants to hear. Now tell me the real story.”

“I, ah, don’t know—what? What real story? I’ll tell you anything! Anything at all!”

“Yes, dear, I know.” She patted his cheek and pulled a sheaf of papers out from under her robes. “Let me see, now. Hmmn, according to these, you owe Resnick a 3,500 word story. The deadline—wonderful term, that!—is tomorrow.” She held up the bloody pliers. “I do hope you’re ready.”

“Um, alternate dinosaurs, right? Uh, lessee....There was a baby dinosaur named Jack, who...No, scratch that. His name was Ty Rex, and he was a very friendly little fellow, but all the creatures ran away and refused to play with him. Ty didn’t understand. He just wanted to be friends. ‘You’ll never get anywhere in life being friends with mammals,’ said his father. ‘It’s indecent,’ said his mother. No, fudge that. Start over. Um...Archy didn’t think there was anything unusual about wanting to fly. ‘So what if no one’s ever done it before?’ he said to himself. All the other archaeopteryx laughed at him...damn, what’s the plural of ‘archaeopteryx’? Anyway, new paragraph. The first thing Archy saw when he broke out of his shell was the sky. And ever since he was a hatchling, he, um, ah....”

“Don’t think too long,” said Mandrella, leisurely pulling up another nail.

Emile settled into his narrative. He got thirteen paragraphs out rather quickly, then paused for thought long enough to lose another nail. “Ow, dammit, I’m talking, I’m talking!”

“This awl,” said Mandrella, “goes through the cartilige in your nose like this. Then I can hang weights on both sides. Hmmn? Oh, you’ve decided on the rest of the plot? Go on, then.”

Archy rapidly progressed through the first conflict and the first surprise reversal, then settled into the long haul toward the final conflict. Emile closed his eyes and let the words pour forth, only occasionally needing prodding from Mandrella. As Archy drew near the final paragraph, Emile forgot about Mandrella, forgot about the dungeon, forgot about the pain, forgot about everything except Archy and his brave desire to fly.

“‘I did it, I did it!’ cried Archy, thumping back to the earth triumphantly. The earth, that would never be the same for him again! Archy hugged his sweetheart, and she gazed at him with adoration in her cold reptilian eyes.

“‘Your eyes are full of wings!’ she breathed.

Archy just smiled and looked around. The ground was no longer a prison. It was just a waystation, a resting place, for him and all his descendants, for all time to come!”

“That’s Lamarckian,” observed Mandrella. “How could his descendants inherit a learned ability?”

“Resnick won’t care. It’s a tear-jerker. Maybe Archy founds the first flight school. That’s for the sequel, anyway.”

“And I’m not sure how one archaeopteryx can hug another.”

“They wrap their wings around each other. Don’t worry—it’s pay copy,” said Emile. “May I get up now?”

“What’s the word count?” she asked the technician.

The tech consulted his transcript. “4,200, ma’am.”

Mandrella picked up a gleaming scapel and rotated the handle thoughtfully between her fingers. “Either you cut,” she said to Emile, “or I do.”

“But, but...every word is necessary! They’re jewels, I tell you, jewels! I can’t cut anything! Now, hey, wait a minute, maybe I don’t need the subplot with his mother—hey, wait, dammit! Ow! Shit, okay, strike paragraphs 27 through 32.”

Mandrella lifted an eyebrow at the technician, who promptly edited the manuscript and reported, “That brings it down to 3,750.”

“Another 250,” said Mandrella.

“I can’t! I just can’t!” said Emile. “I don’t know where to begin!”

“Start with the said-bookisms,” said Mandrella, sliding the scapel gently under the skin on the inside of his left thigh. She wiggled the blade up a few inches toward his crotch. “You’d better hold still,” she said. “I’d really hate to slip.”

Emile cut another 250 words very quickly.

“Lights,” said Mandrella. “That’s a wrap. Someone bring orange juice for Mr. Johnson. And run that sucker through the spell checker. Print it out! I want Courier 12 pt., double-spaced, one inch margins. No, dammit, the title goes half-way down the first page, not a third. Use 20-lb bond. Don’t forget the SASE! All right...mail it!”

Technicians bustled through the room. Mandrella helped Emile out of the excruciator. “There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked.

“God, no,” said Emile. “Writing’s my life.”

“Same time tomorrow, then?”

“Better schedule a whole weekend. My novel’s overdue.”

Story Notes

This corker is mostly an inside joke. During the early 90's, Mike Resnick and Marty Greenberg (among others) put out a whole bunch of anthologies on the alternate-history theme. The most successful was probably Alternate Kennedys, but it started getting really silly after a while, with things like Alternate Worldcons feeding the frenzy. Hence my reference to an anthology for Resnick called Alternate Dinosaurs.

The rest of it was just fun centering around the truism that I, like many authors, hate writing but like having written. I wrote it for a lark, and was surprised when it was picked up for publication. Catherine Oxenberg (of whom I hadn't heard at the time, being the non-TV-watcher that I am), did a reasonably nice job reading it for the audio tape version that came out about a year after its first appearance in print.