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9. Christmas Again

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‘And that’s enough’ said Ingar. ‘I think you know what happens next, don’t you? I don’t need to tell you do I? I’m worn out with this story. I’m worn out with the girl. You must be too. Please tell me I can stop. I really want to stop. It’s just too cruel. Can I stop?’

Of course we told her no. Of course we did. And when I told Romy the story, she wouldn’t let me stop either, because we all knew that the last bit would be the best bit. It would be the part of the story where we really wanted to feel at one with the young girl and to share her journey. We all knew we did. And I knew now that in Miri and Ingar, well, maybe in Ingar, I had two more friends who felt the same trembling feelings deep inside themselves that I had always done. Always, since the first time I’d found myself dangling from the climbing ropes at school and I’d felt that quivering in my belly and felt so ashamed when I was showering with the girls after gym. And then when I slowly realised that I shouldn’t be ashamed and that I wasn’t alone. That I was just one of many and that the more we shared the more we felt good about our feelings. And yes, I know I’d gone a bit wild and almost gone too far, and I’d certainly gone further than anyone else I knew when I was the Vivien-girl, but I still felt the same and it was still the same feelings that excited me. And so of course I told Ingar that she had to go on, and of course I wanted to tell Romy the whole of the girl’s story. And I wanted to kiss Ingar on the lips and the breasts and I wanted to put my tongue deep inside Romy and after that night in the pub, after our two (I lie) glasses of red wine, I did. And she did to me. And we loved it.
 
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So, after some teasing and poking and pleading, because she really did want to stop for some reason, Ingar agreed to carry on and finish her story.

The girl looked up at the frost slicked steps of the ladder, sensing the crowd watching her all the time. They were staring at her roughly-shorn hair, at the tears on her breasts and the rivulets of semi-frozen blood that crossed her belly. They were staring at the three strips of flesh hanging from her back, and the raw tears in her flesh, dotted with flakes of snow. They were staring at the once-grey shift that hung from the cord around her waist, darkened by her own urine. They were staring at her as she looked up and tried to steady herself for the climb. The executioner ascended next and, crouching, offered her his gloved hand. His assistant told her to get up and gave her a push. Slowly, one excruciating step after another, she began to ascend. She felt the hands of the assistant pushing on her backside and looked down to see his cruel grin. She knew he was enjoying every moment of this. Shaking her head and groaning, she stopped, her head falling between the rungs, and stifled tears. Then tried again, and now she could reach the outstretched hand and a moment later she found herself swung upwards and kneeling on the snow-flecked platform.

She gazed around. Not at the great town hall with its banners, or at the crowd, but at the bleak wooden plateau on which she would die. She tried to comprehend once again; the place she would die. Not an old woman in a bed or a wife in childbirth, but here, in view of all the City, on a bare wooden platform in winter, in a flurry of snow. Now, here, in a few minutes, she imagined, she would be killed and all her life, everything that had gone before, would be done and over and forgotten. And whatever sins there had been, and she could only think of the one, in her cell, a night ago (or was it two), would be assuaged forever.

She gazed around again, slowly taking in the machinery of her death. In the middle of the scaffold was the strangest thing, like one of the stick-people she had drawn as a child she thought, made of heavy dark wood. One piece for the body and head, two for each leg, set at a wide angle from the body, wider, she thought, than was really normal, and two for each arm, set slightly above the horizontal, as if she were raising her arms somehow. And at the ends of each was an open leather cuff. This was meant for her, she decided. A little table that she would lie on, just a few feet above the platform. This was where they would kill her.

Beside the frame, she saw some tools. A long-handled staff that seemed to be made mainly of iron, not quite squared-off, maybe five or six sided, and it was very long, well over the length of her arm she thought. She wondered what that was for. And an axe. She could guess what that was to be used for. So it would be quick and fast she thought. She imagined looking one last time at the sky and then darkness and no more pain. She wondered what her eyes would see, if they would see, as her head tumbled to the floor. It would not be so bad, she thought. It would soon all be done.

To one side , covered by snow, as if no-one would need to use it, was a large wheel, lying flat, but with a post going into its hub, so that it wasn’t quite on the ground. The post seemed to go through a hole in the platform and disappeared beneath. She wondered what that could be for. Maybe it was for someone else. She took a deep breath and tried to stand, but fell onto her hands, and only with the help of the executioner found her feet, her toes sensing the cold, bitter planks beneath. She tried to smile, looking at him, waiting for him to tell her what to do next.
 
I finally found the time late this night to re-read the last few installments carefully (PKin is so prolific at times it's hard to keep up properly). The writing is superb. I find myself hanging on the words and the vivid images they paint in my mind. The interplay between storyteller and listener, and the story itself , set in Hamburg, are captivating ... the former in its playfulness and tenderness, the latter in its grisly brutality and the portrayal of the feelings of its victim. Love it PKin!!! Bravo!
 
He held her still, then moved her towards the centre of the scaffold, beside the stick-man, then took his arms from her. She stood all alone, licked her lip, the pain still searing into her. She wrapped her arms over herself, to appear less naked to the crowd below, every face inclined upwards to catch a glimpse of the young girl before she was tied down, for they all knew what would happen next.

The rituals progressed. The tabarded officer cleared his throat, raised his hand for silence, and read his proclamation, to which the crowd responded, at the right moments, with a loud jeer and a louder cheer, when her punishment was announced. The girl heard the words but did not understand. She glanced this was and that, knowing that she had missed something of importance to her, looking for a signal, an answer that would tell her what would happen next. That was all she wanted to know.

She asked him, quietly, if it was time now, and he said it was. He told her, once again, to do exactly as he said, as that would make things easier. This time he meant for himself, not for her, but she did not yet know that. He told her to go to the cross, or sick-man, or whatever it was and to sit astride the main bar, the body, if you will. She stepped meekly across the scaffold and looked at the shiny, dark wood; it seemed as though it had been polished specially for her. The assistant had wiped it clean of snow, but the odd flakes twinkled where they had been trapped in the grain, or around the open leather straps. She was beside it now, her mouth slightly open, her eyes looking down at the thing on which she was to die. On which she thought she was to die.

She asked him if this was the right place to sit and he said yes, and so she stepped over the stick-man with one leg and lowered herself with her broken fingers until she was astride the beam. She looked up to him waiting for the next instruction, remembering how she waited for the nuns to tell her what to do in the convent. She felt a flake of snow land on her eyelash and another on her lip, and another on her breast, the left breast. She flicked it away, catching the raw tear on her nipple, and winced.

‘Now lie down’ he instructed her, ‘with your head on the end piece’.

She did as she was asked. She felt the cold of the wood on her torn back and cried out. The executioner came to her and placed a finger over his lips and told her to shhhsh. She bit on her lip.

‘Put your arms out onto the cross-pieces’

She did, and immediately the assistant and another helper, who she had not seen earlier, went to the leather cuffs and pulled them as tight as they could until she winced with pain, her head turning this way and that to see what was happening, vague awareness of the crowd below entering her mind. The flags on the town hall. The banner of the red castle. The people looking up. The executioner, her friend, in his dark mask. She looked for his eyes, straining to see. His dark eyes in his dark mask. She knew he would be kind to her and that it would all soon be over. He was her friend, her last friend.
And now her arms were fixed and her body was flat on the stick-man, and she became aware of the rise and fall of her rib cage and her sore, torn breasts as she breathed. She looked into the sky where a swirl of flakes seemed to be gathering and floating. And to her left at the town hall and to her right over the frozen Lesser Alster where the children were still skating and playing their games.

‘Now your legs, lift them, one at at time. Left first’

She lifted her leg and quickly it was secured at the ankle. Then her right and now she was fixed and immobile. She felt a strange calmness, despite the pains across her back and the tightness of the bonds.

‘Will you chop my head off?’

He answered, truthfully, that he would.

She imagined it would all be over, and that made her smile, which she thought was a little strange.

But wasn’t it usual to blindfold someone who was to have their head cut off, she thought? The executioner was doing something behind her. She supposed he was getting the blindfold ready and probably the axe. She had seen an axe.
Surely he should have blindfolded her now she thought. She wondered how long they would make her wait. It must be soon. After all, everyone was here to see her killed and they couldn’t stay in the square forever. She thought of them rushing off to their jobs or their market stalls talking about the girl and her beheading, and maybe telling friends in ale-houses who hadn’t been able to come to the town hall square all about it. They would want to be away from here doing whatever they had to do. She was sure that he wouldn’t make her wait too long before he tied the blindfold over her eyes.
But he didn’t. She felt confused. She wondered why she was waiting. She wondered why he was no longer standing behind her head. She saw him moving by her side. Suddenly she felt a sense of panic. But she was tied down, she couldn’t move at all. She could just raise her head. That was what she would do. She would raise her head and see what was happening. She lifted her head slowly from the sick-man and she saw the executioner standing by her feet. And she saw the assistant handing him that strange long bar, the one with the wooden handle. The long iron bar. She saw him place his hands, carefully, one above the other, the little finger of his right hand linked to the index finger of his left, to secure his grip. She saw him raise the bar high over his head and swing it through the air and she heard the sound it made as it flew fast through the air. She saw him practice his swing again. And then a third time. And then she knew what was about to happen to her and she knew why she had been tied down on the stick-man and she knew why she had not been blindfolded and she knew that he was not going to cut her head off, at least not yet, and she knew that she was not going to die quickly and she panicked and screamed and screamed and called him a liar and said she was innocent and that she had never killed anyone and shouted that it had been her mistress and screamed and tried to pull from her bonds, but she could not.
 
Ingar asked again if she could stop now, but we wouldn’t let her, not Miri, not me. She had to carry on we told her. She made a sort of frustrated noise and said that we all knew what would happen, but we told her to carry on. So she made a pouty face, and her face is very pretty when she pouts, and then sighed, and then continued with the story.

The girl was terrified now, she was pulling and tossing and gasping, she wanted to escape, she wanted it all to end. She felt betrayed, she thought it would all be over by now and that she would be dead and that the crowd would be leaving the square and that her body would be carried over to the coffin. She looked around and there was no coffin. He had lied about that too. She raised her head and looked at him, and he came to her and bent over her and spoke quietly.
He told her he was sorry, but everything he had said had been to help her. He didn’t want her to be frightened, he knew she was frightened, but he didn’t want her to be more frightened than she needed to be, because he knew that would make everything harder. For her and for him. He said he was sorry again, and that he didn’t want to have to kill her like this but he was no more than the agent of the City and he had to do as they required. He told her to be brave, like she had been. He told her it would be hard, but she had to be brave and had to be as still as she could be. He said he was sorry again, and bending close to her head whispered to her. And she stopped crying and became calm and her fingers unclenched and she lay her head back on the end piece, and she looked up again into the sky with her wide open eyes. Then with his knife, he cut away the cord that held the stained shift around the girl’s waist and with another quick upward cut opened the fabric and tore it down the middle, folding the sides back so they fell from the limbs of the stick-man and left her body exposed and naked to the sky.

She was almost unaware of the first blow that shattered her left leg beneath the knee. She felt the stick-man she was bound to shake violently, she heard a cheer from the crowd, but for a moment she felt nothing at all. And then the pain surged into her body and her breath flew from her and her chest heaved and her head banged rapidly from side to side and her mouth frothed and she tried to scream out loud but could hardly make a sound and she looked up and saw her own leg brutally smashed.

And now he was by her right leg and she let her finger-nails dig into the palms of her hands and she flexed her toes and felt her ankle secured by the tight leather strap and she felt the nausea gathering in her throat and she saw him lift the long iron bar and she saw the dim sunlight glint of the grey metal and it slowly made and arc across the sky then flew downwards and she heard the terrible crack as her leg broke and blood splashed over her thighs and now she did scream out loud and cursed and bit on her lip.

She knew it was just beginning and she felt sick with the unbearable pain and yet she knew, as much as she could think, that the pain would grow worse. She just wanted her heart to stop and her body to release her from the torment, but she was strong and it would not and now the executioner moved to her side and with a circling turn of the bar smashed first her left thigh and then her right and she looked down at her broken legs and tried to move her toes and found she could not and her head fell back, her mouth drooling. Her tortured breasts heaved and her back, the skin ripped from it, rose and fell from the wooden bar of the stick-man. She thought again of the stick-man she had drawn as a child and a tear came to her eye and ran down her cheek and she coughed a little laugh. She was being killed by a stick-man she thought to herself.

Her belly betrayed every breath, her mouth wide and gasping for air that might take some of the pain from her. Her mind flooded with a confused jumble of thoughts interrupted by flashes of agony. She felt the place where the guard had touched her and the special pain of delight she had enjoyed and that sweet pain was overcome by the flood of hurt that streamed from her poor legs. And she knew it was not over.

She hoped he would finish it now. Maybe a blow to her heart or to her head that would silence the screaming torture. She looked at him as he moved around her with the bar on his shoulder, circling. She looked at the assistant laughing and grinning. She hoped he would stand between her legs and aim at her breast. He did not. She hoped he would stand behind her and crush her skull with one swift blow. He did not. She understood that there would be no release. That his contract had specified the slowest, cruelest death. That she would suffer and would find no easy sanctuary. She waited, looking left, then right. And he stopped at her right side and raised the bar and smashed her lower right arm, then moved to the left and her hand, her fingers, were lost forever, tied to her only by torn flesh and broken bone. And then to the left and again the bar came hammering down and her whole body bounced on the stick-man and blood flowed from just below her shoulder and she became too lost in pain to shout out and she knew that there was one more blow to come.

She tried to breathe through her nose, to control her lungs. Her teeth were biting through her lower lip. She could see the trembling of her breasts and the shaking of her hips, but try as she might she could control nothing anymore. She was in her broken body, but she had lost all connection to it. Her mind and her body were tied only by the most immense agony that surged this way and that, up and down and across, unceasing, increasing. Her head fell back again and her mouth opened wide.
 
Drawings and manips of this proceedure I find quite erotic.

This description I found extremely emotional, but not erotic. I was immediatley transported into the girl's mind and/or body, imagining the horror and pain. This amazing writing gave me a severe reality check, of what man can do to man. And the need to keep these strange deep thoughts we on this forum have strictly in control.

Thank you pk for having the skill and courage to tell this story.
 
More thoughts on this story (I told you it got to me emotionally, never really out of my mind these last two hours).

Would you want to know your fate completely, in the same circumstances as the girl from Hamburg? I first thought I would, then changed my mind, now totally confused.

If you were unaware of what they could do, it would probably be better to think in terms of a quick death. If you knew what could happen, but they hadn't told you your fate, you would worry if the worst was going to happen to you. If they told you, you would worry about the suffering. If you were like the girl, you would feel very betrayed; but only at a time when fear, pain, agony is going to blow your mind anyway.

So on balance I think the old woman's and executioner's plan was best, keep her ignorant.

What about you?
 
Romy rolled over and slid her hand between my breasts, her little finger stroking under the little bar through my nipple; she opened her mouth and sucked on my other breast, then lifted her head and looked into my eyes. She asked me if Ingar had stopped at this point, because I seemed not to want to tell her any more. She said she would have understood, because it was so gruesome a story. And that if it was true, and she was sure it was, then she couldn’t bear to think of the poor girl in such grotesque pain, her whole body broken and twisted. So it would make sense to stop the story there, because, after all, she must almost be dead. I kissed her on the tip of her nose and asked her if that was all she felt. I think I confused her for a moment, because, well, she looked quizzically at me, a pair of little frown lines forming on her brow (which I rather liked). So I asked her if she wasn’t also excited by the agonies of the girl, because I was sure she was, because I had seen her touching herself, slowly, continually, as I’d been telling her Ingar’s story. At first she said that she absolutely wasn’t excited and that this was not at all like the games we played or the time she’d been to the place in Hamburg. Hamburg, what a coincidence, she thought. I knew she thought about Hamburg quite often and the things she allowed to be done to her there. But I just stayed silent and waited smiled a very little and then she said that in a way she was excited. She didn’t want to die, not at all, not like me (she said), but if she had to die, well, then this would be, somehow, an exciting way to die. Not knowing, just like the girl. Going through her tortures and slowly, very slowly realising the true horror of her fate. She liked that. The not knowing and the awful shock of everything, and the indescribable pain and the snow and the people watching her naked body broken. She said she did find it somehow quite thrilling, not that she would ever wish it to happen to herself.

I kissed her on each of her breasts, letting the little silver bars play with my tongue. Then I kissed her on her nose and then on her eyes and then on her lips and I said to her that I thought she was lying. That when she went to sleep at night she’d be dreaming of the girl on the scaffold and she be imagining herself, tied to the wooden stick-man, and imagining just how it would feel to have your back stripped of flesh and your breasts torn and your limbs broken and she would lie there, sweating and waking from her sleep and she’d play with herself again and she’d dream of being that girl. I told her I knew that it was true, because I knew how I felt and if I could have pressed a button and been transported back in time then I would have loved to be there, on that cold winter day, in front of the town hall, being broken. My legs and arms being shattered as I lay there, as flakes of snow fell onto my bloody body. I knew that I would want that and I was certain that she would too and I told her that it would be quite perfect if we could both be there, both on the scaffold. She looked at me and touched me and forced her fingers into me and ran her nails inside me and pushed another finger into me and I knew then that she felt just as I did. And I told her that I would tell her the rest of the story, because it was not yet over, and in the end Ingar had told us too, in our room in Ridingham.
 
old slave said:
More thoughts on this story ... What about you?
Click to expand...
I do think it's best for her not to know. If she were one of those martyr-girls, it might be different. Knowing the stations of suffering might be something for a martyr. When Lisa went to become 'that Vivien-girl' it was gruesome too, but she wanted it (or thought so) - knowing what's coming is then of course different again. And it is gruesome; if it was only the story of the execution told, it's quite possible that at some point I'd bail out and pull the ripcord. The way it's intertwined with the reliving and retelling, in Ingar's circle and from Lisa to Romy, it turns into something more.
 
The executioner stood back and looked at the girl. She wheezed as she tried to breathe and he could see her wide eyes staring at him, questioning him. He looked at her broken legs and arms and was satisfied with his work. She was broken, but she would not die quickly, just as the Justices had required. He looked again at her body, spattered with blood from the blows he had given her. He looked at her face, dotted with tiny spots of red. He hadn’t really looked at her, he realised, but she was pretty. Not beautiful, in many ways quite ordinary, but pretty, with regular features, a nose that was neither too big nor too small, almost straight perhaps. Her eyes were blue, he hadn’t really thought about her eyes. Her hair, although it had been cropped short and was now matted with sweat and blood, was golden. Her lips were soft and full. If he’d seen her in one of the alleys beside the harbour he’d have taken her for a night and a few coins, he thought. Then he thought that she was probably to innocent a girl to ever work in those dark, narrow streets. He wondered if she’d have kissed him. He would have liked to have kissed her, and then to have pushed her against a wall and fucked her. But she wasn’t that sort of a girl. And she was not for kissing now. Bending down, he took a piece of cloth and wiped her face. He felt her breasts moving close to his hand. He could almost feel the pain she was suffering as she strived to breathe, her body fighting for life even though she wanted it all to end. He put his mouth to her ear and told her, again, that he was sorry. He told her that it was almost over now. She looked at him and he knew she knew that it wasn’t really true. He had broken her but it was not yet time for her to die. She tried to speak, her mouth moving, but words struggling to escape.

‘Please kill me now. Please end it. I’ve suffered enough. Please help me…’

Her voice faded away and tears ran from her eyes. He wiped her face again, and once again said sorry. The crowd were waiting, he knew that it was time for the next part of the performance to begin; he had a job to do. For a moment he felt the handle of the knife hanging from his belt, looked at the silver-blue blade, and thought that just one quick movement would end it all for her. One push of the blade between her ribs and her eyes would open wide and blood would flow from her mouth and she would be gone and her pain would be over. He thought of the girl who played in the field behind his lodging, dancing with a hoop, her blonde braids blowing behind her. He looked at the broken, bleeding limbs tied to the wooden frame and again at her face. She could have been a pretty woman he thought.

The assistants were ready, they had seen the executioner’s signal, and they moved to either end of the stick-man, quickly releasing the leather straps that held the girl fast. She could no longer move. Her arms and legs were useless to her, just sources of agony. He nodded and they put their hands onto her hips and shoulders. She screamed from deep in her belly. They lifted her; she heard a noise which might have been the crowd. Her limbs fell, like a puppet’s, as her body was raised from the wooden frame, dangling in air. A nod and they secured their grip, drawing another shriek from the girl, then carried her a few paces across the platform to the wheel that stood on its post, waiting.

He ordered them to take care, and to do the job properly. A good execution should not be botched at the last moment. Professionalism took the place of pity. They had a job to do and would be rewarded according to their conduct. And the assistant had to learn the importance of correct procedures. He was too eager to enjoy the suffering of his victims, forgetting that the real skill was in drawing out the pain to the precise point that the Justices had specified. He would learn.

All the while, during this short, last journey, the girl was crying and shrieking. Her broken bones and torn flesh and nerves jarred against themselves, sending shock-waves of agony through her convulsing body. Her head hung back, rolling sideways as she still tried to see what was to happen to her, the crowd now forming her sky and the grey clouds at her feet. She heard him call an instruction and felt her torn body being lowered down onto the hub of the wheel, her head resting, slightly propped forward, on the rim, arranged, so it seemed, that she could look down on her broken frame and torn breasts, all now bespattered once again with the blood that would occasionally erupt in little sprays from her shattered joints.

She thought that perhaps at last they would stop and that her pain could not be made worse, but she was wrong. The assistants knew the next part of the job, and worked together, first twisting her left leg under and over the spokes, tying off the ankle onto the rim, then repeating with her other leg, and then her two useless arms. She bounced in shock, gasping and squawking, her body thumping up and down on the hub of the wheel until, finally, she was fixed and once more immobile. Now, she was sure, it was over. Her eyes shut, she longed to find the peace of darkness, even though darkness would not banish her agony.

But it was not over. She felt the wheel moving. The assistants were lifting it upwards on the post, then, suddenly, having raised it a few feet, one slipped and it crashed down, the post thumping into the ground beneath the scaffold, the girl thrown in her bonds, her howls silencing, briefly, the undiminished crowed. The executioner cursed their incompetence and called on two of the guards to add their weight from below the platform. This time it rose more smoothly, still jarring as the post was pushed upwards, and then a final thump as a retaining spar was hammered through a mortice cut into its thickness and the whole assembly fell back and, shaking, was finally fixed. He looked up, staring at the girl’s back, a coagulated mess of hanging strips of white flesh and dripping blood; staring at her twisted, broken limbs, laced into the spokes of the wheel; staring at her shorn blonde hair, resting on the wheel’s rim. It was over. Until tomorrow his job was done. The assistants tidied away their tools and the iron bar, wiping away the blood and flesh that adhered to it. The executioner bowed to the steps of the town hall, then climbed down the ladder to the cobbles of the square, washing his hands in a bowl of fresh water. On her wooden bed the girl stared upwards at the sky, unable to fathom the agonies that flowed through her shattered remains, her mouth opening slowly, catching flakes of snow, understanding at last how she was to die.
 
pkindenhaag said:
The executioner stood back and looked at the girl. She wheezed as she tried to breathe and he could see her wide eyes staring at him, questioning him. He looked at her broken legs and arms and was satisfied with his work. She was broken, but she would not die quickly, just as the Justices had required. He looked again at her body, spattered with blood from the blows he had given her. He looked at her face, dotted with tiny spots of red. He hadn’t really looked at her, he realised, but she was pretty. Not beautiful, in many ways quite ordinary, but pretty, with regular features, a nose that was neither too big nor too small, almost straight perhaps. Her eyes were blue, he hadn’t really thought about her eyes. Her hair, although it had been cropped short and was now matted with sweat and blood, was golden. Her lips were soft and full. If he’d seen her in one of the alleys beside the harbour he’d have taken her for a night and a few coins, he thought. Then he thought that she was probably to innocent a girl to ever work in those dark, narrow streets. He wondered if she’d have kissed him. He would have liked to have kissed her, and then to have pushed her against a wall and fucked her. But she wasn’t that sort of a girl. And she was not for kissing now. Bending down, he took a piece of cloth and wiped her face. He felt her breasts moving close to his hand. He could almost feel the pain she was suffering as she strived to breathe, her body fighting for life even though she wanted it all to end. He put his mouth to her ear and told her, again, that he was sorry. He told her that it was almost over now. She looked at him and he knew she knew that it wasn’t really true. He had broken her but it was not yet time for her to die. She tried to speak, her mouth moving, but words struggling to escape.

‘Please kill me now. Please end it. I’ve suffered enough. Please help me…’

Her voice faded away and tears ran from her eyes. He wiped her face again, and once again said sorry. The crowd were waiting, he knew that it was time for the next part of the performance to begin; he had a job to do. For a moment he felt the handle of the knife hanging from his belt, looked at the silver-blue blade, and thought that just one quick movement would end it all for her. One push of the blade between her ribs and her eyes would open wide and blood would flow from her mouth and she would be gone and her pain would be over. He thought of the girl who played in the field behind his lodging, dancing with a hoop, her blonde braids blowing behind her. He looked at the broken, bleeding limbs tied to the wooden frame and again at her face. She could have been a pretty woman he thought.

The assistants were ready, they had seen the executioner’s signal, and they moved to either end of the stick-man, quickly releasing the leather straps that held the girl fast. She could no longer move. Her arms and legs were useless to her, just sources of agony. He nodded and they put their hands onto her hips and shoulders. She screamed from deep in her belly. They lifted her; she heard a noise which might have been the crowd. Her limbs fell, like a puppet’s, as her body was raised from the wooden frame, dangling in air. A nod and they secured their grip, drawing another shriek from the girl, then carried her a few paces across the platform to the wheel that stood on its post, waiting.

He ordered them to take care, and to do the job properly. A good execution should not be botched at the last moment. Professionalism took the place of pity. They had a job to do and would be rewarded according to their conduct. And the assistant had to learn the importance of correct procedures. He was too eager to enjoy the suffering of his victims, forgetting that the real skill was in drawing out the pain to the precise point that the Justices had specified. He would learn.

All the while, during this short, last journey, the girl was crying and shrieking. Her broken bones and torn flesh and nerves jarred against themselves, sending shock-waves of agony through her convulsing body. Her head hung back, rolling sideways as she still tried to see what was to happen to her, the crowd now forming her sky and the grey clouds at her feet. She heard him call an instruction and felt her torn body being lowered down onto the hub of the wheel, her head resting, slightly propped forward, on the rim, arranged, so it seemed, that she could look down on her broken frame and torn breasts, all now bespattered once again with the blood that would occasionally erupt in little sprays from her shattered joints.

She thought that perhaps at last they would stop and that her pain could not be made worse, but she was wrong. The assistants knew the next part of the job, and worked together, first twisting her left leg under and over the spokes, tying off the ankle onto the rim, then repeating with her other leg, and then her two useless arms. She bounced in shock, gasping and squawking, her body thumping up and down on the hub of the wheel until, finally, she was fixed and once more immobile. Now, she was sure, it was over. Her eyes shut, she longed to find the peace of darkness, even though darkness would not banish her agony.

But it was not over. She felt the wheel moving. The assistants were lifting it upwards on the post, then, suddenly, having raised it a few feet, one slipped and it crashed down, the post thumping into the ground beneath the scaffold, the girl thrown in her bonds, her howls silencing, briefly, the undiminished crowed. The executioner cursed their incompetence and called on two of the guards to add their weight from below the platform. This time it rose more smoothly, still jarring as the post was pushed upwards, and then a final thump as a retaining spar was hammered through a mortice cut into its thickness and the whole assembly fell back and, shaking, was finally fixed. He looked up, staring at the girl’s back, a coagulated mess of hanging strips of white flesh and dripping blood; staring at her twisted, broken limbs, laced into the spokes of the wheel; staring at her shorn blonde hair, resting on the wheel’s rim. It was over. Until tomorrow his job was done. The assistants tidied away their tools and the iron bar, wiping away the blood and flesh that adhered to it. The executioner bowed to the steps of the town hall, then climbed down the ladder to the cobbles of the square, washing his hands in a bowl of fresh water. On her wooden bed the girl stared upwards at the sky, unable to fathom the agonies that flowed through her shattered remains, her mouth opening slowly, catching flakes of snow, understanding at last how she was to die.
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This has got to be the all-time definitive tale of being broken on the wheel. Such agony! And the emotions! The penetrating look into the minds of both executioner and victim ... really well done PKin!
 
So, that’s it… or something like that… I think that’s what Miri said… Is that it Ingar, just that she gets tied up and dies? I was a bit surprised. Because Miri was usually, well, the quietest of us I suppose. I didn’t know what she wanted. More or less. I didn’t know. Until she sort of spoilt it by asking.. ‘what happened’ …I wondered if she expected a miraculous rescue… it seemed unlikely to me….
 
Of course, she died, but not quickly at all. Very slowly, very awfully. She couldn’t see the crowd leaving the square in their twos and threes or the Justices and guild-men and aldermen walking back up the steps of the town hall for their lunch of pike and wine, or the children on the lake who were still playing on their skates. All she could see was the grey sky and the flakes of snow and the seagulls and rooks. And her body that continued to move and sweat and bleed and breathe. The body she longed to die, to release her tortured mind. She raised her head, just slightly, enough to see how her back lay just below the rim of the wheel, on the harsh spokes. Enough to see how her arms and legs were almost torn from her and were laced between the wooden bars. Enough to see the bindings that held her there and would not release her. And then her head fell back and she exhaled and tried to draw in the cold air even though she didn’t want to, and she felt her ribs moving and her chest filling and her breasts hurting and her back screaming and she breathed again. And the afternoon went on and her breathing continued and she longed for her pain to end, but it did not. It grew and filled her mind and filled the sky and filled the world and she knew nothing but pain.
 
Have I told you how much I love feeling my breasts against Romy’s? I’m sure I have, but I think I should tell you again. Sometimes you can have enough of a story and enough of the poor young girl slowly fading on her wheel with no-one watching or caring anymore. But I care utterly for my Romy and I think all those boys who like girls’ breasts are missing out so much because they can’t lie there and feel their own lovely soft breasts and tender nipples sliding over the breasts and nipples of their lover and feel them squeezing together and feeling, if they are lucky enough, their tiny silver piercings flicking as they touch. I love it when Romy dives under the covers and licks me and flicks her tongue. And I love it when she bites the lobe of my ear and I love it when she runs her finger over my lips and chin and down to the little hollow at the base of my neck that has no name, or not a nice name anyway. But it all sorts of fades away compared to feeling her breasts against mine. Oh, and I suppose we hold each other tight and kiss too. That is the best thing. And when I do that with Romy I don’t really think about the girl on her wheel. But then when we lie next to each other and look into each other’s eyes, then I do. Then I think of the snow and her body and the blood and the bindings and the seagulls circling in the sky above her. That’s when I think of her.
 
I suppose I’ve never been able to stop thinking about her. Not since Ingar told us the story. I keep thinking of her, in her last hours, so totally alone, tied down on her wheel in the cold winter sky. As people drifted away, chatting about the performance and the way the executioner had broken her and the screams she made and then went to their fish stalls or their ledgers and thought about supper and the lace they planned to buy for their wives to make up for the night when they had come home drunk from the brothel and stinking of cheap girls. She lay there, unable any more to sob tears of pain, unable any more to cry out. Just waiting for death to claim her, waiting for the cold to freeze her or her blood to drain from her wounds (but she would never loose enough blood because the executioner had done his job well). Slowly her eyes became dim, but still she could see enough to watch the seagulls come lower. To settle on the iron rim of the wheel, then, emboldened, hop onto the spokes and begin to peck at her smashed legs. Then onto her belly, their bright yellow beaks opening again the seared wounds on her breasts. But she couldn’t scream anymore. And in the end she barely noticed when the birds came to her face and pulled on her open lips and ripped her cheek open and tore her eyes from their sockets. All she knew was a strange overlaying of pain upon pain as she drifted on her bed of agony. Longing to die, unable to die.
 
He returned to the scaffold just before dawn on the next day. The clouds had departed, leaving a fresh scattering of light snow over the ground and the wooden platform. A faint light was breaking over the horizon, casting a pale glow over the icy lake in front of the town hall square. His assistant was with him, his face betraying his discomfort with the early hour and the burden of the ladder that he now placed against the structure. The executioner climbed up, telling his assistant to bring the tools, a mallet and his axe.

The snow made the platform slippy underfoot and he kicked a space clear beneath the wheel, then pointed to the tenon that held the post in place. With a few hard swings he knocked it clear and with a screech of wood on wood, the post and wheel slumped down onto the scaffold, stopped only by the thump of the post as it hit the cobbles beneath. She was still, flakes of snow coating her broken body. The assistant turned and vomited. Her torn limbs had been ravaged by the attention of the seagulls, her breasts resembled nothing so much as a pile of minced meat, her mouth ripped to her neck, the hollows where her eyes once gazed from empty holes, edged in dried blood.

He wanted it done with and gave the boy a kick, telling him to get her untied as quickly as he could. The knots that he’d tightened so firmly the previous day, the more to hurt the girl, were frozen, so after a few faltering efforts he cut them free and stood back to let the executioner do his work. With a few sharp blows he hacked off her broken limbs and then moved to her body, raising his axe high and with a practiced eye severed her head, just as he had promised. It fell onto the platform, rolling slightly then coming to a stop by his assistant’s feet. Another barked order and the assistant pulled the pieces of flesh and bone that used to be a girl from the wheel, dropping them over the edge of the scaffold, then lifted her body, what was left of it, and let it fall with a dull thud onto the pile of limbs. The executioner took her head and placed it into a bag, the sort used for carrying potatoes from the fields, then clambered down. He’d already built a small fire to one side of the scaffold and now took his tinder box and with a few strikes set it crackling into flames. Looking away, somehow afraid of the dead girl’s remains in a way he had never been of her living body, the assistant heaped the body parts onto the pyre, covering his nose as the rancid smell of burning flesh filled the air. While he was doing this the executioner walked across to the town hall steps, lifting the pike that stood there from its position, and forced the girl’s ravaged head onto it, twisting it to and fro to make sure it was secure. She would stare with her empty eyes over the square until the birds finally stripped her scull bare. It was over, the job was complete and his contract had been satisfied.
 
Ingar sighed and slumped back onto her cushion, exhausted.

‘Well, I hope you both thought it was worth it. I’m done. Totally.’

Miri cradled her in her arms and kissed her on her forehead. I think I smiled and snuggled up to her.

‘Let’s go to bed shall we? I think I need you two with me tonight.’

And we did, and held each other gently and dreamt of the poor girl and her death, all those years ago, her ashes blowing into the wintery sky, her torn face frightening small children whose fathers led them to the square and lectured them on the exquisite agonies of retribution. And I woke up and Romy had her arm around me and we kissed. I love kissing Romy.

Anyway, what more is there to say? That was Sunday and today is Tuesday and I’m back in Ridingham and Romy’s in her uni town and so the holiday is over. Another Christmas. I think I like the Christmas holiday and the long, dark nights. They are so nice for storytelling. And I like a nice story.
 
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