When the door closed, I walked down the hallway with an evil smile on my face.When the door closed, I walked down the hallway with an evil smile on my face. Ten hours later, in the same hall. The hall had been cleared and the table installed in the middle of the room. Only this table was no longer a rectangle; it was an 'X', carefully made for the purpose to which I was about to put it. The four sides came away in individual triangles, revealing the shape; at the ends of each of the arms, a small block came out, revealing recessed steel rings for fixing restraints; the 'head' of the table wasn't a perfect triangle, but towards the center still retained a crosspiece so that my victim would have something to rest his or her head on. And the table was comfortably warm to the touch. Whoever had made this table was obviously pleased with his handiwork; Down at the lower left leg, under the carefully hand-painted and polished lacquer was, engraved and filled with gold, the initials 'M.K.' I, too, was pleased with his handiwork. The torches had been turned low, so that menacing light flickered from the four corners of the room, and in the main hall fireplace a blaze had been made, tended carefully by two slaves. They were not the focus of my attention this pre-dawn morning. Breakfast was. And, as I had summoned them, four slaves walked in. All were male, and they were large members of their predominantly large respective species. |