Altered States - New Story By Jedakk

[thehangingtree]

That damned thing was a real pain in the ass. I first had just the pic on the right hand side there, thinking that a picture of Maia would be good enough. But I got called to task about that, and others wanted to paste in some photomanip of one of Ramon's girls where they thought Catherine ought to be, and that wasn't going to fly with me.

So I was forced to create a fallout shelter/dungeon, sculpt a girl who fit my mental picture of catherine, blindfold her and crucify her. Argh!

Here are some more views of cat in the fallout shelter:

Obviously there should be Joe, Doc, Liz, etc. there but I didn't need them for the cover art. The odd looking stuff on the floor in the bottom edge of the last pic is the sand that they spread out there to make cat feel like she was lying on dirt when they tied and nailed her hands.

Internet ain't agreeing with me tonight... I'll open tomorrow. While I doubt I will ever try to match your skills I do like reading hoe you have got there...

Ol' Tree

 

[Eulalia]

Madiosi is currently working on putting the entire story in to e-book format which you'll be able to download from the Archives shortly.

The e-book version can now be found in Madiosi's CruxForums E-Book Library:
http://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/crux-forums-e-book-library.4744/page-11

The pdf, as posted by Jedakk here, is in the Archive.

 

[Kodos the Executioner]

In the meantime, here's a PDF version of the entire story, all 111 pages!

Thanks jedakk for the pdf -- I really enjoyed reading the story!

 

[mp5stab]

To be honest, I held off on reading this until I knew the story was finished. Reading it all in one go was definitely the better choice over waiting for the serialized segments. Your writing is excellent.

 

[Deleted member jedakk]

To be honest, I held off on reading this until I knew the story was finished. Reading it all in one go was definitely the better choice over waiting for the serialized segments. Your writing is excellent.

I have no doubt that reading the whole thing straight through, or at least reading until you get to stopping places that work for you, is a lot better than this serialized version. I didn't write it with the intent of serializing it, which actually, to my mind, requires more of a segue between the segments than I sometimes had.

There was one part in particular where I said "shit!" because I knew the ending to that particular segment was flat, didn't give any feeling of anticipation for what was about to happen in the next segment. I learn lessons every time I write.

I broke it up like that in order to make it easier and less intimidating for those whose English might make it challenging. And apparently there were things in that story that didn't come across to everyone. In particular, someone asked me why Joe, Doc, Liz, etc. all had their names capitalized, while catherine's was not. In writing this, I assumed that this audience would recognize that as the convention that's used by submissives, their names in lower case, even the pronoun "I" written as "i". Now I know that might not be so.

 

[mp5stab]

Working my way back through the thread now, it's like opening a Christmas present.

Those Amara renders were a sweet surprise. I could wax on at tremendous length about how you understand the dynamics of a crucifixion pose, you can convey agony, and how seeing her gasping up into the air while she pushes up on the nails is so striking. But I don't think I should, you're the master of this; you already know. What I'd like to bring up is the titlus: It says "occisor" which translates to "killer", instead of the more used "homicida"- murderer. I think a lot of people just go with homicida because it has an English cognate "homicide", but you went with a more agressive word, and given the slaying she was involved in, that word makes sense. Nice detail.

Also, I have to wonder, was Amera all in catherine's head, or was she recalling real events?

 

[Deleted member jedakk]

Working my way back through the thread now, it's like opening a Christmas present.

Glad you're enjoying it!

and how seeing her gasping up into the air while she pushes up on the nails is so striking.

If you're talking about Amara, the black girl, it does look a lot the same, but what she's actually doing in that pose is trying to lower herself as gently as possible onto that sedile. In the story, it was designed specifically for a woman's body, so that there was only one way for her to "rest" on it. Maia, the girl in the foreground of the cover picture, actually is struggling upward for air.

Also, I have to wonder, was Amera all in catherine's head, or was she recalling real events?

Amara, Maia and the other characters catherine saw... Well, if you read the whole story it becomes obvious, and what happens when catherine goes into that altered state of consciousness is the whole point. If you haven't gotten that far, perhaps I shouldn't give away the ending.

 

[mp5stab]

Mhmm, I've gotten to that point now. I'm glad you didn't go straight for the "all a dream" cliché, well sorta, with the inception references it's a toss up.

The cross whipping scenes can only be described in terms of gushing, first Amara being whipped to death, then Maia's whipping, and how the Doc uses that the figure out the alternate state world. I love how it climaxes with her actual death, too. It's rare for the cross to make that any more than an anticlimax. This is amazing.

 

[andy01]

I have no doubt that reading the whole thing straight through, or at least reading until you get to stopping places that work for you, is a lot better than this serialized version. I didn't write it with the intent of serializing it, which actually, to my mind, requires more of a segue between the segments than I sometimes had.

There was one part in particular where I said "shit!" because I knew the ending to that particular segment was flat, didn't give any feeling of anticipation for what was about to happen in the next segment. I learn lessons every time I write.

I broke it up like that in order to make it easier and less intimidating for those whose English might make it challenging. And apparently there were things in that story that didn't come across to everyone. In particular, someone asked me why Joe, Doc, Liz, etc. all had their names capitalized, while catherine's was not. In writing this, I assumed that this audience would recognize that as the convention that's used by submissives, their names in lower case, even the pronoun "I" written as "i". Now I know that might not be so.

Horses for courses. I liked the instalments, waiting to find what was going to happen next.

 

[old slave]

Horses for courses. I liked the instalments, waiting to find what was going to happen next.

If I've the time, I like the anticipation and side-chat of instalments. But I also read stories straight through from the archive, and found as a newbie to the site, not knowing the members' characters who were chatting, that it was less distracting from the story. So having both episodes and a complete pdf (which can be read offline) is the best of both worlds.

 

[Deleted member jedakk]

I love how it climaxes with her actual death, too. It's rare for the cross to make that any more than an anticlimax.

It's funny, I originally wrote the death experience as a brief mention in catherine's part of the "Aftermath" section. But then that section kept growing, and there was too much stuff there; no one was going to have the patience to read it! I had to cut some things, try to make it more concise.

And then it occurred to me that there was no reason the story had to end with everything going dark as Maia died, because catherine didn't die. I could have her remain joined to Maia, experiencing everything all the way through Maia's death on the cross, and she could return and describe her experience - all of it!

So I went back and wrote the chapter where Maia dies, the feeling as she slips out of her tortured body, splits apart from catherine, and the two women meet each other face-to-face. That was a rare opportunity and a lot of fun to write. Especially where Maia finds that she now possesses cat's potty mouth, and "both of us were glancing around uneasily now, kind of afraid of who might show up looking stern as a nun with a ruler." You can find humor everywhere!

 

[Deleted member jedakk]

Horses for courses. I liked the instalments, waiting to find what was going to happen next.

It was killing me, trying to space those out about 24 hours apart, trying to figure out how much to post to make it something like a complete episode, and not too much at a time! But I really liked the discussion, which sometimes made me explore what I was thinking myself when I was writing.

 

[Deleted member jedakk]

Since I had already created a catherine character, I decided to try the scene at the end of the story where she kneels before Joe and offers him the whip. Joe is a big, muscular guy, so I've got him just back from playing some basketball. catherine has her long blonde hair up in preparation so it won't tangle in the whip.

 

[Eulalia]

catherine has her long blonde hair up in preparation so it won't tangle in the whip.

nice touch that - I keep mine shortish anyway, but especially for the Whip - not below my neck!

 

[Deleted member jedakk]

nice touch that - I keep mine shortish anyway, but especially for the Whip - not below my neck!

Although I've never whipped anyone, when I write about such things I tediously go through every step in the process in my mind, and I could see that long hair might well tangle in the whip. I think the first time I mentioned that was in "The Serpent's Eye" where I had Salonina, the cook, put Sabina's long hair up in a bun for that reason:

“We need to brush your hair and put it up so it will be out of the way,” I said. She stared at me for a moment, the unspoken question being, out of the way of what? We both knew the answer to that. Just like we both knew why I brought the old peplos rather than a good one. They’d take that away right before they whipped her, and would be rough about doing it.

And putting her hair up would keep it from tangling in the whip when they flogged her and save her a bit of misery by keeping it out of her face when she was hanging on the cross. Balbus would never let her keep her long hair anyway, because it would hide the suffering in her face from the gaze of the onlookers. But this way maybe she wouldn’t have to endure having his helpers hack it off.

She nodded her understanding, we both sat down on the straw, her with her back to me, and I began brushing her hair. From where I sat I couldn’t see her face, but I heard her sob and knew that whatever distraction the bathing and dressing had given was done with. It was time we talked about what they were going to do to her. One more sunrise and it would begin.
​

 

[Deleted member jedakk]

And one more thing about "Altered States" that other writers might find of interest:

I knew as I was planning this story that I needed a scene near the end where cat would awaken from her altered state of consciousness. I wanted some drama where Joe, Doc and the others would be in a state of high anxiety wondering if cat's mind was still there; especially, once they understood that on her time scale, she'd experienced three days of unrelenting torture on the cross, had actually died on the cross in her mind.

I needed something, some characteristic of hers, that they would immediately identify with her and be assured that her personality was still there. A term for a characteristic that like that is "shibboleth," a Hebrew word that comes to us from the book of Judges in the Bible, where some 42,000 people who couldn't pronounce it correctly were killed at the Jordan River.

What I needed was a shibboleth that would immediately identify cat to her friends. What I chose was the phrase "fuck me," odd enough for a woman to say that it would be notable. Then as I developed the rest of the story, I had cat say that from time to time so that it became a familiar phrase of hers that readers would associate with her too. And when she said it after she came back from her altered state, everyone was relieved because they knew it was really her.

Just in case anyone is interested, there actually was a reason behind that habit that I gave cat, more than just to be entertainingly funny.

 

[Eulalia]

And one more thing about "Altered States" that other writers might find of interest:

I knew as I was planning this story that I needed a scene near the end where cat would awaken from her altered state of consciousness. I wanted some drama where Joe, Doc and the others would be in a state of high anxiety wondering if cat's mind was still there; especially, once they understood that on her time scale, she'd experienced three days of unrelenting torture on the cross, had actually died on the cross in her mind.

I needed something, some characteristic of hers, that they would immediately identify with her and be assured that her personality was still there. A term for a characteristic that like that is "shibboleth," a Hebrew word that comes to us from the book of Judges in the Bible, where some 42,000 people who couldn't pronounce it correctly were killed at the Jordan River.

What I needed was a shibboleth that would immediately identify cat to her friends. What I chose was the phrase "fuck me," odd enough for a woman to say that it would be notable. Then as I developed the rest of the story, I had cat say that from time to time so that it became a familiar phrase of hers that readers would associate with her too. And when she said it after she came back from her altered state, everyone was relieved because they knew it was really her.

Just in case anyone is interested, there actually was a reason behind that habit that I gave cat, more than just to be entertainingly funny.

One of the first things I wrote here, more than 5 years ago, when I was beginning to put my fantasies into writing,
was http://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/exposed-naked-and-beaten.1117/#post-12589
it later became a chapter in The Interrogation & Punishment Centre for Girls,
and in that, my hair's hacked off before I'm whipped:

'Next the Chief Torturer muttered something to the Director of Punishment, then suddenly grabbed my long hair, tugged my head back, and used a knife from his belt to hack off my curls. Even my soft locks would not be allowed to get in the way of the whiplashes! I shivered at the feeling of coldness across my shoulders and neck. The slavegirl quickly gathered up my shorn hair and carried it away - there's a market for girls' hair, nothing is wasted!'

I honestly can't remember whether it was my own idea or I'd read or heard of it.

 

[Deleted member jedakk]

One of the first things I wrote here, more than 5 years ago, when I was beginning to put my fantasies into writing,
was http://www.cruxforums.com/xf/threads/exposed-naked-and-beaten.1117/#post-12589
it later became a chapter in The Interrogation & Punishment Centre for Girls,
and in that, my hair's hacked off before I'm whipped:

'Next the Chief Torturer muttered something to the Director of Punishment, then suddenly grabbed my long hair, tugged my head back, and used a knife from his belt to hack off my curls. Even my soft locks would not be allowed to get in the way of the whiplashes! I shivered at the feeling of coldness across my shoulders and neck. The slavegirl quickly gathered up my shorn hair and carried it away - there's a market for girls' hair, nothing is wasted!'

I honestly can't remember whether it was my own idea or I'd read or heard of it.

You reminded me of what I wrote in "The Serpent's Eye" about how Sabina felt when she was chained to the whipping post naked, anticipating the first stroke of the whip:

I was used to wearing my long hair down, so having it bound up on my head felt strange and was a constant reminder of why Salonina had put it up that way for me the night before. Even though I was already completely nude, it made me feel even more naked. There was absolutely nothing between my bare skin and the knotted leather of the whip. I felt the tickle of sweat trickling down my sides from my armpits. I was already panting in anticipation of what was coming.
​

It occurred to me that if you're used to the weight of long hair down your back, it would feel odd, maybe more exposed, not having it there. I actually think that the feeling would be more pronounced, her fear heightened, if, as a final preparation for the whipping, someone either cut off her hair or pulled it up and tied it out of the way to leave her back fully exposed. I might write it that way another time!

The only place I can think of having seen or maybe read of women having their hair cut prior to execution is maybe before being burned at the stake. I remember a scene in some movie where two women and a man were burned in England for some religious transgression, all three bound to the same stake. Prior to that, soldiers cut their hair so short that their scalps were bloody.

Other than that, I realized way back when I was doing Poser scenes of a girl on a cross that if her head hung forward, her long hair would hide her face. That didn't work for me artistically, so I needed some pretext for having her hair bound up.

 

[mp5stab]

Well, to me, whipping is hardly a pretext for putting the hair up, it's a perfectly valid justification. Of course, usually I don't depict the hair being put up in something as plain as a bun...

 

[Deleted member jedakk]

Well, to me, whipping is hardly a pretext for putting the hair up, it's a perfectly valid justification. Of course, usually I don't depict the hair being put up in something as plain as a bun...

Yeah, maybe "pretext" wasn't an accurate word. Hair in Poser is notoriously hard to manage, and I had a number of abortive tries over the years at doing Poser scenes where the victim had long hair. The hair ended up taking more time than all of the rest of the scene combined, and then the results looked wrong. I needed a short hair style that didn't reach the shoulders and preferably would move along with the head and neck. And I tried a lot of them before I finally settled on that bun.

The other one that worked ok is the hair that I used for Lucilla, the girl sentenced to be crucified twelve times. It has so many morphs that you can pose it in all kinds of ways, and it's short enough that you don't have to worry about it passing through the shoulders and such.

And yes, whipping is more than a pretext for putting her hair up out of the way. It's a perfectly logical reason and could be a chilling prelude for the victim, knowing why her hair is being put up like that and what's coming next.