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9. Christmas Again

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Phew, I am sort of glad that’s all over. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas, but the whole thing of being kettled-up in the bosom of the family and eating loads of turkey and roast potatoes and sprouts, even if I peeled them and even if I like them, and loads of wine and stuff and stuffing, well, it leaves me exhausted. And all the good intent I had for the day of settling down in a chair and reading Carol Ann and writing something maybe, well, it just heads south pretty quick. And there wasn’t even anything worth watching on tv. Anyway, it’s done for another year and tomorrow we can slowly transition back to normal and around lunchtime I’ve agreed to meet up with Romy in the pub for a drink and then we’ll do something together, which may involve no more than tying a piece of rope around ourselves for the afternoon and maybe, just maybe, playing with the interesting fly swat with a leather flap that mum bought me for no particularly obvious reason. So, I think I am off to bed. Duty has been done and I do want to read something and let my fingers roll over my nice fresh sticking plasters. Tomorrow they can come off as well, which will be lovely. My boobies are so sore! And tomorrow morning, I do promise you, I will start to tell you about the term, unless I get distracted by one of the very odd DVDs I got about a Korean schoolgirl who gets murdered and then turns into an avenging prostitute. I think I might like that!
 
Boxing Day really is the day after the day before. Lunch seemed to arrive almost immediately after breakfast, which was greasy and tasty and brown-saucy. And Romy was waiting by the fire in the pub when I got in and only a few other folks were around. We had a drink each and a little head-against-head moment and talked about Christmas dinners and then she came back to my place. Our nipples were still sore, but without those nasty bits of tape and even the bruises looked pretty, but not as pretty as the little silver bars. So we put on some music and got a rope, a lovely new one which was thinner than my little finger, and looped it first around our waists and then between our legs and then we lay on the bed and pulled as tight as we could so it really pushed our breasts together and we could feel the little bars against each other and it cut into our clits and the more we moved the more we felt it and we kissed and touched and it was lovely.

Then we showered and went downstairs and sat with mum and little brother and talked about presents and Romy made a pot of tea and we smiled as we watched something rubbishy that mum had recorded. And then it went dark.
 
pkindenhaag said:
So we put on some music and got a rope, a lovely new one which was thinner than my little finger, and looped it first around our waists and then between our legs and then we lay on the bed and pulled as tight as we could so it really pushed our breasts together and we could feel the little bars against each other and it cut into our clits and the more we moved the more we felt it and we kissed and touched and it was lovely
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That eye peaking through the keyhole belongs to Pp but there is plenty of competition for a place in the queue Pkin.
 
It’s a funny time, the days between Christmas and New Year, when everyone feels tired and lazy and not much happens. It’s a good time to catch-up on things and to read a bit and to lounge around in sloppy clothes. In the North the weather has been terrible and I’m a bit worried about some of my friends who were staying in Ridingham over the holidays, because the floods there look bad. Here it’s just dismal and grey and windy. And yesterday and today I’ve been all on my own because Romy’s had family things to do. So we’ve had to make do with texts and stuff and I’ve skulked in my room and been trying to read but keep getting distracted by things on FB and stuff. And I’ve been Skyping with Sallie a bit too. I find it a bit hard sometimes, because things haven’t been that easy for her and I don’t want to dump all my experiences on her ‘cause that wouldn’t be fair really.

But I can tell you everything, and I did promise I’d tell you all about my last term. So as I’ve not much else to do today, and as I think you might like to know, I will.

To be honest, I was a bit scared about starting my second year. After everything that had happened and all the relationships that went wrong last year, I felt a bit embarrassed. Luckily, because I hadn’t bothered to arrange anything, a room came up in a house with a few of the girls from the LGBTQ. It was a last minute thing, which was lucky for me, so I said yes. I knew it would be the worst room in the house, but that was fair, as I hadn’t done any of the work to get it. And when I got there, to be honest it wasn’t bad. On the top floor, with a sloping ceiling, but nice and light and bigger than the place in college. And the girls were nice too: I knew two of them a bit and the others vaguely, but they were friendly and quickly drew me into their group. We spent the first week, more or less, in the pub or the college bar, and so, without telling them everything, I told them enough. A couple were a bit too un-lipsticky for my soggy tastes, but I suppose they provide a market for dungarees and bad haircuts. Not that they weren’t totally pleasant, for engineers. The ones I knew a bit more were in the humanities faculty, like me. One was doing English, the others history and politics and things like that, so we easily found things to talk about. I suppose I should tell you a bit more about them. The ones I like. The two I like, I should say. Not like Romy, of course, but well, it’s good to have more than just one special friend. Otherwise I would get lonely up North, wouldn’t I?
 
pkindenhaag said:
tied Romy to the bed, one foot, her left, and one wrist, her right. And how I tied myself too, my left ankle and then my right wrist.... And there we were, one free leg and one free arm each
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I'd wonder if she chose to tie that arm and that leg which previously had been dislocated... and whether that way of binding together with Romy communicates something between the two about that ...
pkindenhaag said:
the interesting fly swat with a leather flap that mum bought me for no particularly obvious reason
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Mum will have her reasons ;)
 
Well, all good intentions and all that, but anyway, now Christmas has rolled unblinking into New Year and a sluggish Saturday on my own, maybe I can catch up. Mostly I’ve been worrying about the house in Ridingham and looking at the flood-cams and the water creeping up our little road, but so far so dry. NYE went by as it does, hour by hour. A few drinks in the George and then home with Romy. Mum was out with friends somewhere. We had a nice time, rustling up a Palestinian salad and a yummy Moussaka and emptying more bottles of red than we should have, before we slunk off upstairs into a tangle of fingers and hair and lips.

So, my flat mates. Let me tell you about my favourites. There’s Miri from the depths of Limburg and Ingar from the city lights of Bremen. Dark hair and blue eyes and pale northern fairness on a lithe rower’s body. We quickly knew we’d like each other and I can’t tell you how many evenings after dinner and a bit of study we found ourselves in one or anothers bedrooms, sitting cross-legged on a rug, chatting away about this and that and that and this. And telling stories. We liked to do that a lot, we discovered. With the lights turned down and a candle or two and the wind outside.

I guess we started off cautious as we discovered each other slowly, but after a little while I decided to tell them a story about Anne de Chantraine. I know you know the story, about the poor girl from Flanders who is taken for a witch and how her life becomes a series of cells and tortures until she finds herself, and is the centre of everyone’s attention, as she is chained to the stake and the fire is set alight.

The girls were quiet after that. For a long time. We sat there, my eyes looking down. I didn’t know what to expect. Then Miri told me she found it really hard to listen, but she loved the story. And she was about to say something else, because her beautiful heavy lips opened in the way they do when a word is hard in coming. And Ingar spoke, and she touched my hand, and she asked me if I was excited by my own story. I touched her on the soft part of the inside of her arm and let my finger run down to her wrist and I lifted my eyes and looked at her and pushed the hair from her face and I think I said yes. I think I said some other things too but I can’t remember, because Ingar immediately said that she knew and that the story excited her too and that she somehow would have loved to have been Anne. Miri lent over and kissed her on the cheek. Then Ingar said that she knew a story about a girl in Germany from many centuries ago and that she thought she might like to tell us about her, if we would like to hear her story. We both said yes. We knew we’d have to wait, because it was late and we had early lectures, but when I crept off to my little bed and as I lay there on my belly, pushing a pillow between my legs and feeling my nails cross my breasts, I could only think of Ingar as Anne and I so much wanted our next evening together to come quickly.
 
And as the October nights slunk towards November and the days became dark and gloomy, the temptations of our little circle around the flickering candle grew. I think it was a Wendesday night, or maybe a Thursday. We’d all been late in the library and I think I grabbed a slice of pizza or something for supper because I was too hungry to cook. It was a Thursday, I’m sure, and late. Maybe eleven. When I tapped on Miri’s door and she opened it and we waited for Ingar to come down from her room under the eaves; we had to wait because it was her story.

When we were settled, sitting on the red-covered cushions, she began. And told us about a girl from Hamburg. She was an orphan, and had grown up in a convent, but had left rather than take orders and had gone to work in the house of a merchant who was old but rich and had a wife who was young and beautiful. One thing led to another and then one night, when the snow was lying on the frozen Alstersee, a body was discovered a few paces from the merchant’s door. Of course it was him. The guard had rapped on the door and the servant girl had answered it and one thing led to another and a blood-stained sheet was found in her room and as she was dragged away, screaming her innocence, the master’s wife peered from behind a tapestry and smiled.

The girl, and she didn’t ever get a name, spent a night in the cells while the captain of the guard asked questions of the mistress of the house, who of course had no explanation to offer other than that the girl had been disciplined by her husband for her insolence and laziness and that perhaps she had just decided, on the spur of the moment, to become a murderer. The grand lady wiped a tear from her eye and was comforted by the young, handsome man who stood by her side, his arm around her shoulder.

And so the girl found herself the sole accused and was asked to confess, which she could not do, for she was innocent and still Godly. In the cellar of the gaol she was stripped and hung from the strappado while the justices ate their breakfast of beer and cheese. And then her fingers were crushed in the screws until blood flowed from her nails and still she could not confess, although her tears stained her face. They lifted her again by the ropes and applied the whip to her back until she could barely breathe, and then hoisted her and dropped her three times until she cried that she could take no more and even though she knew nothing she must be guilty because how else could they treat her so.

She was returned to her dark cell and chained, naked and shivering, to the stone wall, her fingers roughly bound where the bones were broken. They gave her water to drink and barley bread to eat.

The next day, beneath the great stained-glass window in the town hall, they led her once again before the justices, dressed in their ermine. They asked her the question again and reminded her that her torture was suspended, not finished, and she nodded yes and with a shaking hand, the windings still bloody, signed the paper as they wished. And they pronounced their sentence on her, the sentence for treason.

Ingar paused in her story and asked us if we were enjoying it. It seemed very hot in the little room around the candle and with the light reflecting dimly from the red cushions and I could feel myself very deeply and I touched Ingar on her fingers and told her that it was a wonderful story, but that this was a good place to stop for the night, and Miri agreed. But it was so late it seemed hardly worthwhile returning to our own rooms, especially as the corridors were cold and unheated, so we agreed that we would share a bed for the night and as we undressed we touched so gently and stroked each other with such tenderness that when we lay in the narrow bed it was as if we were barely touching yet lying one within the other and we quickly fell into a deep, calm sleep.
 
"Ingar paused in her story and asked us if we were enjoying it." Oh yes, please continue!
 
I love waking with my girls, there is nothing nicer. Apart from waking with Romy. But I love the feel of arms and legs and lips and I loved the feeling that morning when we woke late and the sun was already peering in through the crack in the heavy old curtains. And my eyes slowly opened and blinked and I brushed her hair from my face and lay back and listened to them both breathing softly and dreamt a bit more about the story Ingar had told us and thought of the day to come in the library and the lectures and the long long wait until we could pull the curtains closed again and light another candle and sit on the floor on our cushions and wait for her to tell us some more of her story.
 
So, when the time came and it was dark and cold outside, Ingar tapped on our doors and with a finger over her lips led me to Miri’s room, where the candle and the cushions were waiting for us. She asked us to sit down and to hold hands and to close our eyes while she told us the next part of the story.

After the justices had given their sentence the girl was led out of the great oak-paneled council room and along a passage, then through a heavy, iron-bolted door and down a gloomy spiral staircase to the cells beneath the town hall. This was a different place in the building than the torture chamber and was for holding the condemned before execution. A row of four small cells, each with an iron barred door, bare but for straw on the floor, a palliasse for sleeping and two earthenware bowls. And an iron ring fixed to the wall with chains hanging from it. There was no natural light, just the flickering orange glow of the torch fixed to the wall of the passageway.

She was still naked and stood, frightened, as the two guards led her into her cell and told her to remain standing and to wait. She stood as still as she could, trembling slightly, her arms folded over her breasts as if to hide herself. She was conscious of her own breathing, and snuffled back a few tears.

Minutes later, although it seemed to her like an eternity, an old woman entered. At least she seemed old to the girl. She came with a few things and a bowl of water and bid the guards to leave them alone. They did as they were asked and stood, one either side of the doorway, trying to defeat the temptation to look inside. The woman seemed kindly and spoke quickly but softly to the girl. She gently eased her arms to her side and explained that she was here to tidy her and make her ready. She turned the girl and held out her broken hands and tutted, saying that they’d made a bit of a mess of her but that she had seem much worse and she’d soon have her better.

With care and patience she slowly wiped the girl’s battered back with warm water from her bowl, using her finger tips to clean the cuts where the whip had bitten through the flesh. The girl grimaced as the task continued, and the old woman soothed her, stroking her brow. Next she moved to her hands, unwinding the bandages and washing the wounds, applying some strange ointment that stung, then cooled her fingers.

Gradually the girl gained enough composure to look up at the old woman, and even to smile a little. The woman spoke to her and told her not to be afraid of her, because she was here to make her more comfortable. The girl asked what would happen to her, although of course she knew what would happen, in the end. Without pausing from her work with the warm, wet cloth, as she wiped the girl’s legs clean, she explained that her job was to make her ready. That she’d come again before the end of the week to dress her wounds if it was needed and that she’d bring her food each day. She told the girl that it was a Monday and that her execution was to take place on Friday in the big square in front of the town hall and that they would be preparing the scaffold for her as she was talking. But she said all of this without malice of any sort and in a matter-of-fact way that made the girl feel calm. She said that she was sorry, but that she would have to cut the girl’s hair because that was the rule, and that she would shave her body, but that she shouldn’t mind that too much, and while she was here in the cell she shouldn’t be afraid because she would be looked after and would be safe and that no-one wanted to be cruel to her. It was just how things had to be because of the law, and she should understand that, and the girl nodded her head.

As she chopped the girl’s golden locks short, the cuttings lay around her feet on the stone floor, and became lost in the straw. The girl cried a little at her loss and the old woman said something soothing to her. Then from her bag she took a razor and some soap and lifted first one arm then the other and shaved away the fair curls and then parted her legs and soon the girl was as naked as the day she had been born. The old woman said she was nearly done, and unrolled a thin grey cotton shift from her bag and asked the girl to put it over herself, and she tightened the little draw string that held it in place over her shoulders and then stood back and looked at the girl and said she was all done for now and that she looked much better.

As she left, the two guards entered again, this time with another rough-looking man who held a hammer and some metal rings in his hand. He asked the girl to sit down with her legs apart, and quickly set to work, attaching two heavy manacles one to each ankle and fixing a chain that connected each, then, testing the length, hammering them shut. He led the chain back over the girl, who was leaning now against the stone wall of the cell, and allowing enough for her to move from the palliasse to the bowls, broke a link of the chain at the right point and hammered it closed onto the iron hoop in the wall. Then tidying his things and wiping his hands on his leather apron, he too left, as did the guards, and the iron door was pulled shut with a heavy clang and everything became silent.
 
Ingar paused and asked us how we felt. We didn’t say anything. She asked us to open our eyes and to look at each other. Then she said she wanted us to take our things off and to sit naked together, which we did, with just the candle flickering over our bodies. She asked us to imagine ourselves in the cell beneath the town hall on that Monday night, long ago. To imagine ourselves as the girl, a heavy chain running from the bindings on her feet, over her belly and between her breasts, over her shoulder to the iron ring on the wall. All alone with her thoughts in the silence of the night, knowing that she would live just three more nights after this one and then would face her death in the square before the town hall, facing the frozen lesser Alster.

She asked us to close our eyes again.

The girl tried to sleep, but could not manage more than a fitful doze. She knew she had done nothing, but that her innocence was of no matter anymore, for she had signed her confession. She remembered the look on the face of her mistress and began to half-understand how the blood-stained sheet might have ended up in her tiny room. She thought of this and that and of how things might have been. She thought of the torture chamber and the awfulness of the pain and how terrible the pain would be on Friday morning and wondered what they had in mind for her. She recalled a year ago having seen the execution of two women in the Fish Market for stealing. One was old and one young, younger than her she remembered. They were jostled and abused as the cart took them to the gibbet. The older woman had shouted abuse back at the crowd; the younger one, who was pretty, looked lost and terrified. She remembered how the executioners had lifted them from the cart and pushed them up the ladders and how the priest had mumbled his prayer and how the crowd went quiet. She remembered the sound of the young girl sobbing and she remembered the sound of the ropes suddenly tightening as the two women were turned off their ladders. And she remembered how their legs kicked and their bodies twisted and how their tongues bulged from their mouths and how they frothed and how their eyes grew large and how their skirts became stained and how the crowd shouted and how, slowly, after such a long time, their kicking became less and less and how, in the end, they hung still, slowly circling on their ropes. And how the crowd and quietened down and drifted away to the market stalls and the ale houses and how she had cried to herself and hurried back along the narrow passages to her master’s house.

She thought again of the young girl and how long she had taken to die. And she was just a thief, a girl of no importance. A nothing. But she was a murderer. She had killed, so they said, her master, and was guilty of treason and would pay the penalty and already they would be printing cheap pamphlets with pictures of her and the crime and her execution and she knew that she would not be allowed to die so easily as the young girl who was turned from the ladder. She cried a little, but knew that her tears were useless. And she tried again to sleep and to dream of happier things.
 
pkindenhaag said:
Ingar ... asked us to open our eyes and to look at each other. Then she said she wanted us to take our things off and to sit naked together, ... the candle flickering over our bodies. She asked us to imagine ourselves in the cell ... as the girl, a heavy chain running from the bindings on her feet, over her belly and between her breasts, ... alone with her thoughts in the silence of the night, knowing that she would live just three more nights ...
She asked us to close our eyes again.
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Ingar instinctively knows how to run a ceremony. Let's see what happens on Friday... ;)
 
Ingar stopped her story once again and without saying a word left the little circle for a few moments, then returned with a small bag, made of silk or some similar material, from which she took a length of shining chain. Sitting, she placed one end of the chain beneath her, then drew it up tightly between her legs, pulling firmly upwards so the links sank between her labia. Then she ran the chain between her breasts and over her shoulder, keeping it tight, and passed the length to Miri, indicating that she should do likewise, which she did. And then it was my turn, and when I had fed the links between my legs and over my belly Ingar quietly asked me to pass it once around my back then to return the free end to herself. She took it and grasping firmly, used the chain to draw us together until our bodies touched closely and our faces met. She whispered to us to think of ourselves as the girl in the cell, to close our eyes and to imagine her dreams. She said she would try to dream of happy times, of sunny days and of her childhood, but of course she would continually be pulled back to the torture chamber and to the morning four days hence when she would be led out over the snow of the town hall square. Imagine, Ingar whispered. Just imagine. Close your eyes and imagine.
 
In her cell time had no meaning. Day and night passed one and the same, the hours moving uncaringly towards the coming Friday morning. The silence punctuated only by the rough sound of chains against stone and the visits of the old woman who brought warm soup, a chunk of dark bread and a jug of water to refill the girl’s bowl, at the same time taking away and emptying the soil. Each time she came she tried to comfort the girl, sitting with her and talking about nothings, about her knitting and the price of vegetables this hard winter in the marketplace. The girl asked what day it was and she answered that it was Wednesday. She had been two nights in the cell and would have two more before they would come for her. She asked the girl if she was afraid and the girl nodded. She started to ask whether she had done what they said, then stopped herself, realising that it didn’t matter and would just distress the girl, who drifted from tranquility to sobs, clinging to the old woman’s clothes as a baby to her mother. Then she would stroke her on the head and kiss her on the cheek and leave her and the iron door would be pulled shut and locked once more.

The next time she visited the cell the girl understood that it must now be Thursday and that this would be her last night of confinement. She had dreamt of her days in the convent and of summers walking with the others in the garden orchard and picking fruits on warm autumn afternoons and of the first day she had spent with her master in the house in the city. She smiled as she remembered those times. The old woman sat with her and unwound the dressings on her broken fingers and smoothed more ointment onto them, before bandaging them once again with fresh, clean linen. She lifted the girl’s shift and carefully tended the welts that were beginning, slowly, to subside from raw red to dark bruises, interlaced with chafed and broken skin, on her back.

The girl asked her what would happen the next day and how she should prepare. She gazed imploringly at the old woman, somehow hoping that she had the key to some miracle that would free her from the awful certainty before her. But she knew in her heart that such a thing was not possible and that she was facing the last night of her life, and she somehow, unexpectedly, found a strange comfort in this.

She waited for the old woman to finish, and settled herself back against the wall, adjusting as best she could her chains. She felt an odd thrill as the old woman began to talk to her. Tomorrow would start early, she explained, and she would come to ready her before dawn. Not that she would know that the dawn was about to break in the confines of her cell. She would be washed again, and given a last breakfast of gruel, but not too much as it was not good to suffer the pains of execution on a full stomach. Then, the old woman explained, the executioner, who was the man who had set her in chains three days ago would come and release her and would bind her hands behind her back with rope. The priest would come and offer her absolution and the old woman asked the girl if she believed, and the girl nodded. She said that was good and she should find the ministrations of the priest helpful and that he would travel with her on her final journey. The old woman said to her that she should stay as calm as she could and she should remember that it was better to go softly to her execution, because nothing she might do would change things and that it was more seemly to respect the judgement of the court and to be repentant. She explained that the crowd who would be there to witness her death would appreciate this and be kinder to her if she showed her sorrow in God. The girl nodded. It was not good to struggle or to scream or to fight, the old woman said, and she explained that she had seen others who had gone to their death filled with anger and that it had been bad for them. The girl nodded again.

She asked what they would do to her. The old woman said that it was better not to know and not to think about that, even though she knew and the pamphlets that could be cheaply bought showed engravings of the torments she would face. She asked if it would over quickly, like the hangings she had seen, even though she recalled that those women had not died that quickly. She hoped it would be quick, she thought. The old woman sucked on her lips. She was afraid to say what would happen. The girl understood immediately and cried a little onto her shoulder. The old woman said she should not think about it, for once the process started it would finish, and faster than she might think, but there was nothing anyone could do and it would finish and in the end, by the time the noon-day bells rang, for sure she would be free of any pain that this world might have to give to her, and that it would in truth all be done well before those bells, high in the town hall tower, would ring. Once it started it would finish and then she would be free. Somehow the girl felt, for the first time, or maybe the second, a strange thrill deep inside her body and she trembled and the old woman felt this. She lifted her young face to her old, wrinkled brow and asked her a question secretly and quietly. The girl shook her head. The old woman said she should not worry, but that tonight she would see to it that she felt these special pleasures, for it was only right that she should not live and die without such knowledge. The girl smiled and wiped away a solitary tear and the old woman stood and left and the iron door was bolted shut.
 
And Ingar said that they could open their eyes now and that she could not tell any more of the story until the next evening, because she was tired. She slowly stood and released the chain and freed Lisa and Miri from their bondage and they quietly went to Miri’s bed and lay down together and quickly they were sleeping, their soft limbs touching.
 
That’s how it was, that night. I remember it so well, the feeling inside each of us. A strange tranquility. I’ve often wondered if the girl felt like that inside her cell, chained to the wall, waiting for whatever was to happen next. I wonder if she knew and was hoping, or whether it just added another fear. I think it must have been strange, not knowing what was to happen, whether it would be something terrible or something wonderful and not knowing when. Not knowing if he’d be kind and gentle or rough and cruel, for after all she was a condemned criminal chained to a wall and he could do anything he wished.
But as I sat at my desk, the next day, reading, and occasionally drinking from my mug of tea, I decided for myself that he had entered quietly, just as she was beginning to fall asleep. He had loosened his clothes and came to her and sat beside her and touched her cropped hair and gently stroked her cheek with the back of a finger until her eyes opened. And he placed a finger on her lips and whispered that they should be quiet and he touched her on her arms and lifted her grey shift and touched her on her belly and stroked her between her legs and lifted her chin and kissed her. He told her not to be frightened and kissed her again, and she reached to him and kissed him, first timidly, then again and again and again, as she had never known kissing before, and she pulled his hands beneath the cotton and placed them on her breasts and her body shook and she lowered herself to lick him and touch him with her mouth. And then it was over and she lay back in her chains and cried and he kissed her one last time and pulled her shift back over her body and as she trembled he stood and bending, touched her face, then left and she was altogether alone, by herself, in her dark cell.

That is how I imagined it anyway, but how could I know? Or Ingar, or Miri. I imagined that it was a moment of kindness that lifted the girl to another place and for that brief moment took her away from the day that was to come after the night. But how could I ever know?

I imagined that she curled up tight, drawing her legs, damp between her legs, together underneath herself, and buried her face between them. She tried to sleep but could not, and she could only think about the feeling she had experienced. She felt between her legs and licked her fingers and tasted herself. She tried again to sleep, then wondered why she was worried about being tired on the next morning, for what would it matter. And then she slept.
 
The day dragged, it was taking so long for the time to pass. I wondered how long that Thursday had seemed to the girl, and how it felt to be passing your last day alive. I wondered, as I tried to read my books, how I would feel. If I could get over the horror that I had been unfairly plunged into. How could I make sense of anything? Maybe it was different back then, I thought, when death seemed to come so easily. But it probably wasn’t any different. I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to be counting the moments away, to count my own breaths away, the last sips from the water bowl, knowing that every second would bring the next day closer. Would I be thinking about what they might do to me? I am sure I would have guessed something. The guards would have said something. I would be telling myself that it couldn’t be so, that they must be mistaken. They wouldn’t do that to a young girl like me would they? Surely the crowd would feel pity and ask the executioner to end things quickly? I would convince myself that it must all be a terrible dream, then, perhaps, a terrible mistake. I would convince myself that a justice in his robes would come to me and tell me that it was all over and they knew I was innocent. And then I would realise that it was happening and that it was unstoppable and that my body would soon not be my own but a thing that the city would use to demonstrate its power and authority and that the crowd would cheer not for my reprieve but for the terrible pain that they would inflict on me. I would tremble and cry, then wipe my eyes and snuffle. And then I would try to sleep again. And then I would wake. And then sleep, until at some point I would hear the clanking of the key in the lock and the new day would have arrived.
 
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