Barbs - not a flaying... maybe next time...
I scribbled some notes when I woke.... It was a bit fragmentary... and maybe drew from your inspiration.
Brilliant blue sky, white sun, black shadows. I'm dragged out from the cool of the cellars, my ankles and wrists still shackled. The noise! A roar, growing in intensity. I glance all around. They are all looking at me, at my rags, hanging from my bloodied shoulders. I can see the stake, chains hanging from it. Waiting.
Noise!
I'm there. He gives me a leather water bag and signals that I should drink. I know it will be my last swallow of water. I feel it, sweet and cold, as it flows into me. He snatches it away. My arms are roughly raised above me and the shackles are fixed to the hanging chain. They pull on it so that I am barely on tip-toes. My toes circle in the sand. I stare at the sand, knowing that they are all looking at me.
Noise!
He comes to me and raises my head, his eyes focused on me. He pushes my sweat-tangled hair from my eyes, letting his hands run down my neck to my shoulders. He tugs on the torn cloth that covers me. Tugs again. Hard. And rips it from me.
I am naked. The noise is filling me.
I wait.
He comes to me again. In his hands a sort of rake. A long pole tipped with horrible, sharp spikes. He holds it at my neck. He pulls it down my body, from my neck to my sex. Over my breasts. Over my belly. Seven spikes cutting into my flesh. Seven streams of blood. Then over my left breast. Seven more. And my right. Seven more. My whole body is bleeding, blood flowing over my body, over my hips, over my legs, warm blood sliding over me. I open my eyes. I close my eyes. My mouth won't scream. I want to scream. I can't.
He turns me. Three more times he runs the rake over me, over my back. Then again, over my side. And again, over my other side.
He stands back from me, watching me hanging there. Watching me gasping and bleeding. He raises his rake. The crowd cheer.
Noise. Noise. Noise.
He watches me, watches as I turn slowly on the chains, my legs unable to bear my weight. He watches me.
I see another man.
He is carrying a bundle of sticks. He is coming towards me. He piles them around my feet. I can't kick them away. I am hanging and bleeding.
He brings another bundle. And another. But they come only half-way up my calves. The sticks spread out around me. The crowd cheer.
Noise!
I see him with a torch. He is coming to light the sticks. He is coming to burn me. They will all watch me bleed and swing and burn. They want to see me burn. I can't even scream.
All I hear is noise.