In my mind the loss of my loincloth is the ultimate humiliation in the events leading to my crucifixion ... It is the last remaining vestige of human dignity that I still possess after being stripped of all other clothing, paraded nearly naked before a jeering crowd, flogged and driven under the lash to the place of execution. There had been the hope that I would be allowed somehow to keep it. After all they hadn't bothered to strip it away yet, had they? But that hope is shattered. My womanhood is exposed to all, and I sense the quickening of their interest, the focus of their attention on what is now revealed and shall remain exposed as the nail me to my cross and raise me high. The loss of my loincloth is not only my ultimate humiliation but the event that signals the beginning of the end for me. It has that sense of finality about it. I am about to die, and die horribly .. Not alone but in full view of everyone, suffering totally naked on the cross...
Love this set, Jedakk. Sabrina's reactions and her "victim's eye view" as presented here captures the moment of despair so well!
Very well put!
When I was crafting this scene I created the poses and the action of the loincloth being pulled down in a separate file with only Sabina and the two Nubians to speed up check renders and make it easier to work with. Then I brought the three of them into the main scene, and I was surprised at how erotic it looked. Even having worked with Sabina's nude figure hundreds of times over the years, somehow the act of removing that last vestige of clothing and revealing what is underneath is more interesting than just the view of a nude woman.
In going over the entire process of crucifixion in tedious detail, it seems to me that this moment would be very significant in the mind of the condemned, either male or female. The victim has been whipped mercilessly like an animal, made to carry part of the instrument of her own torture and death to the place of execution, while - at least in the scenario I've written for Sabina - being dragged at the end of a chain and whipped the whole way. She is naked with the exception of the brief loincloth they gave her, so the last thing she has left to her is this small token of modesty.
Now they are taking even that away, stripping her naked before the crowd who are waiting to see her suffer in agony. This is perhaps the ultimate debasement, having strangers forcibly strip her naked, much worse than if she had to remove her own clothing.
In Sabina's mind, her path to crucifixion began when they stripped her clothing before they whipped her:
There were murmurs and hoots from the crowd; the show had begun. I had relived this scene so many times in my mind that I had to remind myself, this is not another dream, this is really happening. I had been part of the crowd at so many executions, but this time I was the one facing execution, the one everyone was jeering at. They will crucify me today, I thought, by mid-morning I will be nailed to a cross.
And then later, during her whipping, she's thinking that as bad as it is, it's better than what's will be done to her afterward:
I knew what they would do to me after the whipping, and if I could buy just a little more time before that – even shackled to the whipping post – it would be better.
And when the whipping was over and she lay there on the pavement at the foot of the post thinking that the crowd had seen all of her, having seen her naked and whipped. And she thinks:
No, the thought came to me, they haven’t seen you nailed to a cross yet.
Now, standing before the crowd at the place of execution, her cross is behind her, the executioner waiting with his heavy hammer and nails. When they remove her loincloth, there's nothing left but to force her down onto the crossbeam and drive the nails through her wrists.
When the Nubians tore away my loincloth I panicked, trying to hold onto it. In my terror, I realized that once I was naked, they would nail me to the cross.
And then I was naked. I was balancing on the edge between life and agonizing death. In front of me was light and life, while behind me the black horror of the cross waited to seize me in its agonizing embrace.
I have always seen this point as the tipping point, the point of no return, teetering precariously on the brink of a bottomless dark chasm within which there is no longer any hope, only a precipitous descent into agonizing pain, humiliation and a long and lingering death.
