Category: Writing

An invisible darkness could be seen rising somewhere in the distance. It could be felt, a cold miasma. The moon was down but something was climbing.

The battle had begun, the sun shone bright. The trees were sparse around the field of battle, no protection whatsoever. He ran in full battle gear.

Large elephants, hidden in the morning mist, were now emerging. running towards the Romans, destroying entire wings of the Roman army with their trunks. Now and then, deadly darts flew around the soldier from unseen enemies, arrows rang like bells against armour. Romans were dying all around.

He heard the deafening roar of the elephants, the shouts of his dying comrades, arrows, howling, groaning of men dying. It got worse on sight. Something was amiss, the Romans fell back. More elephants poured into the chaos. He continued to run.

They broke his shield and pierced his helmet. They struck him in the neck, but he did not stop. As he ran, he felt himself covered in blood, it was all around him. He took his helmet off and saw that his neck had been cut open. The air was thick. He fell to the ground. He quickly dug a hole with his hands and abandoned weapons. He covered his head with dirt. He could only imagine what was happening around him.

Everything was shaking and quaking as an earthquake seemed to be swallowing everything around him. He could hear screaming, shouting, He buried his head deeper in the hole.

The pitch-black darkness had reached Caius Livius, blocking his view of sun.

“The lines are broken, the Battle is Lost” wrote Livy, describing the Battle of Cannae, fought in 216BC in Italy, the largest defeat, in terms of casualties, suffered by the Roman army until the battle of Teutoburg Forest, in 9AD.

I went swimming at dawn at a nearby beach. I walked across the sand and descended into the water.  I splashed around for awhile and dove, while rising from the water a sharp pain coursed through me. I walked to the shore and lifted my leg and simply noticed a sharp nail jotting from the top of my foot.

I looked below my foot and was simply faced with a wood block with a nail hammered through it. This homemade contraption was hanging from my foot with the nail fully pierced through my foot much to the satisfaction of the creator.

After this incident I went to the grocery store. I bought some bread and instant coffee.

I entered my house and walked to the kitchen to prepare myself a sandwich and some coffee.

As I opened the bread bag, I used my thumb to open the bread bag tie and felt my thumb getting pricked by the bread bag tie. I dropped it on the counter and looked at my thumb which now had a red prick mark on it. I was looking at my thumb I felt woozy and fainted.

I regained consciousness a few hours later and decided to finish my coffee. I drank the coffee down quickly to wake me up and after finishing it I felt my teeth crunching down on something. I let some coffee fall from my mouth onto the palm of my hand and looked at it. What I saw was little pieces of rust.

I felt kidney pain from ingesting the rust coffee and collapsed on the floor.

Idea for a torture device that came to me in a dream.

I call it “The hammer that never comes down”. It consists of a small pit, like a well. It is completely pitch black.

The victim is placed at the bottom. A sliding rubbery lid is placed into the opening of the well that slides down slowly so that the victim has less space to move and breathe.

The victim can push or kick the rubbery lid up slightly. With every kick or jump the lid goes slightly up but also starts slowly going down again. The lid is possible to be pushed all the way up to the top of the opening of the well, where, still covering the opening so that the victim cannot escape, little openings in the lid are exposes so sunlight and fresh air comes through. Then the lid starts slowly going down again.

With useless toil of pushing the lid up to the top, the victim can enjoy some sunlight and air. If he does not push the lid up, he has little breathing room and room to move and lives in total darkness.

I made a rough illustration of how it would work.