The july morning was warm and sunny.
I walked across the meadow through the tall grass that was almost hip-high. The grass was covered with morning dew, and normally I would have avoided the larger clumps to keep my sandals, dress and tunic from getting wet. But now I had no sandals, nor gown, nor tunic, and my skin was damp from the grasses and the foliage of shrubs. The tallest ears of grass scraped against my vulva as I walked through it and the twigs of bushes stroked my hips and dangling breasts. I was wet with dew and with sweat and I was cold, but I had no way to protect myself from their touch, because my hands were immobilized, spread wide and tied with ropes to a heavy beam, and the soldiers following me urged me not to delay because the mayor was waiting on me on the cross hill (that's why we took a shortcut and not a winding main road), to see with his own eyes how, according to the sentence of the judge, the torturers do justice to me, nailing me to the tree of torment as a punishment for the fact that yesterday I stole a loaf of bread from the baker. I was a poor woman with no occupation so I couldn't buy the bread for my breakfast. But I didn't suppose I would be punished with so horrible death penalty as crucifixion!
The way of the cross with the patibulum on my shoulders tired me a lot, but walking through the green meadows was the most beautiful and pleasant part of my execution. When I finally stood on the top and saw the lustful and contemptuous glances of the mayor and the assembled spectators, I wanted to collapse underground out of shame. But the earth was as hard as rock, as were the hearts of everyone around me...
Mad with terror and pain, I could not tell myself how I was nailed to the beam and in the same time sadistically raped and dragged on the cross. My feet were hammered together to the front of the pole but the nail was driven from one side, so that I hung over my cross with my hips twisted to the left.
Hanging on the wounds of my hands and feet was a terrible experience, from the first seconds my whole body was tearing with pain, my tense muscles trembled, and again I was all wet, this time from sweat, not from dew.
Though my feet were nailed tight and pressed against each other, my knees were bending sideways, and the twisting of my hips did not cover my nakedness at all, for those who looked from the sides saw my entire groin exposed.
I was dying of pain and I was dying of shame, wondering myself that I had not yet lost my mind from this terrible physical and mental suffering. I dropped my face down so as not to look straight into the eyes of the people standing around, but looking at my own twisted, pain-torn, dying body was just as terrifying and unbearable for me that I didn't know what to do. Strained with pain and fear of death, I finally started to cry as when I was a little girl.
Soon I was exhausted and hung inert, dreaming of death. The painful muscle spasms completely overwhelmed me. Rivers of blood ran down my naked body. The flocks of flies circled my private places, wounds and face, and I could smell my own stench. Laughter and malicious remarks from onlookers completed my humiliation...
The hours passed and my torment had no end. And I was aware that the crucified criminals often were dying long, long time, so I know that I would be dying myself for many more hours and maybe days, although after the very first hour I had no strength to endure such cruel suffering any longer, not for a moment longer. Not a second longer! But I had to endure them, having no choice. Nobody cared how much I suffer, on the contrary: they enjoyed my suffering, and the more they saw my fear, pain, shame and exhaustion, the more it made them happy.
I cried once again but when they saw me writhing in pain, sobbing and begging for mercy, it made them only laugh unrestrainedly. But soon once again I hanged totally exhausted with monstruous pain in my limbs, and I literally ran out of tears, and my mouth was also too dry to talk. I hanged squeaking and moaning and looking half-conscious on the joyful faces of my neighbours and travellers, gathered around exactly to watch me naked and mutilated. I didn't understand their cruelty, but I was experiencing it with every cell of my dying body.
Now I became dewatered and horribly thirsty and I was literally starving. I was starving! And I knew that for the rest of my life I would not get anything to eat.
After all, I hadn't had time to eat the bread I had just stolen out of hunger before I was sentenced for that crime to the most cruel death penalty ever invented.