By slaveobjectx

The Cuffs

I looked baffled but once again I was grabbed and marched out of the room, down the corridor and into a half darkened place that looked like a blacksmith’s forge. But to me, it appeared rather as the entrance to hell, and within a few minutes it became obvious that it was indeed a place of horror. It was very hot inside; the room was filled with damp and smoke. It soon became clear to me that there was some reason for that.

Along one of the walls there was a huge iron oven with a lid open, revealing a white-hot fire glowing. I saw something lying in it, but from the distance couldn’t make out what it was exactly. But the whole furnishing of the room filled me with fear. Around the wall hung all sorts of thick chains and iron contraptions that I couldn’t guess what they were supposed to be for.

A dirty guy, muscular in a leather apron looked over his shoulder as we entered. ‘Standard irons? Boy, you must have been good! Well, I hope yer startin’ as you mean to go on. You’ll find life here’ll be a lot easier if you toe the line and give us no aggro. OK, boy, over here and we’ll soon have you kitted out as a real slave. You won’t know yourself again, boy!’

I moved across to him, where he was standing beside a low anvil on the ground. After I had arrived, the man started to search for something among that dark muddle of iron contraptions lying behind him. I couldn’t discern in this half-light what these things were exactly but some appeared to me to be some kind of strange torture devices. I saw the blacksmith taking up one of them, and walking with it to the fireplace, and heard him searching for some feature. I was really scared now. I was beginning to believe that in this place they were capable of anything. I must have been wide eyed with terror so I was sort of relieved when the ‘blacksmith’ returned after a while with only a heavy round iron cuff in his hands, which then was fitted in an adept way by him around my left ankle, as if he had done this already a hundred times before. And I didn’t doubt he had indeed.

The anklet looked quite impressive to me, as I was only used to small modern police-handcuffs yet. This one on the contrary seemed rather medieval, massive and heavy as it was. It was about two-and-a-half inches wide and half an inch thick, hinged and with a big hole on each half where they met. The ‘blacksmith’ banged both halves against each other, so that both holes were aligned. Within a few seconds my ankle was no longer free but encircled by a thick ring of inflexible iron which couldn’t be removed. It was moreover a rather narrow fit, leaving only a tiny space between the cuff and my skin. The iron felt hard and cold, and the weight pressed painfully on the bones of my ankle. I was worried by the idea that I had to wear this stuff for some time and perhaps even to work in it.

‘Hold him steady, you guys, while I fix it.’ The other two guards quickly grabbed hold of my ankle, bent my leg in the required position and held it at an angle on the anvil, so that I was forced to keep my balance on my other foot. I had no choice other than to give in and wait for the ‘blacksmith’ to return with a padlock or something like that to put through the holes of the cuff. But the ‘blacksmith’ didn’t search for such a lock. To my horror instead he stuck a pair of long handled tongs into the fire of the oven along the wall and pulled out a big glowing metal bolt. He walked with it to the anvil, where my ankle rested in the hands of the guards waiting for him.

Deftly, he inserted the pointed rivet into the holes in the anklet which fettered my feet. I could feel the intense heat from the bolt, which spread throughout the cold cuff, and warmed it steadily to a degree that was in the end nearly unbearable. I really feared the cuff would leave a burn on my ankle, and waited, scared, for what would come. I knew at once that it was in my own best interest that things should go as quickly as possible, because the longer the process took, the hotter the cuff on my ankle would become. Only now did I notice that both guards had put insulating gloves on their hands. Apparently they knew the cuff might get hot, and didn’t want to burn their fingers. For the chain-gang-slave they were apparently going to make out of me a bit of extra pain of course didn’t count to them.

So I willingly kept my ankle at the anvil, hoping the whole thing would soon be over. I didn’t dare to move as the ‘blacksmith’ reached for a heavy iron mallet and banged it half a dozen times on the flat side of the tapering bolt. Banging away, he forced it into the hole and out the other side and just as quickly he switched to that side, pounding away until it was flat and fixed. It had become so broad that it wasn’t possible to remove the rivet anymore, and thus the cuff was tightly closed. Then the blacksmith chucked cold water over it. It hissed furiously as it cooled, and so the rivet was now definitely impossible to remove.

‘Well boy, you won’t lose your new ornament easily now.’

I still couldn’t believe it! This was barbaric, as if the Middle Ages had never ended! From the moment I had entered that ‘forge’ of terror it was clear to me that I was being put in some chains, incredible enough though that seemed in this century. But to weld the fetters in place! This was a permanent business, with no question of being released for a while now and again. They really meant these things to stay on. I apparently had to wear them day and night, to work in them, to sleep in them, to live in them. And that, I had to fear, for the whole ten years I had to stay imprisoned in this unholy place! It seemed unbearable to me. Just this one cuff already had a weight of at least three pounds, I guessed. And I was sure it would be followed by more. They really planned to make me their slave!

I started to cry. Not a macho thing to do but I was so tired, so disorientated and rapidly going into shock with the events of the last few hours. They ignored my tears and proceeded to the other ankle. Within a minute that was done too, and an identical heavy cuff enclosed my right ankle with the whole process finished with the cold water, which luckily cooled the warmed up cuff. In a way it was a kind of relief to me when my right ankle was fettered also, because the longer its semi-freedom within the unwelded cuff, the hotter the iron would have become. It came as no surprise to me that they then moved on to shackle my wrists as well and I whimpered a little through that process also. It was the same kind of cuffs, it was the same procedure, and it had the same final result.

Now both my ankles and wrists were confined in narrow bands of unbreakable steel, which were designed to last forever. I would have to wear them, all four of them, as long as the guards liked, and I had reason to fear that might be very long. I wouldn’t ever be able to remove them without their help myself. Although the bracelets were a little bit shorter than the anklets, in total the whole stuff weighed some ten pounds or thereabouts.

I was in a daze and tried to adjust to my new, humiliating ‘dress.’ I must have looked like the chained convict-slave I was condemned to be for the future only just a few hours ago.

To be continued…