The Pilgrim Girl - The Story of a Submission - 38
Christa's eyes widened. A gasp flew over her lips. Her heart started to beat.
No! she thought. No! This can not be true! I have to be wrong! I did not look right! That just can not be true!
But Sister Zita floated on her bare feet through the chapel to the cross where Christa was helplessly tied, and the hammer and the nails were still in her hands. The nun wore a fine smile on her face. Without haste she came to Christa.
"Sister! Sister Zita!" Christa stammered. "What are you doing? Please, do not do that!"
The nun leaned over the girl on the cross: "The day has come, my child. Today you will truly repent. You will follow our Lord in full consequence and repent on the cross." Zita smiled: "I know you want it!"
Christa shook her head. She was freezing cold. She was sick with fear.
"No, sister Zita!" she called. "Not that! Do not do that! Let me go! Free me!"
"But not at all!" the nun said unctuously. "You will now experience what it is like to show true penitence. All the crucifixions with the leather cuffs were only preparation for that one day, my child."
She put the nails on the cross, one each beside Christa's hands and two at her feet. Christa panicked. "Sister Zita, listen! I do not want that! y penitence doesn´t go that far!"
"That doesn´t matter, little one," said the nun. "You know the cross. It will demand the necessary penitence as well as humility and devotion. That's why you're tied up. So you can not shy away at the last moment. The ropes should help you become one with the cross."
Christas panic increased. "No!" she screamed, pulling on the ropes that held her on the cross. "I do not want to do that! Sister Zita I want to repent! For all time! But in a way that leaves me alive! I do not wanna die!"
"We all have to die," said the nun sincerely. "So do you, my child. Your time has come. You will do the highest possible penance and go to our Lord. Amen!"
Christa started to cry. "Oh please, sister Zita! Please do not do this to me! I am still so young! I do not want to die!" She started to stammer. She explained to the nun that she wanted to stay with her to repent on the cross every day, for the sins of humanity, but please not die! She wanted to live to atone for the sins of the world.
Sister Zita picked up a nail - it was the one who was lying next to Christa's right hand.
"Thou shalt not atone for the sins of the world!" she said in a hard voice. A terrible fire burned in her eyes. "Thou shalt repent for your OWN sins!"
She set the nail on Christa's right hand exactly where she had described it to her some time ago: right between the balls of her hands.
Christa watched in horror as she felt the tip of the nail searching for the right spot. It was a big iron carpenter nail fifteen inches long and almost a centimeter thick. She could not believe what she saw. It was too unreal.
She felt like she was in a bad dream. At any moment, she expected to wake up in her bed. But this was not a bad dream, she knew that. She was scared like never before in her life.
"Sister Zita, do not do that! Please, if you nail me, you´ll kill me!"
"Death is part of life," said the nun. She smiled at Christa, with that terrible fire in her eyes, and Christa recognized the madness in those eyes that she had looked at so often when she was hanging naked on the cross. Sister Zita raised the hammer.
"No!" Christa screamed.
"Yes!" said the nun in a hard voice. Then she struck.
Nothing had prepared Christa for this pain. She not only heard the hammer blow, she felt it! She felt the nail penetrate deep into her hand, piercing her hand with several hammer blows.
She screamed. Christa screamed like on a spit.
Sister Zita did not mind her screaming. She drove the carpenter's nail through Christa's hand, and as the tip of the nail struck the wood under her hand, she fetched it further and hammered the nail into the crossbar, blow by blow.
Christa screamed with all her might. She screamed in pain and fear. She was frightened. Cold horror had seized her. She felt dread. This was real. That was not a bad dream she would wake up from. Christa screamed.
Zita hit one last time. Christa felt the tremendous pain as her hand was pressed hard on the wood. The sister circled the cross and moved to the other side of Christa, where the next nail was already waiting to be hit through her left hand.
Christa was frightened. She begged and stammered on and on. She asked Sister Zita in tears not to do so. Everything, really everything she wanted to do, so that she was spared this kind of penance. Christa promised everything. She whined, she stammered, she begged and pleaded.
It did not help. Sister Zita did not stop.
She picked up the nail and set it on Christa's left hand. Again the girl felt with the tip of the nail searching for the right place between the palm of her hand.
Christa tried to pull her hand away, but the rope around her wrist held her hand iron-hard. There was no escape.
"No!" she screamed. "No!"
The hammer came down and drove the nail with a single punch through Christas hand. Christa roared. She reared up. She bowed her back. With firm blows, the nun drove the nail into the wood. Christa felt her hand pressed against the beam. A final blow and the hand was permanently attached to the wood.
Through a veil of tears she saw the nun walking to her feet. Zita picked up a nail and set the point on Christa's right foot, right in the middle of the foot. She raised the hammer and struck.
Christa reared up, howling. She heard the hamming of the hammer on the nail, a quiet tick-tick and she felt the iron driving through her flesh. She felt the nail tip hit her sensitive sole - from the inside!
A blow and the nail pierced from the inside through the sole of the foot. It came out from behind the balls of in the middle of the foot. Such insane pain ran through her that Christa was writhing on the cross and roared. She shook her head. She pulled with all her strength on the ropes that held her. She howled and screamed.
Below, in her foot, the faint tick-tick became a loud Tock-Tock, as sister Zita struck the carpenter's nail with firm blows into the wood of the foot rest.
A new pedestal, Christa thought incoherently. A brand new one! It is clear! She has to build a new pedestal each time she captures a new victim! Otherwise you would see the holes from the nails and the blood!
She felt the last nail put on her left foot. Zita struck. Christa screamed.
The iron nail drove through Christas foot, then pierced the wood beneath. Christa felt the vibrations of the hammer blow all over her body - but most of all in her nailed hands and feet. She gave a long cry. She passed away in fear. She was nailed! She was nailed to the cross! Sister Zita hit nailed her on the cross!
The last nail was in place. Sister Zita put away the hammer. She took a small, sharp kitchen knife and began to cut the ropes that had held Christa on the cross. They were no longer necessary. The nails were holding Christa now, the terrible nails!
Christa saw the nun smile. Nothing human was of that smile. It was not the smile that sister Zita had given her when she looked at Christa on the cross. It was not the smile she had given Christa when she stroked her bare feet at the coffee table. It was the smile of madness!
"I told you, you will not wear the ropes for long," said the nun. Still burning in her eyes this terrible fire. She held up the broken ropes: "You do not need them anymore!" She threw them carelessly aside.
Christa lay naked on the cross. She was sweating with fear, but at the same time she was cold with horror. She was scared like never before in life.
"Sister Zita, please do not!" she pleaded, knowing well that it was pointless. She could read it in her sister's eyes. Pure madness blazed in those eyes.
Christa tried to defend herself against her shackles, only that she no longer wore any kind of shackles. She was neither tied to the cross with ropes nor strapped to the cross with leather cuffs. She was nailed! Four long carpenter's nails held her on the cross. One could not be more firmly and definitively connected to the cross.
As Christa moved, she found that she could turn her nailed hands on the nails. Her feet also had a little freedom of movement in this regard. It was a joke - but a bad one.
She kept talking in panic to the nun. She pleaded. She begged. She humbled herself deeply. She felt no shame about it. She was too scared. She was scared to death.
It did not matter to the nun. She smiled her new cruel smile as she looked down at Christa.
"I'll crank you up now, girl," she said smiling, "so you can repent."