Disclaimer – all stolen shamelessly without permission
Warnings – contains some mildly disturbing masochistic themes
A/N – I'm sorry about this one. It's a bit of a digression, but it had been lurking on my computer from way back when, and I don't have the heart to ignore it. Based heavily on that scene from 'The Little Shop of Horrors'. This is just a little idea I had to get out of my system about the similarities of That Dentist and Mordor's Best Torturers.
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Interruptions (or Interrogations – Part 2)
Without waiting for permission, the intruder flung open the Witch King's pseudo- gothic iron door, and marched into the centre of the room.
"I can't take it anymore!"
The Nazgûl raised an invisible and rather decayed eyebrow. By all laws of nature, there should not be an eyebrow there at all, the Witch King and his band of vagabonds should all be entirely bald after centuries of wandering the earth, but nevertheless, that eyebrow remained.
While feigning puzzlement and a healthy dose of amnesia (it was to be expected given his age), the Witch King knew exactly who this man was, and why he was keeping him from his waiting (and now rather curious) torture victim. The man was not exceptionally tall, and whether it was due to the meagre prison diet, or the fact that he constantly seemed to be twitching or hopping erratically from foot to foot – he seemed thinner than he perhaps ought to be. Bones seemed to jut out at odd angles, and looked as if they might have been obtained second hand (or foot…) from a variety of unsuitably matched skeletons.
The man also had a considerable amount of rather disconcerting (and mostly self-inflicted) injuries. From the rash on his left forearm where he was scratching fervently with well-chewed nails – to the marks on his thumbs from the obvious overuse of rusty thumbscrews.
The man was a masochist, and a professional one at that, who hailed from the Northern Waste, where there wasn't really any call for a professional masochist. After hearing about the excellent (and rather horrific) service to be had as a prisoner in Barad-Dûr, he had packed his bags, and parked himself outside the gates until someone decided he was enough of an annoyance to arrest.
Unfortunately, under the new fair and diplomatic rule of Sauron's latest Mouth (1), merely sitting outside the gates had not been enough to get him a long term position in the lightless dungeons of Barad-Dûr – it was now required that he actually do something to earn his keep.
This something had resulted in said masochistic prisoner, whose name is not really important, taking the trouble to deface the dark walls of Mordor with the heinous, and guaranteed to be punishable, phrase 'Sauron is a cissy'. Of course, due to the limited nature of the Black Speech vocabulary, this translation was no mean feat, and its shoddy execution resulted in an passing enraged orc guard lecturing him on word order and use of the accusative case.
After being forced at spear-point to write out the grammatically correct version eleventy-one times, he was promptly arrested for 'childish namecalling and obscene ignorance of the subtle grammatical nuances of the Orcish language.
"But I'm not due for another session until…" The man produced a small battered card and studied it carefully, "next half-moon!" (2). Somewhere in the wraithworld, the Witch-King's face twisted into an expression which hovered between amusement and disdain. Someone had obviously been trying to organise things. The Witch king was putting his bets on The Mouth.
To be brutally honest, the Witch king could see nothing wrong with the old system. Prisoners were brought in, and when the Dark Lord felt it necessary, or when they seemed too cheerful, or if they began to annoy the guards, or as was more common, one of the Nine needed something to take out his anger at eternal enslavement on, the were tortured.
But those days were gone. The Mouth felt the system was unfair, he thought that to keep up Mordor's reputation as 'a very nasty place', prisoners should receive equal amounts of torture, regardless of colour or creed, height or disposition. He also believed the Nazgûl deserved equal numbers of torturees. Apparently it was no longer deemed fair that the Witch King got first pick of the prisoners just because he was the tallest and had the shiniest gauntlets.
The prisoner leaned in conspiratally to add, "And between you and me… #7 isn't half as good."
The Witch King was not renowned for his resistance to flattery (which was what had got him in this mess in the first place). "Really? Go on…"
The Nazgûl listened with great interest as the prisoner gave a detailed comparison of the differences and similarities between the torture techniques used by #7 and the Witch King. "…And in conclusion," the prisoner wheezed, staring longingly at the gleaming knives upon the wall, " you're generally… much… better."
A small and twisted smile found its way on to the Witch King's face. Knowledge that his radical and yet effective use of the serrated scalpel was appreciated pleased him greatly. "Very well," he turned and with one swift arm movement, removed Gollum unceremoniously from the Chair. "Hop on."
The prisoner leapt with ectastic glee onto the chair to claim his prize, as Gollum crawled away unnoticed to hide in a corner, mumbling and hissing to himself.
1. That is, the idea that arresting people just for the sake of it was not really very nice.
2. I know not what calendar Mordor runs on, (if anyone out there does know, then feel free to educate me), but I'm going to assume it's based somehow on the phases of the moon.
