J
Juan1234
Guest
"That's your cross," the guard pointed. Phoebe squinted up at the third cross from the city gate. "He raped his master's daughter and then murdered her."
There were five crosses on each side of the road leading from Ostia to Rome, and from each there hung a naked man. The man on her cross was dead, though only hours dead. Most of the rest were alive, panting, groaning, even sobbing. Normally only one or two of these crosses would hold a criminal whose flesh was not rotting or gone altogether, but after the recent slave uprising, there were so many people to be crucified that the emperor had sent handfulls of the condemned to the various towns and cities across Italia for execution. Thus Ostia was responsible for crucifying 150 rebel slaves in addition to the criminals normally executed here in a given week, and the governor, an efficient, business-minded man, saw no reason to build new crosses that would stand unused once the rebels' bodies had rotted off of them.
Nor did he see a reason for his soldiers to do any work that a condemned criminal could do just as well. They gave Phoebe a ladder and a short iron rod - very short - nothing she could use against three trained guards armed with real weapons.
"Don't be slow," said the leader, gesturing to the scourge in his rigiht hand.
Phoebe's stomach churned as she approached the cross. She had been waiting almost three weeks to be crucified, knowing her life was over, but never knowing just how soon the end would come. Then they had told her that morning: "Dorbus is almost dead. You're next on that cross." How her heart had pounded with dread!
It pounded much harder then than it had when she had first been sentenced. The sentence had been no surprise. She and her brother were the only slaves in a small household, and her brother had run away. So of course she had known before the trial that she would be put to death. And of course she had known that as a slave girl, she would suffer the humiliation of being publicly nailed to a cross and dying on display.
But now it suddenly felt real, and her heart was pounding again. Here was the cross she would hang from as she died. Here was the naked man whose place she would take. The agony of the death he had died - the death she would soon die - was etched into his lifeless face. His body was fully exposed, his member swollen obscenely in a permanent erection.
And she knew what he had done with it. She had to hang from the same cross as this pervert!? She had to suffer the same nails driven through her wrists, still stained with his blood, and to mingle her own lifeblood with his as she died? The dread and the revulsion at who this man had been swirled together in her belly until she could hardly distinguish what she was feeling anymore.
By now she had unbent the spikes through the man's feet and drawn them back through the wounds until his legs dangled free. Soon she had the ladder against the back of the cross and was untying the ropes fastening the patibulum to the stipes. Then the patibulum fell, and the crucified man with it, crumpled in a heap on the ground.
As she came aroudn the front of the cross to remove the nails from his wrists, Phoebe was suddenly aware that the two men on the adjacent crosses were watching her. She was fully clothed and free to move, while they were naked and pinned to their crosses like insects, and yet a chill of exposure ran through her when one of them spoke to her: "Missy, I've been begging to die, but now --" he winced, hauled himself upward a bit and drew a raspy breath, then cotinued, "Now I only hope I live long enough to see you join us up here." Then he seemed to laugh. His face twisted in a hideous grin of agony and his body convulsed several times with a sort of labored, choking mirth. Phoebe could see his penis beginning to reach out, and she almost cried.
Her work done, and eager to get away from that place, and from the gazes of the crucified men, she first loaded the cross beam into a small cart the guards had brought, then drug the rapist's corpse the short distance to the road. There, the guards hauled the body onto her back, bending his stiff arms to come down around her neck so she could hold them. His face nestled between her shoulder and neck, so that she was sure she could feel his hot breath down her tunic, and his ankles trailed on the ground behind her as she set off back into Ostia.
There were five crosses on each side of the road leading from Ostia to Rome, and from each there hung a naked man. The man on her cross was dead, though only hours dead. Most of the rest were alive, panting, groaning, even sobbing. Normally only one or two of these crosses would hold a criminal whose flesh was not rotting or gone altogether, but after the recent slave uprising, there were so many people to be crucified that the emperor had sent handfulls of the condemned to the various towns and cities across Italia for execution. Thus Ostia was responsible for crucifying 150 rebel slaves in addition to the criminals normally executed here in a given week, and the governor, an efficient, business-minded man, saw no reason to build new crosses that would stand unused once the rebels' bodies had rotted off of them.
Nor did he see a reason for his soldiers to do any work that a condemned criminal could do just as well. They gave Phoebe a ladder and a short iron rod - very short - nothing she could use against three trained guards armed with real weapons.
"Don't be slow," said the leader, gesturing to the scourge in his rigiht hand.
Phoebe's stomach churned as she approached the cross. She had been waiting almost three weeks to be crucified, knowing her life was over, but never knowing just how soon the end would come. Then they had told her that morning: "Dorbus is almost dead. You're next on that cross." How her heart had pounded with dread!
It pounded much harder then than it had when she had first been sentenced. The sentence had been no surprise. She and her brother were the only slaves in a small household, and her brother had run away. So of course she had known before the trial that she would be put to death. And of course she had known that as a slave girl, she would suffer the humiliation of being publicly nailed to a cross and dying on display.
But now it suddenly felt real, and her heart was pounding again. Here was the cross she would hang from as she died. Here was the naked man whose place she would take. The agony of the death he had died - the death she would soon die - was etched into his lifeless face. His body was fully exposed, his member swollen obscenely in a permanent erection.
And she knew what he had done with it. She had to hang from the same cross as this pervert!? She had to suffer the same nails driven through her wrists, still stained with his blood, and to mingle her own lifeblood with his as she died? The dread and the revulsion at who this man had been swirled together in her belly until she could hardly distinguish what she was feeling anymore.
By now she had unbent the spikes through the man's feet and drawn them back through the wounds until his legs dangled free. Soon she had the ladder against the back of the cross and was untying the ropes fastening the patibulum to the stipes. Then the patibulum fell, and the crucified man with it, crumpled in a heap on the ground.
As she came aroudn the front of the cross to remove the nails from his wrists, Phoebe was suddenly aware that the two men on the adjacent crosses were watching her. She was fully clothed and free to move, while they were naked and pinned to their crosses like insects, and yet a chill of exposure ran through her when one of them spoke to her: "Missy, I've been begging to die, but now --" he winced, hauled himself upward a bit and drew a raspy breath, then cotinued, "Now I only hope I live long enough to see you join us up here." Then he seemed to laugh. His face twisted in a hideous grin of agony and his body convulsed several times with a sort of labored, choking mirth. Phoebe could see his penis beginning to reach out, and she almost cried.
Her work done, and eager to get away from that place, and from the gazes of the crucified men, she first loaded the cross beam into a small cart the guards had brought, then drug the rapist's corpse the short distance to the road. There, the guards hauled the body onto her back, bending his stiff arms to come down around her neck so she could hold them. His face nestled between her shoulder and neck, so that she was sure she could feel his hot breath down her tunic, and his ankles trailed on the ground behind her as she set off back into Ostia.
