OUBLIETTE by Camila Hamel

ENDLESS STATIC feed: 01:89:14 - 02:06:16

Feb 23, 2026

Capture

To move, to even shift my weight, was to summon devouring clouds of flesh-eaters. I shut my eyes to them, until the lids were no more. The pins held my quivering legs and bloody arms; the screws, my agonized feet; the nails, my hands; the cold metal prong, my sex. I could smell the pus that oozed from the wounds, the urine and feces that attracted all manner of vermin. They tickled and gnawed my bony joints, poking out of their coverings.

I had lost count of the days. I was weak as I stood there, encased in the iron. The insects bit me and crawled across my bruised face. They crawled into my ears and exited my nostrils. I could not see the bastards who had beaten me before leaving me here to rot, still breathing, a clump of dying matter to be composted. My only solace was the cold and the silence in this place, my biggest dread: they would return.

Sometimes, the wind blew over the heaving ocean, and the rusted chain that kept me suspended creaked. The cage swayed slowly, turning left and right. I heard myself scream as the pins tore my flesh.The visceral pain brought up sour bile.

On one such occasion, my arms had swelled with the infection, as had my feet. I could not see them, but I knew from the smell and the throbbing. The wind whipped through the opening in the cave, and set the oubliette in motion again. The pain was so intense, I blacked out.

Release

When I came to, I heard voices. Despite my agony, I called out to them. I was desperate for death, but my voice rasped, a wispy thing. The talking stopped and the footsteps got louder. A sharp clang echoed as something, a club or pike, banged against the metal that encased me. It sent a shock wave through me. I could not understand what they were saying, and the banging would not stop, ten, twelve, fifteen times, each one an excruciating jolt in my skull. I whimpered, but they were not done with me. Through the slots and holes of the oubliette, came a sudden dousing with water, and how it stung the open sores on my arms and legs. I was soaking wet and shivering when the whine of a generator rose in pitch, followed by a loud crack.

I involuntarily clenched my teeth and every muscle in my body went rigid as the electric charge passed through me. I rose out of the oubliette and saw all clearly. I saw them and their dirty work, the oubliette and the blood that had pooled and dried beneath it. I was free.

Or so I thought. I woke, where I could not say. My bandaged body already healing. This was the fifth time they took me down and fixed me. They would ask their fucking questions, things I always refused to answer. They insulted me and threatened me with my death again. I laughed in their faces. What did I care? That is the poorest of threats, I would snarl. They were waiting for all to heal. As soon as the scarred limbs shrank to their normal size, they could beat me once more, and put me back in the oubliette. The iron cage with its sharp, thick needles, that was where I was going, and this time they would take it up to just before organ failure from dehydration. I told them they could electrocute me for all I cared, except they probably could not understand what I had said because I was forgetting how to speak the language. The oubliette was nothing but pain. I was an erasure. This was all the freedom I would ever get.

Yet, I clung to one thought. It was not murder. Had never been a murderer, though where I went, death followed. Everyone I came to know died. As a child it was my mother’s canaries and parakeets. She would find their little bodies, talons clenched against the uncaring sky. My mother saw the cause and effect with a conviction as clear as her liquor. She cursed me, but I denied such a power with all the vehemence I had. It didn’t matter. She began to think of me as hated spawn, a mistake, and as I got older, she collected more examples of my supposed perversity, for in order to denounce me, she needed evidence.

They came for me. I was dragged out and drugged. The whips tore at me, the clubs destroyed my teeth. I wore the thick, bloody drool on the front of my naked chest until it cracked black and chipped off. How did I stay alive? This was the time before the oubliette, when there was still a rock-hard crust of bread to suck on. Now a runny, fetid soup was all I got, perhaps once a week, sometimes two weeks. I would shit it out almost immediately, which at least rid me of the larvae living inside me. Sometimes I threw the metal bowl against the wall and watched the streaks drip down to the floor. My body preferred its fat stores and muscle tissue; it would gladly consume these, but they would feed me before my body began breaking down its internal organs. This they would not allow.

Why am I alive?

I chanted these words of human degradation until they lost their meaning, and I became just a howling animal preyed upon by stronger animals.

Escape

I was standing once more in my iron prison, to piss on myself and ooze pus that would be devoured by the chiggers, the better to burrow under my skin. Yet, either through negligence or indifference, my oubliette was unlocked and my feet unbolted. Perhaps they imagined I was too close to death to bother about. It was true that I was weak, but they were wrong. I had a means of escape, if that was what I wanted. Abused and defiled, I did not know what I wanted. It was the ghost of my rebellion then, the inertia of my stubborn life force that impelled me to open the two doors of my infernal cabinet, my oubliette.

I whimpered as the steel pins exited the flesh and muscle of my extremities. The intense pain traveled throughout my body, and the prong between my legs activated my sex until the climax exploded, the cum water gushing and dripping down my legs. Panting, bleeding and shaking, I lowered myself, taking hold of the floor of the oubliette. I would have to jump to the ground below.

There was no time to hesitate in dread, as my bloody hands were too slick and weak to support my body weight for very long. Skin and bones though I was, I might as well have been as fat as my gaoler, who sat on his ass all day long and tortured me with the spectacle of feasts he consumed in front of my eyes. It was not a far distance to fall, and I rolled, sparing my ankles, though I stifled a shriek as the rest of me, every atom felt the impact of the fall onto hard stone.

I lay there for I don’t know how long, but eventually, I stood up and felt around in the darkness until my fingers found the hooded cloak on the peg next to the door. It smelled like urine, but I put it on, and staggered out into the corridor. No one was guarding the cell, and I continued on to the place where a refuse chute would carry me to the sea. The saltwater stung, but nothing was broken. In the morning, I awoke on the beach at the foot of the fortress.

I knew where I had to go.

My limp was worse now, since walking all this way aggravated my injured legs. The hut stood in the clearing, my damned childhood home. Smoke issued from the chimney, and there was a neat stack of wood against the wall. I took hold of the axe buried in the tree stump that served as a cutting surface.

When she saw me, she screamed.

—Hello, mother.

I spit on the ground.

—How are you here, demoness, wicked, disgraced creature!

Demoness; this is an apt description. I cradled the axe like a baby.

—Why are you here?

She was drowning in terror, her eyes, pools of denial.

My fury lent me the strength to grab a good hank of her hair and drag her out to the yard. She writhed to get loose, and I kicked her hard in the ribs. I shrieked louder than she did, the wounds in my feet opening again. The grass went red.

—I want this hand, I hissed.

—Stop, please!

—The hand that slapped me hard for the most trifling error or misdemeanor, the hand that signed me over them, the hand that helped them get me into the wagon that carried me to their torture chamber.

I grabbed her forearm with one hand and slammed her hand down on the tree stump, striking it off. She curled up, roaring in anguish. Ignoring her, I took hold of her old leg, and let the axe deliver its blunt message.

Quiet now, as shock overtook her, I struck again, and the body flinched and twitched. Then I took the arms, one after the other, and finally, the head, whose stare was not the mask of hate I would have preferred to see. No matter. In the house, I threw the pieces into the hearth, one-by-one. The smell was nauseating, and I puked on the floor. The act itself left me strangely numb.

It also left me without a clear purpose or goal. I needed to rest, but I knew they would be looking for me. They might take me to trial, my execution as certain as any death.

I thought the more likely outcome would be to hunt me down and shoot to kill.

What I never dreamed of happening was—and in retrospect, I wonder how I could have been so naïve, so stupid—that they would simply return me to the oubliette.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

‘OUBLIETTE’ was selected for February publication by ENDLESS STATIC. It’s a departure from my usual work, which is usually less visceral. Consider it an outlier rather than a pivot.

Camila Hamel writes picaresque urban fantasy that tends toward the comic and absurd. Every so often she wanders somewhere much darker. “OUBLIETTE” is one such excursion. She publishes on Substack (Remote Control) and elsewhere.