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The Wait

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Barb,

Well, your latest crucifixion didn't involve a rain delay. Also, considering it's the Romans(again), you might think that (so-called)barbarian women should have worked more on their hiding techniques. If there are Romans anyplace close by you will always have the possibility that you will find yourself hanging from one of their crosses(especially at a crossroads).
 
Sometimes I think it's nearly impossible to think of fresh ways to depict being crucified by the Romans. Late last night, though, my warped little mind wandered to this little scene and I rushed to write it out. It's just a short story, but I hope people here like it.

The Wait

The sun blazes overhead as I lie on the ground, my back pressed to the stipe of a rough-hewn and well-used wooden cross. My outstretched hands are bound to the patibulum by short lengths of rope wound round and round over my open palms and through my fingers and tied painfully tight. Another length of rope binds my slender ankles together. My knees are raised, and yet another length of rope lashes the soles of my feet tight against the splintered, nail ravaged and bloodstained surface of the stipe. I am naked, save for a dirty loin cloth, and covered with sweat from hours of sweltering under the midday sun.



Nothing is happening. The soldiers assigned to the task of crucifying me by the roadside sit idly about on the dry gravely ground. One of them aimlessly tosses small stones into the stagnant water that fills the nearby roadside ditch. A second seems to have fallen half asleep, hunched over the foot of my cross. A third gets up every now and then, walks impatiently out onto the road and looks back toward the distant walls of the Roman town, shakes his head, returns and flops down beside the others.

I squint up at the sun, and experimentally try to flex my nearly numb fingers. I open and close my knees a few times to restore circulation in my legs and then push on my feet to raise my butt and shift my position. The stipe beneath me is hard and uncomfortable.

I lift my head and shake a few stray sweat-soaked strands of brown, red-highlighted Celtic hair out of my eyes, before turning toward my executioners and asking them in a raspy voice why we are waiting.

One of them shakes his head ruefully and informs me that his dull-witted comrade, Lucius, has forgotten the nails and has gone off to fetch them. The soldier at the foot of my cross is not so kind, letting loose with a string of curses aimed at poor Lucius.

My head drops back against the stipe and I exhale with a long drawn out sigh through pursed lips. Perspiration stings my eyes. My back aches and my shoulders hurt from having been forced by the soldiers to carry my patibulum all the way out here from the gates of the town. I grimace as I lift my butt and shift position again.

As we wait, people pass by on their way to and from the town. Some are indifferent and look the other way, some stare; others stop to talk with the soldiers, or to take a closer prurient look at my near nakedness. Some make cruel or crude remarks; no one expresses pity or sorrow.

After a while, I raise my head again turn to my executioners and ask, "Why are you crucifying me? What have I done? Have I committed a crime? I don’t understand."

The restlessly pacing soldier looks down at me, pauses and says, "No, you’re just unfortunate. Each week the governor randomly picks out a barbarian at the market and has him or her crucified out here on the road as a reminder to the local populace of his personal power and authority. This morning he chose you."

My head sinks slowly back as my mind replays the horrible and startling scene in which I was unexpectedly seized by soldiers in the marketplace, brutally stripped of my clothing in front of a hushed crowd, hustled to the city gate where a patibulum was lashed to my outstretched hands and placed across my shoulders. Then I was led down the road to this place, where my stipe laid waiting on the ground. It all happened so fast.

We continue to wait. "Where in damnation has that idiot Lucius gone?" growls the restless soldier after returning from the road again. It is clear that the restless one is in charge of my crucifixion and is fearful that some officer will come along and discover me and my cross still lying on the ground.

"He'll be here soon enough," replies the soldier who sits alongside me. "Relax! Sit down and admire this little beauty. It's not every day we get to execute one like her. Not bad for a barbarian, wouldn't you agree?" he adds, cupping and playfully stroking my soft full breasts. He slides his open-palmed hand over my flat, sweat-sheened belly to explore under the folds of my loincloth. I suck in my breath and try to press my thighs tightly together and shift my butt in an attempt to avoid his probing fingers. His attention returns to my breasts with their tumescent nipples floating on wide circles of crinkly pink areolas. I turn my head away and try to ignore his rough squeezing and groping, but cry out when he tugs at and roughly pinches each nipple in turn.

Time passes. We continue to wait. The heat builds. I am sweating profusely and parched in the throat. I beg for something to drink. One of the soldiers gets up and fills a small leather pouch with stagnant water from the ditch. He returns and trickles the water over my face, always moving the enticing dribble of water just out of reach as I raise my head, mouth open wide, and frantically try to catch just one elusive drip. Exhausted by the effort and defeated, I let my head fall back hard against the stipe and begin to sob.

The waiting goes on. I am literally baking under the sun. My eyes are closed but I sense a change. A long shadow has been cast over me. I open my eyes. A Roman officer sits high on his horse, the metal on his breast plate and helmet glinting in the harsh sunlight. He harangues the soldiers for not having crucified me yet. All three grovel before his authority, heads down, while the tirade of invective flows over them.

Then he stops and stares at me. "Why is this girl allowed a loincloth?" he thunders. "She is a barbarian, not a citizen of Rome! She deserves no dignity. Barbarians die nude!"

Chastened, the soldier who had been sitting at my feet springs into action. He leans forward, straddling the stipe on his knees, and pressing my knees apart grabs my loincloth with both hands where it is tied at my hips and rips it away with such force that my bottom is lifted completely off the stipe. I flop back down, totally naked and try to press my knees together in a futile effort to cover my sex. But the soldier sitting alongside me reaches over and forces my knees back apart to give the officer a better view. The officer laughs at my discomfort, and wheeling his horse around to ride away, calls over his shoulder, "Have that little barbarian whore nailed to that cross and up and writhing before I return or I will have the lot of you flogged in camp tonight for incompetence and dereliction of duty!"

We wait some more. Helpless and shamed, I try to shift position once again, moaning and muttering to myself. The soldier sitting at my feet looks at me in a devilishly hungry way and extending a stubby finger begins to stroke the inside of my thighs, forcing them apart and gently probing my labia and spreading my lips. I grimace and gasp, head raised, heart pounding as I regard the malevolent look in his eyes and the yellowness of the teeth exposed by his crooked, leering grin. A moment later I yelp as he jams his finger deep inside me. I buck and struggle vainly as he roughly pokes about and inserts a second and then a third finger. My eyes widen as he clumsily lowers his leggings with his other hand. I see his erect member pointing menacingly at me. I wince as my knees are forced apart and he lowers his hips down between my open thighs, the ropes binding my feet cut into my ankles painfully.

But just then Lucius's return is heralded by the crunch of Roman feet on gravel and the clink of nails tossed on the hard pebbly ground. The soldier in charge shouts, "At last! We have been waiting for hours. Where the fuck have you been Lucius?" Reaching out and cuffing the man on top of me on the head, he quickly takes charge. "Flavius! Get your sorry love shaft away from her cunt and step lively. The waiting is over. Let's get her nailed and raised before that bastard of an officer returns. Hop to now!"

View attachment 282200 The wait is over. Within seconds the point of a nail probes against each of my narrow wrists. Then the ringing sound of hammers fills the air as squarish Roman iron spikes are driven straight through my flesh and buried in the waiting wood with three quick blows. Blood spurts from my punctured wrists and pain streaks through my arms to my shoulders and neck like lightning bolts. I arch my back, twist to the right and back, scream and fall back against the stipe, gasping and cursing.

Then whimpering softly to myself, I lie still as they kneel on both sides of my cross near my feet and position the points of two nails atop the arches of my bound feet. Two hammers come down in unison. The nails are swiftly driven through, mangling flesh and shattering bones. I wail and shake my head from side to side. The pain is unbearable. I convulse and lose control of my bladder and bowels. "Shit!" cries one of the soldiers as he hastily wipes his arm and hand off on my thigh. Then they position themselves around me and my cross and grunting with exertion raise me and my heavy timber cross from the ground.

The long wait is over. I am crucified. All that remains is the dance, the agony, and then, finally and mercifully, the peace of death.

Barbaria, 2015
I love this story, have read it several times. Every time I come back to it I imagine something new - a classic in my opinion!
 
Wow! August of 2015? I’d long since forgotten about that one! Thanks for resurrecting it. ❤️
It's such a sexy story! It has such a foreboding, liminal atmosphere. Your anxiousness to proceed and break the fear, monotony and humiliation of lying bound and naked before the soldiers, but to proceed means, abject torture, horror, and a prolonged degrading death. It's so... present!
 
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