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The Last Knock For The Beginning

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Fox-on-Cross

Great-Cruxinquisitor
After words and accusations, the verdict, flagellation, bearing the cross on your shoulder, you reach the location for the crucifixion.
Your clothes are pulled away and you get the ultimate knock on your shoulder, your both legs drawn to force you to stretch on the row wood of the beam.
They laugh...

Now you are sure, there is no way back.
 
:D
 
I think that for anyone facing crucifixion, there would be that last thread of hope that would persist up to some point. As the execution process proceeds through whipping, then carrying the beam as you are forced to walk toward your place of execution, being stripped of your clothes, being made to lie down on the beam as the executioner probes your wrist and places the first nail, that hope grows smaller and smaller, replaced by hopelessness. There's no last-minute reprieve coming.
Even though you know what is about to be done to you, this is all so surreal, can't be happening. You've been whipped, you're lying there naked in front of a jeering crowd with strong men holding you down. This is all outside of anything you ever experienced, it can't be happening, your mind can't accept it. In this nightmare, couldn't there be that one more barely conceivable thing, that you'd escape somehow?

When does that last speck of hope vanish into the darkness of despair, when your mind surrenders and becomes totally resigned to the reality that yes, you will die on the cross? I think it's when that first blow of the hammer falls and you feel the point of the nail pierce your wrist. And you know there's no going back.
 
And skilled tormentors will keep that spark of hope alive as long as they can,
only to jeer when you finally realise they've been deceiving you...

Maybe, but I was just thinking of the thought processes in the mind of the condemned, a bit like Victor Hugo's "The Last Day of a Condemned." I think that even if the executioners are indifferent to the victim and don't really make any effort one way or the other to imply that there might be hope for them, the victim will still have that spark of hope right up to some point of no return.
 
I agree with Jedakk that it is that moment when the hammer falls. That moment is unlike my whipping, the carrying of the beam, the stripping away of the last of my clothing, modesty and dignity, the fatefulness of being forced to lie back on the wood, even having my hands roped in place, or the probing of the nail. Once that iron shank has been driven straight through my delicate wrist and buried in the wood of the patibulum, all hope .. no matter how slim ... has been extinguished, gone forever. It's going to happen. They are going to crucify me, here and now, for all to see!
 
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Before his beheading Cromwell beseeched "mercey, mercey, mercey", but in vain.
Those weren't his last words, but the last line of aletter he wrote to the King asking for clemency: "Most gracious Prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy." That's Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII one time right hand man; not Oliver Cromwell, Puritan leader who defeated Charles I. Thomas was Oliver 2nd great-uncle.
Gary Gilmore's last words: "Let's do it."

Other last words of those facing execution:
"I'd like to thank my family for loving me and taking care of me. And the rest of the world can kiss my ass."
Johnny Frank Garrett, Sr., lethal injection, Texas, February 11, 1992
"Good people are always so sure they're right.
Barbara Graham, gas chamber, San Quentin June 3, 1955
"How about this for a headline for tomorrow's paper? French fries."
James French, electric chair, Oklahoma, 1966
"Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel."
George Appel, electric chair, New York, 1928
"Take a step forward, lads. It will be easier that way."
Erskine Childers, Irish patriot, firing quad, November 24, 1922
"Capital punishment: them without the capital get the punishment."
John Spenkelink, electric chair, Florida, May 25, 1979
"There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is God's messenger."
Saddam Hussein, hanged, December 30, 2006
 
Quite right, I'd forgotten T. Cromwell was beheaded. An occupational hazard, working for Henry VIII, scarily unpredictable, gives him an earldom and makes him Lord Chancellor, a fortnight later he has him beheaded, and soon after that he's blaming others of his Council for making false accusations, and threatening to chop their heads off too... But (a/c Wiki) Edward Hall, a contemporary chronicler, records that Cromwell made a speech on the scaffold, professing to die, "in the traditional faith" and then "so patiently suffered the stroke of the axe, by a ragged and Boocherly miser, whiche very ungoodly perfourmed the Office". Of course, it depends whose side you're getting the story from.
 
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