meme

Instructions

He felt calmness return: "Get on with it, old woman" "Old woman!" she snapped. "you've courage, and that can't be denied. well, we shall see, sirra." she bent close, lowered her voice almost to a whisper. "you will feel pain in this hand within the box. Pain! but withdraw the hand and I'll touch your neck with my gom jabbar-the death so swift it's like the fall of a headsman's axe. Withdraw your hand and the gom jabbar takes you. Understand?" "what's in the box" "Tik Toks by eight year olds" He felt an increased cringe in his hand, he pressed his lips tightly together. How could this be a test? he wondered. the cringe became painful. the old woman said "you've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind. The pain got worse. "why are you doing this?" Paul demanded. "To determine if your human. be silent" Paul clenched his left hand into a fist as the cringe sensation increased in his other hand. it mounted slowly: cringe upon cringe... upon cringe. he felt the fingernails of his free hand biting the palm. he tried to flex the fingers of the cringing hand, but couldn't move them. "It burns," he whispered. "Silence!" Pain throbbed up his arm. sweat stood on his forehead. Every fiber cried to remove the hand from that burning pit...but... the gom jabbar. Without turning his head, he tried to move his head to see that terrible needle poised beside his neck. he sensed that he was breathing in gasps, tried to slow his breaths, and couldn't. Pain! his world emptied of everything except that the hand immersed in agony, and the ancient face inches away staring at him. his lips were so dry he had difficulty separating them. The burning! The burning! he could feel the skin curling black on that agonized hand, the flesh crisping and dropping away until only charred bones remained. It stopped! as though a switch had been turned off, the cringe stopped. Paul felt his right arm trembling, felt sweat bathing his body. "Enough," the old woman muttered. "Kull Wahad! no woman-child ever withstood that much. I must have wanted you to fail."