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Out to the suffering-grounds.

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malins

Stumbling Seeker
(the experience of a condemned slave on her journey from the cell to the fields of pain, on a day when the dungeons are cleared of delinquents and a mass crucifixion is held.
Some of you will know this part from an event that happened elsewhere. It goes with a pic for the occasion.)


(1)
The rattle of keys, a clang.
"It is time." -- No anger or hatred, yet, in the voice of the jailer.
Just absolute rocksolid firmness.
He's brought many prisoners out into the yard to their fates.

I snap out of my dazed state and rise.
Lift my face up, a face that is still half-hidden beneath disordered, matted strands of hair.
"That will not do. You will not conceal your guilty face from the world". -- he produces a thin leather cord.
"Let me..." but before I can further speak, he's grabbed my hair and drags me up.
He is very tall and strong I find myself painfully pulled up on to the very tiptoes ...
and wince with tears in my eyes as he coarsely binds my hair.

Then he suddenly lets go and I collapse in a heap, at his feet.
He makes a sound of disgust, spits on me, hitting me on the nape of the neck,
and rolls me off the the top of his foot.
"GET. UP. miserable wretch or I will make you. Up, out of the cell."

It's unnecessary for him to restrain me in any way. His hand closes almost completely around my upper arm.
Out of the cell, arriving at the foot of the stairs, I hesitate a moment...
his grip closes vicelike making me squeal,
and he half drags half shoves me up the first steps until I find my feet again and comply.
Out into the courtyard...

---

I step ... blinking in the sunlight till I can make out the scene ...
and there it is.

My death-cross, fashioned freshly.
Just for me, so that I can pay my debt, in the currency of pain.

I'll carry it to the suffering-grounds.
I'll lay it down there, then I'll lie down upon it, then I'll be nailed to it, raised on it, hang from it.

Struggle my pointless life away and then ...
when it's wrenched the last gasp from my lungs and the last beat out of my heart I will have paid. I will have made it good.

There are two guards and some kind of officer or overseer.
The jailer releases me from his grip and I walk a few trembling steps toward this group.
I feel strange, as if my head is way too high from the ground and my feet are not properly touching.
I might faint...

"Brought before us, a faithless slave, condemned to the cross" the officer states matter of factly, not expecting a response ...
he's marking something on a writing tablet, probably crossing my name out.
Blotted out from the book of life.

"Bow your head, condemned one." -- I comply.
He didn't say close your eyes but I do.
My hair lifted out of the way, a loop of chain is draped around my neck, heavy links cold on my skin.
Hard and cold over my clavicles, hanging down over my breasts.

I open my eyes.
Slotted through the links of the chain, at the end of the loop, are long spikes.
Crucifixion spikes, my death-nails.

I will carry them ... a short while.
And then ... they ... will carry me ... all the way ... to beyond.

--

The officer speaks.

"I've come right from the throne-room. I have walked on those marble tiles upon which the Empress sets her feet"
"Perhaps a few grains of dust are sticking to my soles, from that ground on which Her Highness has walked."


Rubbing the dirt with the sole of his boot ...

"Perhaps a few specks have rubbed off."
He taps the dirt with his foot.
Then walks around, positioning himself behind me.
He points at the spot of packed earth.

"Condemned creature. You are not worthy to kiss the ground the Empress has walked upon ... but I permit you to kiss ... this".

It's the kind of permission that's an order and I kneel to do so.
I am wearing only a loose loincloth over my hips,
and I'm shamefully aware of how I expose everything underneath as I bend over.

As soon as my lips touch the ground I feel his whip upon me.
I curl up to protect myself.
He strikes over my back, and then upon my sex.

I shriek and jerk up but then already his hands are on my hips and his tunic shoved up, he violently pushes into me.
Then one hand grabs my ponytailed hair and pulls my head violently back as he starts thrusting.
"The slave-slut is sopping wet", he proclaims triumphantly; the guards laugh.

As he continues to thrust away he changes his grip on my hair ... grabs it at the base and grinds my face into the dirt.
He is quick about getting his release and as he's about to come, he begins delivering a series of harsh slaps against the side of my head.
Stings and flashes of light and ringing in my ears.
He's hardly finished filling up my belly with his hot seed when he withdraws and kicks me right where he has just been.

Sending me sprawling out over the wooden beams of my cross, face first.
Laughter from the guards as they close in and bring in a few kicks of their own.

--

But then a voice intervenes, from quite some distance ... atop a tower.
It speaks with a kind of mirthful reproach.

"Now will you stop it you undisciplined louts! You know the Empress wants this one to be in one piece when she goes up her tree! The Bolfinggarian emissary is supposed to recognize her!"

They remember they're actually supposed to set me on my way carrying my cross instead of kicking me to a pulp.
So after a brief pause I'm pulled up again.
They steady me on my feet.
My ears are ringing and everything hurts.
I spit out blood and a fragment of a molar.

Standing above the beams I am for a moment transfixed by their sight.
I gaze at the point where they join, and right there in the middle,

suddenly,​
a red spot appears,​

a drop of blood off my beaten face,
a christening almost -
this cross will drink much more of my blood,
but that is the first sip.
I guess it likes the taste of me?

I give everyone plenty cause for more hilarity,
as they give me the order to pick up this cross,
and I make clumsy attempts to lift and shoulder it.
I have no idea really how to properly pick it up!

I beg forgiveness ...
I've never been crucified before!
... I don't know quite what to do with this ...

Finally I find out the best way for me
is to just lift it on one side up by the shorter crossbeam,
craw under it until it rests on my shoulder, and then push up from my legs.

One of the guards leads me onward,
the other, whip in hand, follows behind.
I set off,
I begin my walk to the dying-grounds.

[image hosted on imgur.com]
89BO4Bf.jpg
 
Last edited:
(2)
On my way out to the suffering-grounds.
The guard behind me somewhat absent-mindedly flicks at me with the whip occasionally.
Often against the back of my thighs, the calves, sometimes on the back.
Every now and then he works more goalfully,
trying to get a strike at my buttocks under the loincloth,
especially when I'm buckling under the cross,
or aiming for a shot between the legs.

It brings tears to my eyes but I'm thankful for the sting of the whip.

Because it keeps my mind in the here-and-now.
Does not let it wander to the near future ...
when that chain-necklace of nails will be lifted over my head,
the spikes pulled out ...
and then pounded into me.

Here and there, we meet groups of people, mostly going about their business,
some stopping to gawk, some taunt me, some just shake their head and go on,
those who throw rocks or clods of dirt are told off by the guards.

A group of foreign traders, not quite fluent in the tongue, tag along for a while.
They seem not especially cruel-minded, just ... dispassionately interested.

"This is what I told you about, how they do it here. With the wood and the nails!" says one.
"Ah yes, so they are going to ... crustify her?"
"Hmm I think though the word is fucicruck ... fucatrick ... fructi ..."


"CRUCIFY! They are going to ... CRUCIFY me!" I blurt out.
Hearty laughs from everyone.
the leading guard points toward the field of justice:
"If you have the time, come over there, you can't miss it. There will be plenty to see today! Quite the festival!"

---

The cross I am bearing is a humble one.
One to hang low on.
Also, it is a girl-cross.
Firm enough to quench all the struggling of a slight-framed body.
But not to tame some raging monster.

So, as crosses go, it is light.
Still it wears heavy on me.
Often I duck underneath it,
to switch it from one shoulder to the other.

It feels to me there is not enough flesh between my skin and my bone,
the beams press down so painfully.
I wince, and I hate myself for doing so ...
for not holding up against even this mildest foreshadowing, of pain to come.
I stumble on with tears of despair in my eyes.

Meanwhile the cord tying my hair seems to be coming loose
and my loincloth is slipping
and sharp stones are pricking my feet
and the sweat and the wasps and the tears clouding my eyes and I try to hitch up the damn loincloth and I stumble and I clumsily bonk myself over the head with the wooden beam. And I fall and I grovel.

They roll the cross off of my prone form muttering to themselves, get me on my feet.

"Loincloth slipping? I'll fix that for you" says the first and he takes off the cord from round my waist and folds it double loops it round me again and runs it through my crotch, over the cloth, and then he pulls it taut, and cloth or not ... it digs in deep and rough and shameful between my lower lips.

"May I help you dear Lady" the other one mockingly says and picks up the cross and places it on my shoulder and then a painful yank from the front and the whip from the back. Yank and whip and tear and rip and soon there is red on the cloth pulled taut between my thighs.

And then ... there it is.
I see it the place where it will happpen.
Where I will be crucified.
Where I will be nailed to my cross and raised to the sky. And when I come down my place will be the midden-heap or a flesh-pit, a maggot-churning, worm-twisting pit where spoilt meats and diseased beasts and unclean vermin are cast.
That is where I belong...

The guards have delivered me to the suffering grounds.

The guards point at a place and tell me to put my cross down, there.

First guard undoes the crotch rope.
Tells me to sit down on the cross.

There are some other people further off.
The guards signal to the others and get their OK - job done, they saunter off.

I'm left sitting on my cross here on the field of justice underneath the wide open sky,
its dome spanned over me grand, cruel, uncaring and godless.

Sitting there waiting for someone to come and begin.
It's not as if there is anywhere to run.
I fret and fidget and chew my fingernails and stick my fist into my mouth and pull at my hair.

If I still need to wait ...
... won't someone at least come and bind me;
... tie me up someone!
I don't know what to do with myself
and I'm slowly going crazy...

Sitting on my cross, waiting for the meat-maker.

That is, after all, what 'Carnifex' means, isn't it,
and that's what they're going to make of me...
 
Now that captures all the really good bits! None of this technical stuff that tends to dry out a story.

"First guard undoes the crotch rope.
Tells me to sit down on the cross."

Such a simple statement - a normal thing to do, sitting down, waiting, but charged with so much more emotion and meaning.
:beer:
 
Such a simple statement - a normal thing to do, sitting down, waiting, but charged with so much more emotion and meaning.
:beer:
I did try to write this vignette from a very immediate, present perspective.

The task was basically to get her from A to B (the cell to the suffering-grounds) and when she gets here she's up for grabs for whoever is running the show that day. In the meantime transporting a bit about how she experiences this, while working within some clearly defined parameters ...

condemned girls will wear only a small loincloth, victims will be carrying the wood, it's a low cross, you are carrying nails, there are two guards, and the only permitted hairstyle is a low ponytail ;)

... much of that is also in the pic though the ponytail is mostly falling down behind her back and the guards are goofing off outside the field of view I guess ;)
 
(the experience of a condemned slave on her journey from the cell to the fields of pain, on a day when the dungeons are cleared of delinquents and a mass crucifixion is held.
Some of you will know this part from an event that happened elsewhere. It goes with a pic for the occasion.)


(1)
The rattle of keys, a clang.
"It is time." -- No anger or hatred, yet, in the voice of the jailer.
Just absolute rocksolid firmness.
He's brought many prisoners out into the yard to their fates.

I snap out of my dazed state and rise.
Lift my face up, a face that is still half-hidden beneath disordered, matted strands of hair.
"That will not do. You will not conceal your guilty face from the world". -- he produces a thin leather cord.
"Let me..." but before I can further speak, he's grabbed my hair and drags me up.
He is very tall and strong I find myself painfully pulled up on to the very tiptoes ...
and wince with tears in my eyes as he coarsely binds my hair.

Then he suddenly lets go and I collapse in a heap, at his feet.
He makes a sound of disgust, spits on me, hitting me on the nape of the neck,
and rolls me off the the top of his foot.
"GET. UP. miserable wretch or I will make you. Up, out of the cell."

It's unnecessary for him to restrain me in any way. His hand closes almost completely around my upper arm.
Out of the cell, arriving at the foot of the stairs, I hesitate a moment...
his grip closes vicelike making me squeal,
and he half drags half shoves me up the first steps until I find my feet again and comply.
Out into the courtyard...

---

I step ... blinking in the sunlight till I can make out the scene ...
and there it is.

My death-cross, fashioned freshly.
Just for me, so that I can pay my debt, in the currency of pain.

I'll carry it to the suffering-grounds.
I'll lay it down there, then I'll lie down upon it, then I'll be nailed to it, raised on it, hang from it.

Struggle my pointless life away and then ...
when it's wrenched the last gasp from my lungs and the last beat out of my heart I will have paid. I will have made it good.

There are two guards and some kind of officer or overseer.
The jailer releases me from his grip and I walk a few trembling steps toward this group.
I feel strange, as if my head is way too high from the ground and my feet are not properly touching.
I might faint...

"Brought before us, a faithless slave, condemned to the cross" the officer states matter of factly, not expecting a response ...
he's marking something on a writing tablet, probably crossing my name out.
Blotted out from the book of life.

"Bow your head, condemned one." -- I comply.
He didn't say close your eyes but I do.
My hair lifted out of the way, a loop of chain is draped around my neck, heavy links cold on my skin.
Hard and cold over my clavicles, hanging down over my breasts.

I open my eyes.
Slotted through the links of the chain, at the end of the loop, are long spikes.
Crucifixion spikes, my death-nails.

I will carry them ... a short while.
And then ... they ... will carry me ... all the way ... to beyond.

--

The officer speaks.

"I've come right from the throne-room. I have walked on those marble tiles upon which the Empress sets her feet"
"Perhaps a few grains of dust are sticking to my soles, from that ground on which Her Highness has walked."


Rubbing the dirt with the sole of his boot ...

"Perhaps a few specks have rubbed off."
He taps the dirt with his foot.
Then walks around, positioning himself behind me.
He points at the spot of packed earth.

"Condemned creature. You are not worthy to kiss the ground the Empress has walked upon ... but I permit you to kiss ... this".

It's the kind of permission that's an order and I kneel to do so.
I am wearing only a loose loincloth over my hips,
and I'm shamefully aware of how I expose everything underneath as I bend over.

As soon as my lips touch the ground I feel his whip upon me.
I curl up to protect myself.
He strikes over my back, and then upon my sex.

I shriek and jerk up but then already his hands are on my hips and his tunic shoved up, he violently pushes into me.
Then one hand grabs my ponytailed hair and pulls my head violently back as he starts thrusting.
"The slave-slut is sopping wet", he proclaims triumphantly; the guards laugh.

As he continues to thrust away he changes his grip on my hair ... grabs it at the base and grinds my face into the dirt.
He is quick about getting his release and as he's about to come, he begins delivering a series of harsh slaps against the side of my head.
Stings and flashes of light and ringing in my ears.
He's hardly finished filling up my belly with his hot seed when he withdraws and kicks me right where he has just been.

Sending me sprawling out over the wooden beams of my cross, face first.
Laughter from the guards as they close in and bring in a few kicks of their own.

--

But then a voice intervenes, from quite some distance ... atop a tower.
It speaks with a kind of mirthful reproach.

"Now will you stop it you undisciplined louts! You know the Empress wants this one to be in one piece when she goes up her tree! The Bolfinggarian emissary is supposed to recognize her!"

They remember they're actually supposed to set me on my way carrying my cross instead of kicking me to a pulp.
So after a brief pause I'm pulled up again.
They steady me on my feet.
My ears are ringing and everything hurts.
I spit out blood and a fragment of a molar.

Standing above the beams I am for a moment transfixed by their sight.
I gaze at the point where they join, and right there in the middle,

suddenly,​
a red spot appears,​

a drop of blood off my beaten face,
a christening almost -
this cross will drink much more of my blood,
but that is the first sip.
I guess it likes the taste of me?

I give everyone plenty cause for more hilarity,
as they give me the order to pick up this cross,
and I make clumsy attempts to lift and shoulder it.
I have no idea really how to properly pick it up!

I beg forgiveness ...
I've never been crucified before!
... I don't know quite what to do with this ...

Finally I find out the best way for me
is to just lift it on one side up by the shorter crossbeam,
craw under it until it rests on my shoulder, and then push up from my legs.

One of the guards leads me onward,
the other, whip in hand, follows behind.
I set off,
I begin my walk to the dying-grounds.

[image hosted on imgur.com]
89BO4Bf.jpg
An appropriate time to be crucified...on DEVIL'S night.
 
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