Well, yeah. It's a public execution, as an executioner, you're an entertainer, working with the material you've got to both punish the victim and maintain the interest of the audience.
I actually wrote something like this in a story for Damian's "Roman Crucifictions" a long time ago. It was a story about three girls convicted of witchcraft, which I came up with only because in Damian's picture the three girls' tituli all had the Greek word "MAGISSA" or "witch" on them. So to fit the picture, they had to be witches somewhere in the ancient Greek world, but under Roman rule. Here's the picture that inspired the story:
One of the changes I got Damian to make was to have the grass beneath the crosses a bit longer and greener than the surrounding grass, as it would have been fertilized by the rotting bodies of previous victims who hung on those crosses. I really wanted it a deeper green to fit what I wrote about it in the story, but it's a detail no one would notice anyway.
Here's an excerpt from the story:
Antonia continued to struggle as the soldiers came for the horrified Ursula. She collapsed to her knees, and the soldiers had to drag her all the way to her cross. When they turned her around to face the crowd, with her back to her cross, she sought out Carinus and appealed to him as Antonio had done.
“S-sir, p-please, I, c-can I ask one thing?”
“No, you cannot piss either. Crucify her!”
“N-no sir, it’s not that…”
“What, then? Make it quick!”
Ursula sobbed. How hard it was to ask for something that so terrified you when the alternative was even more terrifying! “S-sir, p-please, when my wrists are… nailed and you… you hoist me up on the cross… p-please… oh gods!”
“What?” Carinus asked impatiently.
“P-please don’t… let me hang like H-Helena and Antonia. Please nail my feet… nail my feet to the cross quickly!”
Carinus stared at the girl and saw desperation in her eyes. For a moment he was dumbfounded. Then he answered her.
“I will grant your request on one condition. When you’ve been hoisted up and you’re hanging there, I will tell you to ready yourself to have your feet nailed. You will pull your feet up so your heels are just below your ass, soles flat against the stipes, side by side. No one will hold your legs. Then you will ask me to nail one of your feet – you choose which one.
“As soon as you do that, I’ll direct Crispus to nail one of your feet to the cross. If you kick or move either of your feet, then you’ll hang just like these other two witches until you’re compliant. If you succeed in keeping still until Crispus finishes, then you may ask me to nail your other foot. I’ll have Crispus do that and we’ll be done crucifying you. Agreed?”
“Y-yes, I agree.”
“Good. We’ll see. Crucify her!”
And so Ursula endured having her wrists nailed and being hoisted up onto her cross. The agony of being suspended by nothing but her nailed wrists was blinding, but when Carinus told her to ready herself, she did manage to pull her feet up, all the way until her heels were pressed against her bare buttocks, just to be sure. She looked at Carinus, but the words wouldn’t come. How do you bring yourself to ask someone to drive a nail through your foot?
She was on the edge of panic, shaking with fear. One foot slipped down the cross, then she gritted her teeth, pulled her foot back up next to the other one, looked down at Carinus and sobbed the words through gritted teeth, “S-sir, p-please… Oh gods! P-please nail m-my right foot to… to the cross!” Then she fixed her eyes on a point above the trees across the busy roadway, waiting, her heart pounding.
“Slide your feet downward a little.”
Ursula looked down through tears at Crispus with his hammer and nails. “Slide your feet down. You have them jammed up against your ass. You’ll be sitting on your heels, can’t have that!”
She let her feet slide down some, braced herself, and looked away again. Her wrists and shoulders screamed with pain. Concentrate. Be still no matter what.
Ursula screamed as the nail tore through her right foot. Somehow she kept her legs locked in place while Crispus hammered the nail home, but she had to fight to remain conscious. She realized that the hammering had stopped. Hurry. Do it now, before the shock wears off. Before the pain gets even worse.
Ursula, unable to focus her eyes through tears of pain, looked down at the shapes of people, sparkles of light in the dark edges of her vision, forced the words out. “Please, sir, n-nail my foot. Please, hurry I can’t h-hold on oh gods it hurts it hurts please hurry…”
Ursula felt the point of the nail against the top of her left foot. It took all of her will to keep still, fighting the stabbing muscle spasms that prodded her to move, made her groan helplessly. She forced herself not to look down. If I see the hammer coming, I’ll jerk my foot away. Her mind rebelled against holding her foot under the nail’s point even though the alternative was worse.
The space of a few heartbeats seemed like an eternity before Crispus delivered the first hammer blow, which drove the nail between the bones of her foot and into the timber, forcing a ragged shriek of agony from her throat. Don’t look no don’t look! Two more blows and it no longer mattered. The nail was already deep in the timber and could not be pulled loose. Ursula risked looking down, had to see. Crispus swung his hammer again, delivered a blow that vibrated the cross, made her breasts quiver as she looked down between them at her bloody feet. She watched, groaning with each of the four additional blows he delivered to drive the nail in until its head was against the top of her foot, solidly locked into the heavy timber. Iron nails through my body. I’m part of the cross now. And I’m dying just a little every moment.
Despite the searing pain when the nail entered her foot, she was relieved that she had avoided the horror she had seen the other two girls endure, what Antonia still endured. But the pain in her feet was growing, throbbing. She needed to push herself up on her nailed feet to relieve the horrible pain in her wrists, shoulders, chest. Although she might have avoided some of the torture that the other two experienced on being crucified, she had no less agony to look forward to as she suffered on her cross.
Another outstanding, insightful piece of writing, Jedakk.
The idea of my Executioner telling me what to do like that,
speaking in the kind of quiet, matter-of-fact way a doctor might use
sends a much bigger shiver through me than the most brutal abuse and bullying.
I wonder why? I've a hunch some of the ingredients in my fantasies might go back
to suppressed memories of childhood experiences in hospital -
at least, there's a sort of subconscious recognition, a kind of déjà vu sesation...
Yep, it's that soft, subtle, quiet but authoritative approach that can make you wonder