I will not lie, my friend, how tempted I was, to touch them. Defiled as they had been, they were still strikingly beautiful. I had not seen a young female in many years. I assume that is why they were left in with me. They wanted to tempt me. To torture me. But I kept myself pure, my friend. The devil was in that cell with me that night. Urging me to caress the soft breasts of the Elena. Urging me to peek, just one more time, between the legs of the Alisa. But I did not. I watched them sleep. They were safe in here, I told myself. This was the only place in Hell that they could find a brief sense of shelter. That night, my portion of bread I saved for them. If they were wake and find hunger, they would have bread to eat. But they did not want it. I gave them all my water, though,
which they lapped up furiously, eyes half shut from fatigue.

The next day was none the more terrible. The guards dragged into the center of the dungeon a large wooden horse. It was just a triangular board with a sharp horizontal edge on its top. And as a twisted joke, a thin wooden pole at one end served as some mockery of a neck and a triangular block a horse's head. I was intimately familiar with this horrific device. I was actually on top of it for not more than half an hour. It felt like ages. I pleaded for mercy. I'll sign whatever you want me to sign, I cried that day. Just get me off, I begged.

And when they opened my cage and dragged those two girls out, I thought surely not. Surely this is going too far. They grabbed their makeshift loincloths that gave them a brief moment of dignity the night before, and threw them back at me. They grabbed those poor girls and tied their arms behind their back, lifting them up high into the air. They called it the 'strappado.' I had felt it once, briefly, during the first few days of my own torment down in this dungeon. I still can barely lift my arm above my shoulder because of that cruel torture.

While the two girls, screaming from the pain, were hanging in the air, they put the wooden horse underneath them and slowly lowered them onto the sharp device. The strappado position was forcing their bodies to lean a little forward, so that all the weight of their body was pushing directly into their groins. This was beyond cruel I thought to myself. And all the while, you could hear the parents sobbing from above.

And then they left them there! Not for half an hour, which was how long I had lasted, but for hours! I couldn't believe my eyes. When the girls would stop screaming and squirming, they would lift them up again, straining their shoulders, reinvigorating their cries of anguish, and leave them hanging in the air for a few minutes, waiting only to drop them down again, sometimes not so gently, back onto the sharp edge that cut into what surely must have been the most sensitive part on their bodies.

For me, the instrument was painful, but I cannot imagine how painful it must have been for a female victim. The edge seemed to fit right in, and slice in between those two folds of flesh that women have at the entrance of their womb. It looked like it cut right through into them, and deeply too. But there was minimal bleeding, and in fact, it surprised me how little these two girls bled from this torture. And it was just went on and on, without end. When the two girls would grow silent from sitting on the wooden horse for a protracted period of time, they would be lifted up, stirring up fresh cries of pain. And when they would grow silent in the air, they would be set back on the horse. They were never given rest. This lasted all day. Can you imagine? But not once did they ever pass out.

When then day was done, after they had been spent with suffering, they were once again tied to the post and raped by the same hoards of men trickled into the dungeon from the night before, and thrown into the cell with me when it all finished.

They were thirsty, the girls. That night, many of the prisoners donated their water and bread to my cell. The girls drank more water than I thought was even possible. They even ate a little of the bread. The old woman in the cell next to mine tossed me all of her rags to use to clean the girls up. And this time, I was able to wipe off most of the blood and vile semen. I even tore off enough of the old woman's rags to wrap around the bosom of the older one, Elena. I was naked, and I felt exposed, but they were safe with me and the other prisoners, and that was the most that we could do.

I must prepare you, my friend, for the worst is yet to come. It did not get better. It never did. For the very next day, two more cruel devices, devices that you probably had only heard rumors of, were brought in to be used on these poor children.

A pear-like object, that they called the 'Pear of Anguish' whose petals could be screwed open and expanded, was brought in, and another device, that they called the 'Judas Cradle' was wheeled in. The Cradle was just a pyramid-shaped object. It's devious design lay in the fact that prisoners were lowered onto it, with the tip going into them, gravity working against them as their own weight pushed them deeper into the singular point. The Pear was no less devious. Its petals opened to a diameter surely larger than a newborn. I can still hear the cries of despair when the device was
opened and demonstrated to the abject horror of these poor little girls.

By now, the girls had lost their voice. Though their screams were
hoarse, but to me, they were still unbearably deafening. I was
unfortunately one of the cells closest to this horrific spectacle.

The little one, Alisa, was to suffer the Cradle. Her tiny body jerked with agony as they lowered her, her thin legs pulled wide apart by ropes, onto the pointed tip. They would lift her up and set her down, as her older sister Elena, forced to watch, would stare in disbelief and horror. They would do this again and again. Lift her up and set her down. It was madness. I looked up at their parents, locked in the cage above. They had just slumped over. There was no movement. Were they already dead? They had not received any water, I realized, for two days now. By God's Grace I
had hoped they had passed on. This would have been more than any parent could bear to watch.

Lift her up, the guards would say. She's not going down any further, they would laugh. Try the other hole, they would sneer. I could barely believe my ears. These were devils indeed. And so up and down she went. Raped and sodomized by the Cradle. It was not long before a trail of blood could be seen running down the sides of the Cradle. No doubt they were going to kill her if they kept this up all day. And then after a few hours, they stopped lifting her up, and set her down, letting her settle, letting her body weight slowly impale her on this monstrous device while they then worked on torturing her sister.

They began by hanging Elena from the air by her arms. And after forcing her legs open with an iron bar, they pushed the Pear of Anguish in. And it was aptly named, for she was in extreme anguish when they screwed the petals open. Then as I remember, they attached the end of the Pear to a bucket, which was slowly filled with iron scraps and tools, adding more and more weight and thus more tension to the rope. I could remember seeing the
girl's chest heave in and out as she struggled to deal with the pain as the Pear must have stretched her womb to its limits, tearing at its delicate walls as it was dragged slowly out. And when finally it came out, followed by a gush of blood, I could see her shudder, and grunt hoarsely.

I had thought they were done with her, but I was wrong. Try the other hole, I could hear them excitedly suggest to one another. Still dripping with blood, the beasts pushed the Pear back in the poor girl, who was twitching with suffering. And once again, they used the bucket and added weight slowly, watching with delight as the device tore and stretched through the entrance of her innards. I could hardly watch. In fact, I did not. I covered my eyes. It was too terrible to see. But to my extreme dissatisfaction, I could still hear them.

In between the laughs and jeers of the guards and priests, I could hear the two girls' rapid breaths and strained exhales when the waves of pain no doubt blanketed their minds. The Lord was merciful to the prisoners at the further ends of the hall. They could cover their eyes. And they were far enough away that they could not hear the soft suffering of the girls.

I opened by eyes to check every now and then. Maybe they would stop moving because they had died from the torture. But no, they were still squirming and tense from the pain. I hoped that maybe would they would pass out, or at least develop a numbness to the tortures. Still no. I remember that I could hear them breathing fast and heavily, eyes strained shut, teeth clenched, brows furrowed, hair matted in perspiration, bodies covered in sweat, stomachs that were tight, pushing in and out, trembling
in tense agony.

When the Pear finally fell from the older sister a second time, I felt that maybe this was the end for her. Surely she would lose enough blood to finally find some peace in death. But the beasts were aware of this. And soon after the Pear was out of her, using a pair of thick tongs, they pushed a short but red hot iron rod into her, causing undeniably more terrible pain, but cauterizing any bleeding. They put one in first into womb, and then another one into her rectum. And then, leaving the rods inside to slowly cook her from the inside, they threw her back into the cell with me. I was horrified. What was I to do? I recall still seeing the steam and smoke rising from her groin. She rolled around in agony, but when her hands reached down to grab the area, she could not, because it burned her fingers.

It was terrible, my friend. What I have witnessed nobody else should ever have to. And still this young lady survived. She survived the night. She was still hanging on to a thread of life. Please, I prayed to the Lord. Please take this Angel up to Heaven now. But the Lord did not listen. It was that night that He taught me truly, that the Lord does work in mysterious ways.

Alisa, however, sat on that cruel Cradle all night. We did what we could to comfort her in her suffering. We said prayers out loud to her. We told her it was going to be over soon. That this could not last much longer. Maybe we were lying to her, but we could not let her think she was alone or forsaken. I remember trying to comfort Elena next to me. Her breathing was hoarse, but slowed. Overnight, the iron in her body did cool. I did not dare inspect. I was terrified of what I would see. She was shaking now on every exhale. Her body once covered in sweat was now dry and cold. I did what I could to keep her warm. More prisoners found a way to throw their rags over and donate them to the shivering girl. We
covered her up and tried to keep her warm. Alisa, sitting on the Cradle in the center of the room, was not as lucky, but we did what we could for her older sister. Most of the prisoners were now naked, because they gave the only thing they had, which were just rags. We did what we could.