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Repertor
Artifex Imaginum
Sorry Repertor, some of your lovely images are casualties of the ongoing upgrade -
if you can post replacements here, we'll try to restore them. Sorry!
Thank you both.
You are always so helpful.
shastar
Tribune
Repertor
Artifex Imaginum
Screamingly hot, Repertor.
May I take this opportunity to thank you, publicly, for the incredibly intense images, 60 of them, that you've provided for this thread.
x 60 
x 60 There is some more story - watch this space.
Part 10: Outside the South Gate
Dimly, Jasmine was aware of the Carnifex and his assistants clearing up their tools and preparing to leave the site. Then the Carnifex stooped to pick up a dress. Her dress. She remembered his words earlier. ‘They won’t be needing them again.’
She looked up at the sun. Even that amount of movement hurt. It was not yet mid-day. This morning, Rebecca had come into her room and laid out that same dress for her to wear. Jasmine had been a slightly pampered, privileged Roman woman, with slaves calling her ‘my lady’ and pandering to her every whim. As she had put on that dress, she had believed that this day would be just like any other day. She was to have attended a birthday party this evening! She remembered looking forward to it; she’d been hoping to go home with Cassia.
Then, a shocked scream from Helena, and her world had collapsed.
Now, barely four hours later, her lovely dress was being carried off by a Roman executioner to be sold for a few coins in the market. She wouldn’t be needing it again. Four hours later, and she was hanging naked beneath a sign that told the world she was a murderess. Opposite, those same slaves were hanging on their own crosses. All equal in suffering. Nobody was calling her ‘my lady’ any more, except perhaps with heavy sarcasm.
Helena broke into her thoughts. She spoke in short phrases, punctuated by gasps of pain.
“How do you…like….your cross, Jasmine?”
“It…fucking….hurts, Helena!”
“Tell me… about….it.”
“Jasmine!” A voice from below. Slowly, painfully, she moved her head and looked down. Who was that? A woman, standing beneath her cross. Who was she?
“Cassia! Tell….Josie….I’m sorry. I…don’t think….I’ll make it….to her….party.”
“To hell with Josie’s party. To hell with Josie! Her father had you crucified! How could he? Look at you! How can this have happened? I can’t believe it! This has all happened so fast! I can’t leave you there. I’m going to go to see Josie’s father, the Proconsul, and tell him the truth!”
“No…don’t.”
“Why not? You didn’t kill Marcus. I did.”
Rebecca and Helena, following this exchange, were visibly shocked. Helena gave a small scream. Rebecca said, “My lady… you’re no more a murderer…than we are!” And she used the term ‘my lady’ with absolute respect.
“That’s right, Rebecca!” agreed Cassia. “Marcus was attacking Jasmine, he was at the point of killing her. When we left you earlier Jasmine was very emotional. We….disagreed. She rushed off and I was worried about her, she was in such a state. So I went to her place, and Marcus was on top of her, with a knife at her throat. I’ve carried a knife since I was attacked a year or so ago. I stuck it in his heart.”
“You saved my…life, Cass. Thank you!”
“I saved you from a quick death for THIS?” demanded Cassia. “I would have let him kill you, if I’d realised you be crucified within an hour! I should be up there, not you!”
Jasmine was silent for a moment, gathering her strength to speak. Hanging at the full stretch of her arms, she found it strangely difficult to breathe. Her shoulders, too, were screaming in protest, adding to the general cacophony of her pain. Perhaps if she took some weight on her heels, it would be easier? She began to push upwards.
“AAAAARGH! OH GOD! OWWWWW!” The pain was indescribable, her pinioned heels felt as though every devil in hell was pounding at them, but, yes, it was easier to breathe. She remained there, all the weight on her heels, for a few moments, sucking in great lungfuls of precious air, then, as carefully as she could, she lowered herself down again.
Cassia, below, was watching helplessly. “Oh, Jas! Please! This is so wrong! You’re being tortured to death! I can’t bear it! I’m going to the Proconsul.”
“NO!”
“For God’s sake, Jas, why not?”
Now she had breath. “Because it was perfectly obvious to the Proconsul that Helena and Rebecca were innocent, yet he refused to help them. Because this was my family, not yours. I am grateful, really I am, but you shouldn’t have got involved. If you confess to the Proconsul he will execute you, and he still won’t save Helena and Rebecca and he probably won’t save me. Even if he did save me, these fucking nails have smashed up my wrists and heels, and I’ll be a cripple for life. I can’t even feel my right hand. It’s dead already. Anyway, I don’t want to live if Helena and Rebecca are dead. ‘Shame on me’, you said. You were right. Now look at me! I am properly humiliated and ashamed of their blood on my hands. I should have got him to write ‘Shame on her’ underneath ‘murderess’.
“Cassia, if you go to the Proconsul, you’ll give up your life for nothing! And all ….this.. will have been for nothing. So don’t!”
There. She’d managed it. She was totally exhausted, but now everyone who mattered knew the truth. A few bystanders had heard it too, so had the guards. To hell with it. Let them all know about Roman ‘justice’.
Cassia didn’t reply, she just stood and shook with emotion. Rebecca and Helena were weeping, too.
Jasmine was hanging forward from her cross, totally exhausted by her speech, gasping for breath. A drop of blood that had travelled all the way from her right wrist dripped off her nipple onto Cassia’s dress. Then she pulled herself back, and rested her head back against the wood of her cross. For several minutes she stayed like that, before her head slowly swivelled around to find Cassia again.
“Cass?”
“Yes, Jasmine?”
“For me…. Live your life…. Be happy. Just……”
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget…..us.”
“If I live to be a hundred, I won’t forget you, or this day from hell!”
For a couple of hours Jasmine did not say any more, but just hung in silent misery, crying out when she was forced, by pain or shortness of breath, to move. Cassia spoke to her often, words of reassurance and comfort, telling her gossip about those in the city, but if Jasmine heard or understood, she gave no sign.
Rebecca started calling for her mother. She seemed to have identified Cassia as being her mother.
“Mother! Help me! I need….a….drink!”
One of the guards showed Cassia where to get water drawn from an urn near the South Gate. She was just able to lift a bowl to their lips, and so she went around helping all three to drink.
If Cassia could be mother to them all for a few hours, then she was content with that role. She was determined to stay to the end. The thief had died, and his dead body was attracting the crows. Scaring them off was nearly a full time job, until some human crows arrived.
Two men, farmworkers perhaps, emerged from the South Gate, very much the worse for a mostly liquid lunch. They saw the crosses, and stopped.
“Fuckin’ ‘ell!” called one, “Look at the pussy on display here!”
“Mine’s the blond one!” bellowed the other, staggering drunkenly towards Rebecca.
“Wot the fuck are you Roman cunts doing putting talent like that up on crosses? I’d have taken ‘em home to punish them, any day!”
The guards weren’t bothered. Abuse of the crucified was all part of terror of it.
But Cassia was very bothered, as the first one approached Jasmine, preparing to conduct a practical experiment to confirm his theory that she was still a virgin.
“STOP!” she yelled. “Neither of you is to touch those girls! You don’t know them, but let me tell you that each of them is worth ten of you!”
“Biss off, you pitch!” slurred the amateur gynaecologist. She gave him a mighty shove and he went over backwards. But Rebecca’s suitor had reached her cross, and she was screaming at him not to touch her.
Cassia was having none of it. “OI! YOU! LAY ONE FINGER ON THAT GIRL, AND, SO HELP ME GOD, YOU’LL BE ON YOUR OWN CROSS BEFORE SUNDOWN!”
The guards knew that Cassia really could make trouble, for them if not for the drunks. “Come on lads, listen to the lady. On your way!”
“Fuck off, Roman…” A spear under his chin silenced him. “You were saying?” inquired the guard, sweetly.
Swaying and swearing, the pair lurched off along the road. The gynaecologist made a one fingered gesture to Cassia, which she returned with a sweet smile, disguising the fact that her adrenaline levels were off the scale.
Jasmine had watched all of this in silent alarm, convinced that she was about to be pawed over by the drunks, but more fearful of the pain than the indignity.
“Cass….” Her voice was barely a croak, but Cassia heard it. It was the first time she’d spoken for hours.
“Yes, Jasmine!”
“That was….brave!” She smiled, then winced.
“I wasn’t going to let them touch you! But I couldn’t see how to protect the others too! Good thing the guards did their job.”
“They….wouldn’t have….without you….. Thank you!”
Cassia just smiled back at her. Jasmine still looked good, even with blood staining her body. She should have brought her to her bed this morning, instead of letting her go off in a temper. If she had, Jasmine wouldn’t be dying now. And now Cassia would never get the chance to make love to her.
“This….is no….place for you….. Cass. Go home!”
“Jasmine, no. I’m here for as long as it takes. I was just thinking…..”
“What?”
“I love you.” There. She’d told her.
Jasmine was seized by an attack of cramp, and began to scream uncontrollably. Cassia wept freely as Jasmine fought another battle against those four evil spikes. Was it her confession of love that had brought this on? At least fifteen minutes went by, with Jasmine moving about, writhing about, trying to get back to some position which would allow her to rest quietly again.
“HELP ME! PLEASE GOD! OH GOD! IT HURTS SO MUCH!”
But how could Cassia help her? She stood looking up at her. She touched her leg. “Jasmine, I’m here!”
“HOW CAN IT HURT SO MUCH? PLEASE! LET ME DIE! JUST LET ME DIE!”
“Jasmine! What can I do?”
Jasmine caught sight of one of the guards. “YOU! PLEASE HELP ME! HAVE MERCY! YOU HAVE A SPEAR! KILL ME! CASSIA! MAKE HIM KILL ME!”
The guard shrugged, and shook his head. If he’d had a denarius for the number of times he’d been asked that….
“OH FUCKING, FUCKING HELL! IF YOU KNEW… HOW MUCH… IT hurt… you’d…. help….”
She’d worn herself out. Once again she was in that horrible, horrible position, hanging forward from the nails. But she was still far from death. Cassia watched those beautiful breasts rise and fall as Jasmine took the little, short breaths that kept her alive. Jasmine was gazing at Cassia, her eyes were open. Cassia couldn’t begin to guess what her thoughts were, as she gazed back across the infinite chasm that separated the crucified from the rest of humanity.
Cassia had not seen Jasmine stay like that for any length of time, but this time she hung there for what seemed like an age, just staring at Cassia. Cassia realised that she would be seeing that stare in her dreams and nightmares for the rest of her life.
Cassia eventually wiped some tears out of her eyes. The movement broke the spell. Jasmine spoke:
“Cassia…..”
“Yes, Jasmine?”
“I… love… you….too.”
Gently, Cassia kissed her own fingers, then reached up and touched Jasmine’s lips. She gazed up at her, stretched out on her cross. If only….
The evening wore on, the sun was approaching the horizon, and one of the guards came to Cassia.
“We have to go now, Miss. Our orders were only to watch till nightfall, they are too far gone now for rescue. I should break their legs, now, and then we can go.”
“No! Please don’t hurt them any more! You go! Leave them! I’ll stay!”
“Miss, it’s not safe…”
“I’ll stay! Leave them!”
“As you wish. On your head be it.”
The guards went inside, slamming the gate shut behind them. Cassia was shut outside the South Gate with a corpse and three crucified women.
Dimly, Jasmine was aware of the Carnifex and his assistants clearing up their tools and preparing to leave the site. Then the Carnifex stooped to pick up a dress. Her dress. She remembered his words earlier. ‘They won’t be needing them again.’
She looked up at the sun. Even that amount of movement hurt. It was not yet mid-day. This morning, Rebecca had come into her room and laid out that same dress for her to wear. Jasmine had been a slightly pampered, privileged Roman woman, with slaves calling her ‘my lady’ and pandering to her every whim. As she had put on that dress, she had believed that this day would be just like any other day. She was to have attended a birthday party this evening! She remembered looking forward to it; she’d been hoping to go home with Cassia.
Then, a shocked scream from Helena, and her world had collapsed.
Now, barely four hours later, her lovely dress was being carried off by a Roman executioner to be sold for a few coins in the market. She wouldn’t be needing it again. Four hours later, and she was hanging naked beneath a sign that told the world she was a murderess. Opposite, those same slaves were hanging on their own crosses. All equal in suffering. Nobody was calling her ‘my lady’ any more, except perhaps with heavy sarcasm.
Helena broke into her thoughts. She spoke in short phrases, punctuated by gasps of pain.
“How do you…like….your cross, Jasmine?”
“It…fucking….hurts, Helena!”
“Tell me… about….it.”
“Jasmine!” A voice from below. Slowly, painfully, she moved her head and looked down. Who was that? A woman, standing beneath her cross. Who was she?
“Cassia! Tell….Josie….I’m sorry. I…don’t think….I’ll make it….to her….party.”
“To hell with Josie’s party. To hell with Josie! Her father had you crucified! How could he? Look at you! How can this have happened? I can’t believe it! This has all happened so fast! I can’t leave you there. I’m going to go to see Josie’s father, the Proconsul, and tell him the truth!”
“No…don’t.”
“Why not? You didn’t kill Marcus. I did.”
Rebecca and Helena, following this exchange, were visibly shocked. Helena gave a small scream. Rebecca said, “My lady… you’re no more a murderer…than we are!” And she used the term ‘my lady’ with absolute respect.
“That’s right, Rebecca!” agreed Cassia. “Marcus was attacking Jasmine, he was at the point of killing her. When we left you earlier Jasmine was very emotional. We….disagreed. She rushed off and I was worried about her, she was in such a state. So I went to her place, and Marcus was on top of her, with a knife at her throat. I’ve carried a knife since I was attacked a year or so ago. I stuck it in his heart.”
“You saved my…life, Cass. Thank you!”
“I saved you from a quick death for THIS?” demanded Cassia. “I would have let him kill you, if I’d realised you be crucified within an hour! I should be up there, not you!”
Jasmine was silent for a moment, gathering her strength to speak. Hanging at the full stretch of her arms, she found it strangely difficult to breathe. Her shoulders, too, were screaming in protest, adding to the general cacophony of her pain. Perhaps if she took some weight on her heels, it would be easier? She began to push upwards.
“AAAAARGH! OH GOD! OWWWWW!” The pain was indescribable, her pinioned heels felt as though every devil in hell was pounding at them, but, yes, it was easier to breathe. She remained there, all the weight on her heels, for a few moments, sucking in great lungfuls of precious air, then, as carefully as she could, she lowered herself down again.
Cassia, below, was watching helplessly. “Oh, Jas! Please! This is so wrong! You’re being tortured to death! I can’t bear it! I’m going to the Proconsul.”
“NO!”
“For God’s sake, Jas, why not?”
Now she had breath. “Because it was perfectly obvious to the Proconsul that Helena and Rebecca were innocent, yet he refused to help them. Because this was my family, not yours. I am grateful, really I am, but you shouldn’t have got involved. If you confess to the Proconsul he will execute you, and he still won’t save Helena and Rebecca and he probably won’t save me. Even if he did save me, these fucking nails have smashed up my wrists and heels, and I’ll be a cripple for life. I can’t even feel my right hand. It’s dead already. Anyway, I don’t want to live if Helena and Rebecca are dead. ‘Shame on me’, you said. You were right. Now look at me! I am properly humiliated and ashamed of their blood on my hands. I should have got him to write ‘Shame on her’ underneath ‘murderess’.
“Cassia, if you go to the Proconsul, you’ll give up your life for nothing! And all ….this.. will have been for nothing. So don’t!”
There. She’d managed it. She was totally exhausted, but now everyone who mattered knew the truth. A few bystanders had heard it too, so had the guards. To hell with it. Let them all know about Roman ‘justice’.
Cassia didn’t reply, she just stood and shook with emotion. Rebecca and Helena were weeping, too.
Jasmine was hanging forward from her cross, totally exhausted by her speech, gasping for breath. A drop of blood that had travelled all the way from her right wrist dripped off her nipple onto Cassia’s dress. Then she pulled herself back, and rested her head back against the wood of her cross. For several minutes she stayed like that, before her head slowly swivelled around to find Cassia again.
“Cass?”
“Yes, Jasmine?”
“For me…. Live your life…. Be happy. Just……”
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget…..us.”
“If I live to be a hundred, I won’t forget you, or this day from hell!”
For a couple of hours Jasmine did not say any more, but just hung in silent misery, crying out when she was forced, by pain or shortness of breath, to move. Cassia spoke to her often, words of reassurance and comfort, telling her gossip about those in the city, but if Jasmine heard or understood, she gave no sign.
Rebecca started calling for her mother. She seemed to have identified Cassia as being her mother.
“Mother! Help me! I need….a….drink!”
One of the guards showed Cassia where to get water drawn from an urn near the South Gate. She was just able to lift a bowl to their lips, and so she went around helping all three to drink.
If Cassia could be mother to them all for a few hours, then she was content with that role. She was determined to stay to the end. The thief had died, and his dead body was attracting the crows. Scaring them off was nearly a full time job, until some human crows arrived.
Two men, farmworkers perhaps, emerged from the South Gate, very much the worse for a mostly liquid lunch. They saw the crosses, and stopped.
“Fuckin’ ‘ell!” called one, “Look at the pussy on display here!”
“Mine’s the blond one!” bellowed the other, staggering drunkenly towards Rebecca.
“Wot the fuck are you Roman cunts doing putting talent like that up on crosses? I’d have taken ‘em home to punish them, any day!”
The guards weren’t bothered. Abuse of the crucified was all part of terror of it.
But Cassia was very bothered, as the first one approached Jasmine, preparing to conduct a practical experiment to confirm his theory that she was still a virgin.
“STOP!” she yelled. “Neither of you is to touch those girls! You don’t know them, but let me tell you that each of them is worth ten of you!”
“Biss off, you pitch!” slurred the amateur gynaecologist. She gave him a mighty shove and he went over backwards. But Rebecca’s suitor had reached her cross, and she was screaming at him not to touch her.
Cassia was having none of it. “OI! YOU! LAY ONE FINGER ON THAT GIRL, AND, SO HELP ME GOD, YOU’LL BE ON YOUR OWN CROSS BEFORE SUNDOWN!”
The guards knew that Cassia really could make trouble, for them if not for the drunks. “Come on lads, listen to the lady. On your way!”
“Fuck off, Roman…” A spear under his chin silenced him. “You were saying?” inquired the guard, sweetly.
Swaying and swearing, the pair lurched off along the road. The gynaecologist made a one fingered gesture to Cassia, which she returned with a sweet smile, disguising the fact that her adrenaline levels were off the scale.
Jasmine had watched all of this in silent alarm, convinced that she was about to be pawed over by the drunks, but more fearful of the pain than the indignity.
“Cass….” Her voice was barely a croak, but Cassia heard it. It was the first time she’d spoken for hours.
“Yes, Jasmine!”
“That was….brave!” She smiled, then winced.
“I wasn’t going to let them touch you! But I couldn’t see how to protect the others too! Good thing the guards did their job.”
“They….wouldn’t have….without you….. Thank you!”
Cassia just smiled back at her. Jasmine still looked good, even with blood staining her body. She should have brought her to her bed this morning, instead of letting her go off in a temper. If she had, Jasmine wouldn’t be dying now. And now Cassia would never get the chance to make love to her.
“This….is no….place for you….. Cass. Go home!”
“Jasmine, no. I’m here for as long as it takes. I was just thinking…..”
“What?”
“I love you.” There. She’d told her.
Jasmine was seized by an attack of cramp, and began to scream uncontrollably. Cassia wept freely as Jasmine fought another battle against those four evil spikes. Was it her confession of love that had brought this on? At least fifteen minutes went by, with Jasmine moving about, writhing about, trying to get back to some position which would allow her to rest quietly again.
“HELP ME! PLEASE GOD! OH GOD! IT HURTS SO MUCH!”
But how could Cassia help her? She stood looking up at her. She touched her leg. “Jasmine, I’m here!”
“HOW CAN IT HURT SO MUCH? PLEASE! LET ME DIE! JUST LET ME DIE!”
“Jasmine! What can I do?”
Jasmine caught sight of one of the guards. “YOU! PLEASE HELP ME! HAVE MERCY! YOU HAVE A SPEAR! KILL ME! CASSIA! MAKE HIM KILL ME!”
The guard shrugged, and shook his head. If he’d had a denarius for the number of times he’d been asked that….
“OH FUCKING, FUCKING HELL! IF YOU KNEW… HOW MUCH… IT hurt… you’d…. help….”
She’d worn herself out. Once again she was in that horrible, horrible position, hanging forward from the nails. But she was still far from death. Cassia watched those beautiful breasts rise and fall as Jasmine took the little, short breaths that kept her alive. Jasmine was gazing at Cassia, her eyes were open. Cassia couldn’t begin to guess what her thoughts were, as she gazed back across the infinite chasm that separated the crucified from the rest of humanity.
Cassia had not seen Jasmine stay like that for any length of time, but this time she hung there for what seemed like an age, just staring at Cassia. Cassia realised that she would be seeing that stare in her dreams and nightmares for the rest of her life.
Cassia eventually wiped some tears out of her eyes. The movement broke the spell. Jasmine spoke:
“Cassia…..”
“Yes, Jasmine?”
“I… love… you….too.”
Gently, Cassia kissed her own fingers, then reached up and touched Jasmine’s lips. She gazed up at her, stretched out on her cross. If only….
The evening wore on, the sun was approaching the horizon, and one of the guards came to Cassia.
“We have to go now, Miss. Our orders were only to watch till nightfall, they are too far gone now for rescue. I should break their legs, now, and then we can go.”
“No! Please don’t hurt them any more! You go! Leave them! I’ll stay!”
“Miss, it’s not safe…”
“I’ll stay! Leave them!”
“As you wish. On your head be it.”
The guards went inside, slamming the gate shut behind them. Cassia was shut outside the South Gate with a corpse and three crucified women.
Hondoboot2
QUAESTOR PULCHRITUDINIS
Sir Wragg, if I could give you 20 'likes' I would. F...ing great writing
That was one heck of an intense chapter
Repertor
Artifex Imaginum
Dear friends, it is a long time ago since sir Wragg posted the previous chapter, but finally we can read how the story resumes in part 10. It was well worth waiting for. I like the way the characters are interacting. Great and intense writing, sir Wragg!
The delay was entirely my fault, for which my apologies. I will try to make it up by providing some more images, which of course may cause a new delay again.
The delay was entirely my fault, for which my apologies. I will try to make it up by providing some more images, which of course may cause a new delay again.
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He only had to work up 60 renders, and he illustrated every moment of Jasmine's crucifixion.Dear friends, it is a long time ago since sir Wragg posted the previous chapter, but finally we can read how the story resumes in part 10. It was well worth waiting for. I like the way the characters are interacting. Great and intense writing, sir Wragg!
The delay was entirely my fault, for which my apologies. I will try to make it up by providing some more images, which of course may cause a new delay again.
Most would agree that the delay was worthwhile, I think, Repertor!
Repertor
Artifex Imaginum
The Carnifex stooped to pick up a dress. Her dress. She remembered his words earlier. ‘They won’t be needing them again.’This morning, Rebecca had come into her room and laid out that same dress for her to wear. Jasmine had been a slightly pampered, privileged Roman woman, with slaves calling her ‘my lady’ and pandering to her every whim. As she had put on that dress, she had believed that this day would be just like any other day. She was to have attended a birthday party this evening! She remembered looking forward to it; she’d been hoping to go home with Cassia.
Now, barely four hours later, her lovely dress was being carried off by a Roman executioner to be sold for a few coins in the market. She wouldn’t be needing it again.
The moment when the fact that she is naked, permanently naked, is hammered home to Jasmine as firmly as the nails securing her to her cross.
Hondoboot2
QUAESTOR PULCHRITUDINIS
I am glad to hear that it happens to other members
....I was wondering if it was just me
....it seems to happen frequently to me.
Yes, didn't I say that? Was I too busy complaining? It was a very good write Wragg!!!!!
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So sad. The small ways in which her subhuman state is now marked. She is dead meat, no longer in need of the small kindnesses or comforts of human existence. And yet she chose this! Maybe without full understanding, but she chose it.
Well done Wragg and Repertor, now onwards to see the poor girl to a proper conclusion!