Bijou in Malhaven

[fauxface]

Chapter XXVIII: Mentor and Student​

The two men grabbed the sides of Alina’s patibulum, and rapidly walked her to the stipes on the left of Bijou, only a few yards from the crucified girl’s right hand. It was all the brunette could do to keep up with them, trotting along as they pulled her, doing her best to avoid being dragged. Once they reached the vicinity of Alina’s stipes – for it was Alina’s stipes, now – the men began to lower the crossbeam, and the girl collapsed into a kneeling position, still facing the wooden post. The men released the beam, allowing it to drop to the ground, and Alina’s body arched backward into an almost gymnastic pose, her shoulders and knees on the rocky ground, her lower legs bent beneath her, her feet alongside her hips, turned outward next to her upper legs. Her hip joints flared with sudden pain from the stress, but before she could adjust her legs, the centurion straddled her, pinning her legs to the ground. Alina cried out with pain from the stressful position, but no one cared.

Carl busied himself removing the ropes from the dark-haired girl’s left wrist and elbow. “We’ll leave her shoulder tied for now, and the other arm, too,” he said to David. “She’s pretty well immobilized by the ropes already, no need to have anyone holding her other arm down.”

He looked to David. “Okay, first thing to learn is where on the patibulum to position the wrist. I’ll show you the extremes, first. Let’s say you extend the arm straight across the patibulum, like this.” He demonstrated. “Think of this as a zero-degree angle, although there will always be some angle once all the weight is on the nails. Anyway, you do that, there’s not going to be much of a hanging effect. It’s incredibly stressful and painful for the girl, so it’s got that going for it, but the problem is, she’s not going to last very long that way. Half an hour, maybe, unless you provide some other way of supporting her body so she can get a full breath; more on that tomorrow. I’m not saying you should never do it that way; you crucify enough women, sometimes it’s a nice variation. I’m just letting you know the downside.”

Alina’s black eyes widened in horror that the manner in which she was to suffer could be discussed so clinically and academically.

“The other extreme is to put the hand right here,” Carl continued, moving the girl’s wrist so that it was adjacent to her shoulder, bending her elbow so that her forearm and upper arm were pressed together. “Ninety degrees to the horizontal. You do that, she’s going to hang straight down. The thing to be aware of is that she’ll be a lot lower on the cross, of course, because she’ll be hanging from the entire length of the arm, vertically. She’ll have more strength, and will be more able to pull herself up for a full breath when she needs to, so survival isn’t as much of an issue. But aesthetically, some people don’t like it; it just doesn’t look as nice as when they’re spread out. Also, the upper arms will be right up against her face, that close to the head, and they can hide part of her face sometimes, at least from certain angles. I have to admit, I like it on occasion, though.” Carl smiled slightly, remembering some of the occasions.

“So those are the two extremes, zero and ninety degrees, and generally you won’t use either of them very often. Basically, what you’re usually wanting to go for is some position where the angle between the girl’s arm and the patibulum is between about thirty and sixty degrees. That’s the sweet spot. Now let me show you how to do that.”

He once again extended Alina’s arm its full length along the patibulum, then bent the elbow bringing her wrist as close to her shoulder as possible, comparing the segments of her arm. “Look. Notice that a girl’s forearm is pretty much the same length as her upper arm. A little bit less, but close enough.”

He pulled her wrist back until the arm was once again fully extended along the wood. “Here’s the rule of thumb… or ‘rule of forearm,’ I guess. Look how long her forearm is. About nine inches, I’d guess, from wrist to elbow. Now, mentally, divide that length into thirds; you don’t have to actually measure and do any math, just look at her forearm on the wood, and take note of the spots on the wood that more or less line up with the points on her arm that are about one-third from the elbow and one-third from the wrist.”

David nodded, not sure where this was going.

“Okay, so you pull the wrist in to the first spot, one-third of the way in from where her wrist was,” Carl continued, adjusting the brunette’s arm, demonstrating. “If you nail it right here, you’re going to get about a thirty-degree angle. Move it in two-thirds,” – he repositioned the girl’s wrist to the second spot – “that will get you forty-five degrees. Finally, move it all the way in to where the elbow was, the last third, and you’ll get about sixty degrees. That’s usually the lowest you want her to hang unless you’re going for extremes.”

He paused. “I could show you the trigonometry, but I’m pretty sure it’d bore the hell out of you. The angles aren’t exact, but they’re within two or three degrees; close as you could tell by eye, which means aesthetically, you’re getting what you need.”

Carl paused. “So for these two, let’s go forty-five degrees, just like we did for Bijou.” Carl gestured upward with this head, indicating the Korean girl above them. He pointed to a spot on the wood along the struggling Algerian girl’s arm. The patibulum was pocked with nail marks from earlier crucifixions, making it easy to find a landmark. “This right here,” he said, indicating a mark on the wood, “looks to be about two-thirds of the way up the forearm.” He slid the girl’s wrist to the designated spot. “This is where we’ll nail her.” Alina squirmed, but Carl held her fast.

Carl paused. “Okay, so we’ve got the hand placement down. Now the next thing is, where to drive the nail. Now, despite what you’ve seen in the old paintings, you can’t nail through the palm itself. You do that, it will tear right through once her weight’s on it. If you nailed through the hands themselves, you’d have to tie the wrists to the patibulum, and the nails would be just for pain and show; no actual supporting function. So you’re looking more at the wrist. I usually go right into the wrist bones. That’s what I did with Bijou, at least on her left wrist. But that’s a little risky if you get it wrong, and since this is your first time, let me show a safer way, and that’s to drive the nail between the two bones of the arm, as close to the wrist as you can.”

Carl pressed down with his left hand on Alina’s forearm, holding it in place at the edge of the wood. Then he reached for her hand with his right and, positioning his grip at the base of her thumb and little finger, squeezed it hard, pulling her thumb and finger together to touch, and slowly flexed the girl’s wrist back and forth. Alina gasped; it didn’t hurt, but she was so high-strung now that everything triggered a reaction.

“See that?” Carl indicated the girl’s wrist. A ligament stood out in sharp relief as he adjusted her hand. “The spot you want is just inside that tendon, on the little finger side of it, right at the spot before it disappears into the wrist; just follow it back from the wrist an inch or so, maybe a tad less. Can’t fail. Okay, hold her now.”

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXVIII: Mentor and Student (cont'd)​

David took over, pressing Alina’s arm and hand to the wood, as Carl positioned one of his custom-made nails over the spot he had just located. The point dimpled her white skin. The Algerian girl was now hyperventilating in terror

“Not to belabor the obvious, but this part is critical. When you drive the nail, it will go through her flesh, and even her wrist bones if we were nailing there, pretty easily. But it’s essential that you keep going; you have to continue driving the nail until it’s well into the wood, so the woman can’t pull it out in her thrashing.” He lifted the hammer, and Alina began to whimper.

The air rang with clangs of iron against steel, in counterpoint with the Algerian girl’s screams, as the hammer drove the spike through the soft flesh of Alina’s wrist. The sounds rang sharply at first, then settled into a deeper percussive note as the steel nail burrowed into the wood of the patibulum. After a half-dozen blows, Carl spoke. “Okay, you can let go.” David did so. Alina’s arm was firmly, but not tightly, nailed to the wood. “It’s a good idea to leave just a little bit of space between the arm and the nail head,” Carl advised. “You hit the nail when it’s already pressed against the arm, you could break the bones, and affect the ability of her arms to support her. As long as the nail’s secure in the wood, she’s not going to be able to get loose, and that’s all that’s important.”

Alina was sobbing in agony now, and the men now crossed over to her right hand. David glanced over at Piper, who had gone pale with stark fear, watching Alina being nailed to the wood, knowing her turn was to come.

Again, Carl positioned the brunette’s wrist, showing David the procedure once more. “Usually, you use the same position for both sides,” counseled Carl, “but you don’t have to. If you move one wrist further in than the other, her head will go to the side with the smaller angle, and with the feet obviously nailed in the center, her body will take on a curvature that can be kind of sexy. But let’s keep it simple for today.” Again, David held Alina’s arm in place as Carl drove the spike through her flesh and into the wood below; again the air was filled with the percussive sound of hammer and steel over Alina’s operatic screams.

“Okay, we don’t need these any more,” said Carl, untying the ropes that still bound the Algerian girl’s shoulders and neck to the patibulum. He gestured to the girl’s legs, still pinned beneath her, and handed one of the lengths of rope to David. David understood. He took the rope from Carl and pulled Alina’s left leg out from under her, then tied a loop around her ankle, as he had done with Bijou the day before. The centurion stepped away to give David room. He, too, was listening attentively to Carl’s instruction. It was always nice to hear a master holding forth on his art.

Carl paused. “If you don’t mind, David, I’d like to give this one a little send-off. The blonde is all yours, okay?”

“Of course,” agreed David, standing aside. Carl removed his trousers and laid atop the dark-eyed beauty. It was common for him to fuck a woman he was crucifying. In the case of Bijou, he had reserved that privilege to David as a matter of deference. As a result, he had been suffering a fierce case of blue balls since yesterday, and was looking forward to relief. Like Bijou, Alina resisted pathetically, but there was really nothing she could do. She gasped from the sudden additional pain as Carl entered her; Logan’s whip had often landed between her legs, and her cunt was bruised and tender. Carl paid no heed to her moans of pain, gradually increasing his thrusts until finally climaxing. Alina sobbed in pain and shame as Carl, now spent, collapsed atop her, regaining his breath.

A few moments later, he rose and collected himself, and was all business again. “Ready to raise her?” he asked. David answered in the affirmative, and the two men lifted the brunette to her feet. She cried out at the sudden surge of pain in her wrists as the nails began to bear weight. This part was familiar to David, having participated in Bijou’s raising yesterday. Carefully, the men walked in a slow circle, rotating the woman until her back was to the stipes. Together, they walked the girl backward the short remaining distance to the tall wooden post, until she was positioned with her back against the wood. Carl gave a small nod, and together they ascended their ladders, lifting the screaming woman off the ground, efficiently sliding the crossbar into place at the top of the post. David, being on the side with the roped ankle, bound it to the cleat as he had seen Carl do with Bijou, while Carl bolted the two wooden members together, as he had done with Bijou’s the day before.

Alina now hung from the cross, gasping and howling in pain, her right leg free and thrashing wildly, her left twisted around the wood and secured to the back of the stipes.

“Okay, now the feet,” began Carl. He grabbed Alina’s gyrating right ankle, extending the leg to its full straight length and pressed the back of her knee firmly against the wood of the stipes. He gently but firmly pushed Alina’s foot toward the surface of the wood. “As you can see, you can’t get the sole of the foot flat against the wood unless you bend the knee.” Continuing to grasp the trim ankle in his right hand, he reached behind the knee and pushed outward, at the same time drawing her foot up the wood until its sole was flat against its surface.

“This is pretty much as far as she can extend her leg once her foot is nailed. If we were to nail it here, she would barely be able to push up; maybe a little, if you leave enough space between the top of the foot and the nail head, but even still, not that much. So my practice is to move the foot somewhat higher, at least half a foot’s length, and because I usually don’t want both feet to be at the same level, I go twice that on the first one, so a full foot’s length.” He pulled Alina’s ankle higher, bending her knee further, so that the girl’s toes were now at the point where her heel had been just a moment earlier. “This will make a little more sense when we do the second foot,” continued Carl, “just trust me on it for the moment. Can you hold her?”

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXVIII: Mentor and Student (conclusion)​

David grasped Alina’s leg with one hand and pressed down over her toes with the other, as he had with Bijou the previous day. Again, he felt the strangely erotic wriggling of the suffering woman’s toes against his palm. Carl now held the third nail, and pressed its tip into the top of the brunette’s foot, where the instep met the ankle joint. “You want to put the nail right here, right at the joint, and almost straight in, pointed downward just a little. If you nail much lower on the foot, and the girl has enough strength left,” – at this point he looked up at the squirming girl – “and I’m not sure about this one, she could pull the foot clean off the nail. The foot bones here, the metatarsals, they’re all parallel and run right down to the toes, pretty much like the metacarpals in the palm of the hand. The foot is essentially a piece of meat around the metatarsal bones with the toes sticking out of one end. You give an energetic enough pull – and some of these girls can be pretty energetic when you drive a nail through their feet – and they can pull it right through that layer of flesh.”

He checked again the position and angle of the nail. “Now here, you’re going to go straight through the bones of the base of the foot. You can’t go between the leg bones like we did nailing her wrists.” He paused, pulling away the nail for a moment before he continued. “Actually you can. You can nail the ankles through the tibia and fibula bones, just as we did the arm between the radius and ulna. But if you want to do that, you’ll need to nail them to the side of the stipes, not the front, and then, unless you take additional steps, the girl will have no support from her legs. She’ll die in something like twenty to thirty minutes. So, not recommended.”

He resumed, once again positioning the nail at its target at the top of the foot. “So, nail almost always goes here, at an angle like this. Now, you’re always going to be going through bone here, and the same bit I told you about following through to the wood is important. In fact it’s probably more important here, since the bone fracturing is more painful than just going through the arm flesh, so she’s really going to try to jolt; and the leg muscles are the largest set of muscles on the human body, so you want to make sure you get the foot secured to the wood. Ready?”

“Yes,” answered David shortly, pressing Alina’s foot more firmly against the wood. Above them, the brunette began to whimper in fear and anticipation. Out of the corner of his eye, David could see Piper looking on, wide-eyed, her face an expression of horror.

“Okay,” responded Carl. He raised the hammer and brought it down, rapidly and repeatedly, driving the nail through the girl’s bones and deeply into the wood beneath. Alina screeched in agony, trying desperately to pull her foot away, but David held firm, and in only a few blows, Carl had gotten the job done.

“Again, notice the head isn’t all the way down to the top of her foot,” he shouted to David, over the howling of the woman on the cross. “It gives a little more play, and helps her push up a little more. She’ll be needing that. Okay, let’s do the other one.”

David untied the rope from the cleat behind the stipes, and almost immediately, Alina tried to kick. It was a pointless gesture, of course, but instinct dies only slowly. He grasped her ankle firmly and brought it around to the front, removing the loop of rope as he did so.

“Thanks,” said Carl. “Now, like I said before, I like the feet to be offset a little. That makes the girl’s inner thighs visible, and I really like that. So, let’s put this one here.” He slid the struggling girl’s left foot into position, sole flat against the wood, so that her heel nestled into the midpoint of the foot already nailed. “Now, remember before, when I said the lowest you can pretty much nail the foot was about a half-length up from where it first goes flat against the wood? That’s where this one is now. The reason I did the first foot a little higher is that you want to nail the higher foot first, so it’s out of the way when you nail the second one.” He paused. “They don’t have to be so close together, either, by the way. Let’s move this one out a little.” He shifted the foot he held horizontally, two inches away from the one already nailed, maintaining the same height. “Now she’ll be spread a little; that’s kind of nice. Here, hold her.”

David grasped the slim ankle and pressed down once again on the struggling girl’s toes. Carl set the nail and hammered it down, through the girl’s foot and deeply into the wood behind it. As the nail penetrated her foot, Alina gasped deeply before letting out her scream; in that brief instant of silence, the men could hear the bones crack as the nail pushed its way through the girl’s foot.

With the Algerian nailed into place, all that was left was to affix her titulus, which Carl swiftly did. Unlike Bijou, Alina was being put to the cross as a simple expedient, to end her time at Malhaven, and the legend carved on the wooden placard reflected this aspect:

Alina Sofia Bensoussan
Femina consumitur​

Femina consumitur: “The woman is depleted.” The men were done with Alina. She was used up, and this is how she would be discarded.

Alina cried out in additional pain as the vibrations from her titulus being nailed above her shook her cross.

It was done now; Alina’s crucifixion was complete. The men stepped back and looked at the raven-haired girl, writhing on her cross. Carl continued his commentary. “Now, a lot of what I’ve shown you here is personal preference. There’s room for a lot of variation. Once you get the hang of it, don’t be afraid to experiment. I like the offset feet, for example; not everybody does. And I like them as extended as they can be; I think it makes the legs look nicer. But that’s just me. Some guys like to bend the knees much more; it’s all a matter of taste.”

With a sense of satisfaction, the two men looked up, taking in their work. Two brunettes now hung suffering from their crosses: the brown-haired Korean girl, Bijou; and the black-haired Algerian girl, Alina.

“I think a blonde would look nice up there right about now, don’t you?” Carl asked. They both turned to look at Piper, now frozen in fear.

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXIX: Reflections​

From her vantage point on the cross, Bijou had watched Alina’s crucifixion in morbid fascination. The Algerian woman’s body had been arrayed on the ground with her head away from the stipes, and Bijou suspected it was to facilitate her own view of the horror unfolding beneath her. To Bijou, it was almost an out-of-body experience. She could not help but empathize with the other dark-haired girl being laid out and immobilized, just as Bijou had been; nails driven through her wrists, just as nails had been driven through her own wrists the day before. She recognized her own helplessness and terror, watching Alina being raped for a final time. She saw, as Carl savagely thrust into Alina, the girl’s contorted face of pain, the prominence of the tendons under her arms, the hands curving into talons as the girl strained ineffectively against the spikes that held her in place, and Bijou knew that she herself must have appeared much the same. She watched the woman’s flailing legs as she was lifted atop the stipes, and relived how she herself had been raised onto the cross only yesterday. She saw herself in Alina as the Algerian girl’s face contorted in agony; she heard her own voice in the woman’s screams as the spikes were driven through her feet, and in her rhythmic cries of pain as her titulus was pounded into place.

And now, looking at Alina, crucified on her right, she recognized herself in the woman’s writhing body, still new to her crucifixion, not yet comprehending that there was no escape, not yet realizing that the best she could hope to do was to minimize her pain by remaining as still as possible.

Bijou now realized the purpose in the sweeping curved line of the stipes’ arrangement. In this way, each woman on her cross could look at the other crucified women, and see herself in them. They were displayed as much to one another as to the audience below. Unable to take any more of Alina’s suffering, she forced herself to look away – just in time to see the men approach her best friend and drag her to the stipes to Bijou’s left.

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXX: Friends Reunited​

Piper gasped in fear as Carl and David seized her patibulum and pulled her, half dragging her, to the stipes to the right of Bijou. There was never any question that Bijou remained the star, and would be in the center; the two new girls would be crucified on either side of her. Swiftly the men pulled Piper to the ground and readied her to be nailed. Carefully, they positioned the blonde woman so that her legs were pointed toward the area between Bijou’s stipes and her own. The Korean girl would have a clear view of her friend being crucified.

Bijou was horrified to see that David was now taking the lead. She could see him position the blonde girl’s wrist and look to Carl for confirmation. Carl nodded and held Piper’s arm in place for David to pound the nails. Again the harsh sound of the hammer filled the air. Bijou shut her eyes tightly. She couldn’t keep out the sound of the nails, or of Piper’s screams, but she could keep out the sight.

The sounds of the hammering abated, although Piper’s screams continued. Reluctantly, Bijou opened her eyes. She could see Carl nodding with approval. Then the men crossed to the other side and repeated the process. Again, David positioned Piper’s arm and drove the spike through the girl’s slender wrist into the wood below. My god, Bijou thought, the way Piper bucked, thrusting her groin up with each blow! Bijou felt ashamed, knowing that she’d done the same in her agony, pushing her loins against the man who was torturing her to death.

The sound of Piper wailing, as David began to rape her, was intolerable. Bijou could not bear to watch, and yet she was unable to look away, looking at her friend squeeze shut her eyes, suffering this last indignity.

And then suddenly, Piper’s eyes were open, looking past David’s shoulder as he raped her, staring fixedly at Bijou in accusative despair. You’re the reason I’m here, the blonde girl’s expression seemed to say. If I wasn’t so associated with you, I would not be nailed to this plank of wood now! Bijou was once again overcome with guilt. Then Piper’s eyes closed again in her suffering, as David finished the rape.

The two men then lifted the patibulum, pulling the blonde girl her to her feet and spinning her around so that her back was to the stipes. Bijou was shocked at the extent of the damage to Piper’s body. She had seen that her friend’s chest and belly were crisscrossed with welts and lacerations, but her back was far worse, a bloody mess. Piper’s scourging, Bijou realized, must have been horrific.

The men pushed Piper back to the stipes, as Bijou watched helplessly. She saw them raise her friend, shrieking as her wounded back was dragged up over the coarse wood of the post until she hung atop it. She saw and heard Piper’s screams, arching her bloody back as David pounded nails through her feet, Carl nodding approval as he did so.

There would be no standardized titulus for Piper. Once David had identified her as his former consort, Carl recognized the young blonde as the woman who had been so often tortured alongside Bijou. It wouldn’t do for her to go to her execution with the generic inscription used for throwaways like Alina. He’d quickly had a customized placard made for this one, hurriedly carved while Alina was being put on her cross.

He grinned and displayed it to David before handing it to him to be installed:

Piper Robyn Littleton
Sodalis in angor​

Sodalis in angor: “Companion in pain”. It was an apt description, thought David, as he nailed the placard in place above Piper’s head.

At last, they finished. Bijou now hung between two other crucified women, still crying out in their pain.

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXXI: Reconciliation​

The hilltop was nearly silent now, broken only by the occasional low moan of one of the crucified women. It had taken a few hours, but both Piper and Alina had finally come to understand that their screams and their thrashing did nothing to alleviate any of their agony; it anything, it only intensified it. The three women now trembled quietly in pain on their crosses.

Bijou looked at the blonde girl on her left, and hoarsely called to her. “Piper…”

Slowly, Piper turned to look dully at Bijou, her mouth hanging languidly open from the inconceivable pain.

Painfully, Bijou, sucked in air and spoke again. “I’m… sorry,” she gaspingly apologized.

Confusion mixed with the evident pain on the blonde girl’s face. “What…” she began; “What for?”

Bijou agonizingly inched herself up. “If not for… me… you wouldn’t be here,” gasped the Korean girl, “on the… cross.” Having said her piece, Bijou fell back, hanging once again from the nails in her wrists.

Understanding dawned on Piper’s face. “Oh, no, Bijou,” she whispered, “If not… for you… they’d have done this… long ago.” She spoke haltingly. She’d only been on the cross for a little over an hour, but it was nearly as difficult for her to draw breath and speak as it was for Bijou. Piper’s scourging had been severe.

Now it was Bijou’s turn to be confused. She looked at Piper without comprehension.

Piper prepared herself once again for the ordeal of speaking from the cross. “They only let me live… to be tortured with you. You’re the only reason… I’ve been kept alive for so long. Without you… would have been crucified years ago.” She spoke softly and haltingly, and many of her words were slurred or cut off, but Bijou understood. The meaning she thought she had gleaned from the expression on Piper’s face, when the blonde had laid on the ground, staring up at Bijou as David raped her, was all in her mind. Most importantly, Bijou would not go to her death thinking her best friend hated her. It was a small gift exchanged between the dying women.

The two fell silent again. There was nothing more to say, and the cost in pain of speaking was far too high.

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXXII: Second Night​

The shadows of the three crucified women lengthened as the sun fell behind them. It would be dark soon, and Carl and David prepared. A copious amount of wood was stacked neatly around the fire pit.

“It’s going to be a chilly one, tonight, David,” said Carl. He laid the sleeping bags near the fire pit as David assembled the wood to start the evening’s fire. “We’re going to need to sleep in the bags, not just on top of them like last night.” The two sat down to enjoy their dinner as the three suffering girls looked on.

At last they finished, and Carl took the plates and utensils away. It was beginning to get dark, and David busied himself starting the fire as Carl made the rounds watering the girls, replenishing their fluids with the drug- and nutrient-laced liquid; enough to get them through the night. Carl was right, thought David. With the sun down, the temperature had dropped precipitously. He was grateful for the warm sleeping bag next to the campfire. He looked at the women, naked on their crosses. It was about to get a lot worse for them, he realized.

† † †​

None of the girls slept, of course. The pain was too intense, and as the sun slipped away, the frigid night air added the cold of the desert night to their suffering. Bijou, having been awake for more than a day, found herself slipping away for a few seconds occasionally, but the pressing need to breathe and the ever-present agony only gave a brief instant of relief. Alina and Piper had not even that tiny mercy; this was their first night on the cross, and they’d not yet earned their exhaustion, as Bijou had.

It was a cold night, but it felt freezing to the hapless women. The campfire burned brightly, taunting the crucified women with its distant warmth. Not only were they nude in the frigid night air, but, crucified, they were unable to pull their arms around themselves; even that small self-comfort was denied them. They hung on their crosses, spikes through their wrists and feet, trembling spasmodically through the night. The women’s soft whimpers reached the men as lullabies, gently putting them to sleep around the flickering fire, warmly snug in their thick sleeping bags.

At last, a crack of pink light appeared on the horizon before the girls, slowly growing into brilliant vermilion streaks as the sun rose through the steely clouds. Gradually, the sun reached out to warm them. After the frigid desert night, Bijou felt gratitude for the aprication; but she realized that the warmth, this early in the day, portended that the midday would be one of a hellishly blistering heat.

If she lived that long. She was nearing her limits, Bijou knew. This was her third calendar day on the cross; and sometime today she would cross the forty-eight hour point. Every breath was agony. The strength in her legs and arms had faded; and what little was left had nearly ebbed away during the freezing desert night. She doubted she would live to see the sunset.

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXXIII: Third Morning​

Bijou looked at the two other women crucified with her. Alina seemed strong, still. Hers had obviously been the lighter of the two girls’ scourgings, and it was clear that the relief of death was not imminent for her. But Piper was in bad shape. The beating she’d gotten before her crucifixion had taken a toll on her, and she seemed almost as in as poor a condition as Bijou herself, despite having been only recently raised on her cross. The blonde girl’s eyes were still closed; and she was barely breathing. Occasionally a soft moan escaped from her.

David and Carl had awakened and were making their rounds, attending to the crucified women. There was no need to beg for water; the men forced it on them. There was no mercy in the act; it was obvious that their tormentors were doing their best to keep the girls alive, squeezing the last drop of agony out of them. And both Bijou and the blonde were near empty, Carl noted. He walked over to confer with David.

“A word, David?” The two men walked a short distance from the crosses, out of earshot of the women. “Bijou doesn’t have much time left,” he told his friend, “Same with Piper.”

David looked up at the Korean girl. So soon? She was still beautiful, her slim body hanging from the nails. She was mostly still, and quiet; but sometimes an involuntary spasm would make the girl’s body quiver and she would cry out from the sudden surge of pain. The sight and sound still gave him a frisson of excitement. He wasn’t ready to let go of her yet, he realized.

“Isn’t there anything we can do to make her last longer?” he asked Carl.

“Yes; yes, there is. I thought you might want it to last a little longer. That’s why I had this ready.” Carl showed David the metal piece he had taken from his pocket. To David, it looked almost like a representation of a letter from some alien alphabet; something like an upper case “U” mated with an upper case “Q”. It was fashioned from a steel piece, somewhat less than an inch in diameter, curved into a horseshoe-like shape, giving it some resemblance to a “U”. The tips of the metal piece were rounded. From the base of one arm of the piece jutted a tail, made of the same steel, subtly tapering at its tip; the shape reminded David of a capital letter “Q”, with the top arc removed.



“What’s that?” David asked.

“The girls are dying because they’re not supported by anything other than the nails in their wrists and feet. You can only do that so long. Bijou’s had a remarkably good run, lasting a couple days. Piper was in a lot worse shape, though, and won’t last nearly that long. The women just can’t breathe any more, David. Hanging like that, they need to pull themselves up by their arms; or push up with their legs; or both. And they’re just out of gas now.”

Carl held up the metal piece. “That’s where this comes in,” he said. “When the ancients wanted to keep someone alive on the cross for a long time, they provided some support for the body; somewhere to sit. That took the stress off the arms and legs, and they could breathe. It was called a sedile.” Carl pronounced the word as three syllables. “This is my version.”

“How much time will it buy her?” David inquired.

“A day, at least,” answered Carl, “maybe two.”

“Do it,” said David.

Carl nodded. “Okay, come with me.” The two men walked back to the Asian girl, whimpering on her cross. Her waist was about level with their faces. Carl took the metal sedile and aligned it between her legs, the tail pointed backward toward the wooden stipes. Carefully, he fitted the device into her, one prong of the horseshoe into her rectum, the other into her pussy. Bijou groaned at the discomfort of this new indignity; the unyielding steel was extremely uncomfortable as it entered her.

But Carl wasn’t through. Having carefully guided the device into the girl, he now pressed firmly and suddenly, and the prongs disappeared deeply into the Asian woman’s orifices. Only the connecting curve, running from her vagina to her anus, and the tailpiece, which pointed toward the stipes, remained visible. Bijou’s groan of discomfort transmuted into a moan of pain. Carl aligned his arm between the suffering girl’s thighs and pressed the heel of his hand between her legs, centered on the steel that protruded from her. He gave a mighty shove, lifting the Korean woman, who began to howl in pain. Her shaking body rose about six inches, and David suddenly recognized the purpose of the vertical line of holes drilled into the stipes, as Carl selected a hole and guided the tailpiece into it. The holes were sockets, made to accommodate the shaft of the sedile; each pit was angled, to match the angle of the sedile’s tailpiece. Carl inserted the shaft firmly into the hole he had chosen and let go of the girl. The fit of the metal shaft into the socket was already snug, and the addition of the girl’s weight ensured it would not come back out.

Bijou screamed, the first real scream the men had heard in a while. Carl grinned at David. A nice collateral benefit of the sedile was that, in addition to prolonging the girl’s life, it hurt like hell. The insertion itself was painful, but the real suffering came from nearly all the girl’s weight, concentrated on that narrow and sensitive part of her body, pressing hard against the unyielding metal of the device. She could adjust the pain only by shifting her weight to the spikes through her wrists, or to the ones through her feet. But such an effort would not so much alleviate the pain as it would merely reallocate it. And when the girl was just too exhausted to support herself, otherwise unable to get that last breath, the sedile would be there to cradle her, and she would be able to breathe. And it would hurt.

Carl took another sedile from his bag, and offered it to David. “Piper?” he asked.

David considered a moment, and then declined. “Nah. I don’t really care about her. Bijou was my only concern.”

Piper wailed in despair, half-choking from her difficulty breathing. She wasn’t ready to die. She had no idea that David’s neglect of her was tantamount to mercy. With the installation of the sedile into Bijou, the Korean girl’s suffering had been increased to a new level; and it had been extended.

Carl half-smiled knowingly. If the blonde girl wasn’t dead soon, she’d wish she were. In the hours ahead, as she hung from the cross, and certainly when her lungs burned in suffocation, when the muscles in her body began to flare in the pain that that entailed, she would wish for death. Withholding the sedile was a blessing, shortening her time on the cross. Carl looked again at Bijou, twisting in agony on the invasive device, eyes pressed shut, her pretty face contorted in pain. Piper didn’t know how lucky she was.

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXXIV: Third Day​

It was mid-afternoon now. All three women were roasting in the midday heat. All of them were beginning to pink up from the unrelenting sun; Piper’s fair skin in particular.

The blonde woman’s suffering had continued. She was almost out of breath, and with all her will pushed against the spikes that held her feet to the wood, and pulled herself up with her wrists. She sucked at the air and then dropped again, screaming in agony as she fell. It was the last full breath she would take.

She wanted to die. Oh, how she wanted to die! Bijou looked at her friend with sympathy. Piper was unable to speak, but Bijou understood exactly what she was feeling; the desperate yearning for the death that refused to visit her.

It had been hours since Bijou had been impaled upon the sedile. All the women had been watered, but the liquid had had little effect on Piper. Her friend, Bijou realized, was slipping away. She looked down at Carl and David, who had drawn close to observe. They knew, obviously. Carl had seen countless girls die on the cross, and had alerted David. The men watched impassively.

The blonde girl made a gasping sound, and Bijou could see the muscles in the girl’s legs and arms stiffen and quiver as she struggled to pull herself up for another breath. But she was spent; she would not rise again. She barely breathed now, tiny ragged sips of air, far too little to keep her alive for long.

A tear trickled down Bijou’s cheek as she looked at the blonde woman. “Breathe!” she whispered soundlessly. “Breathe, Piper, please.” But Piper was almost completely still. Only the trembling of her young body showed that she was still alive and conscious.

Bijou looked to her right. Alina was in agony, but still managed to gulp air occasionally; she would not be dying anytime soon.

A wet whimper came from the blonde girl. She was suffocating now, unable to get another desperate breath. Her legs and arms twitched spasmodically. Her face contorted in a grimace of agony. Her lungs were burning, and all the muscles in her body began to flare in pain.

“She’s in acidosis,” said Carl. “Without oxygen, the cells of her body are barely keeping alive, escalating her lactic acid levels. It causes an intense burning sensation.”

“That’s just your speculation, though, right? How could you know for sure what a crucified woman feels?” asked David.

“I’ve asked,” said Carl, tonelessly. “More than once, I’ve halted a crucifixion right at this point. Slapped some oxygen on them and asked what it was like. I promise them a swift death, no additional pain if they tell me; or I can let them go back to the same if they don’t. All but one cooperated.” Carl thought of Clarise; sweet, brave Clarise. She’d told him to go to hell; and she’d suffered for it. “Their accounts were remarkably consistent. These final few minutes are among the most excruciating ones on the cross.”

David nodded. “Good.” He imagined Bijou suffering this way, and felt himself stiffening at the thought.

The blonde girl’s face had gone slack now, but her body still trembled. “Still conscious,” commented Carl. “The twitching will stop soon, and she’ll lose consciousness not long afterward. And then she’ll die.” Bijou wept openly now, looking across as her best friend quivered in her death throes. And then, gradually, Piper’s tiny spasms slowed, and then stopped. She was quiet now, having slipped from consciousness for the last time.

There was nothing more to watch now, and the men stepped away. Bijou looked at her friend, tears streaming down her face. Piper was still.

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXXV: Memories of Tracy​

David busied himself preparing the evening’s fire. Less wood than the previous night; the weather looked threatening, and he and Carl would be staying in one of the cabins tonight.

The two remaining women were quiet now, softly moaning from time to time. Bijou was the more vocal of the two, sometimes crying out from a sudden spasm of pain as she inadvertently moved on her cross. Alina was fading; without the benefit of a sedile, she too was now having trouble breathing.

David soon had the campfire blazing. He had planned on watering the girls, but now decided against it. Let them suffer through the night; he’d tend to them in the morning. The sun was just going down, but there was already a chill in the air. Carl came over and joined him, and the two sat, enjoying the warmth of the flames and the sight of the suffering women.

David pulled a long stick from the fire, contemplating the ember that glowed on its tip. He looked from the glow to the Korean girl, and then to Carl.

“I want to burn her a little,” he said.

“Go ahead,” nodded Carl, “it won’t hurt anything.” He meant it would not interfere with the crucifixions; certainly it would hurt Bijou.

Slowly David walked to the cross where the Asian woman hung. She looked at him, and the glowing stick he carried, and whimpered in fear.

“I’ll bet you didn’t think there was any way I could make this worse for you, did you, Bijou?” he asked.

Bijou’s body quivered uncontrollably in anticipation of the scorching pain she was about to feel. The motion triggered a spasm of pain where the sedile entered her anus, and she gasped before she managed to get the words out: “Please, David, no… no more…”

“Yes, Bijou,” he replied coldly. “More.” He found a relatively undamaged area on her waist, and pressed the burning piece of firewood to her skin. Unable to restrain herself, the Korean girl threw back her head and unleashed a bloodcurdling scream, unheeding of the agony that the sudden movement triggered as her body strained against the nails and the sedile. She collapsed, exhausted. David examined her and found a spot, on the lower part of one of the girl’s breasts, that had somehow remained relatively smooth and untouched through her scourging. He rotated the stick – the initial contact with her flesh had dimmed one edge, but the other side still glowed – and held it to her breast. Bijou screamed and shook again from the fiery pain.

Through the pain she recalled how David had tortured Tracy for hours with the brand, the first torture she’d ever witnessed; how he had pressed the hot metal to her over and over, expertly protracting the branding for hours. Poor Tracy, she had thought then, before she had realized that she would herself feel David’s cruelty even more deeply.

Tracy… what had happened to her? Then she knew.

“Tracy….” It was barely a sound from the Korean girl.

“Pardon me?” asked David. He was genuinely confused; he had no idea what Bijou was saying, or why.

“Tracy…” she repeated faintly. “Did you… kill her… too?”

Now he understood. “Tracy? Tracy Seldon? Wow, that’s a name from the past! No, Bijou. I have no idea whatever happened to her. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her in years, and it’s a good bet Tracy was executed, probably crucified, too, but I honestly have no idea.”

Bijou panted in her pain, and gathered her breath, preparing for a reply.

“Yes, Tracy Seldon was crucified. I crucified her.” Carl had come up behind David and joined the conversation.

Bijou made a strangled sound, trying to speak, but no words came out.

“We were done with her. It’s as simple as that.” Carl spread his hands, the gesture conveying the simplicity. They were done with her; so she was removed. He turned to David. “You would have enjoyed it, David. Those long legs of hers, I nailed them in place, fully stretched out along the stipes. She looked incredible.” He looked back at Bijou. “It was about two or three years back, if I recall. She only lasted a day, maybe two, I can’t remember,” he told her. “She could have lasted longer,” he added to David, “but with her legs almost fully extended, breathing became an issue pretty quick. I could have made it last longer with a sedile, but after a day or two, I was done with her anyway.” He looked back at Bijou. “Not everyone rates the special treatment you’ve been given, Bijou. You must have made quite an impression on David, here, for him to want to make you last so long.” He walked back to the campfire.

David stood looking at Bijou for a while longer, then returned to the fire, dropping the improvised wooden brand into it. Bijou hung limp from the exertion and softly wept for Tracy.

 

[JustJJ]

I keep wondering if David has a specific reason to single Bijou out for significant torture…

This story is excellently written!

 

[JustJJ]

Also I want to add that your sedile design is particularly cruel. It makes me shiver to think of such thin metal as a seat and insert. Deliciously malicious!

 

[fauxface]

I keep wondering if David has a specific reason to single Bijou out for significant torture…

I have my theories (and the next chapter will, I think, shed a little light on that)... But the interesting thing is, I didn't plan David out much at all. His character sort of just emerged on its own. Each time I wrote about him, it didn't feel like I was his author, I was just writing stuff down. The fun part about this for me was that I didn't intend for David to have any personality at all; he was just there do do the hurting. It was quite surprising to me to watch as he emerged.

(Bijou, who I expected to have more personality than anyone, really didn't end up with much at all.)

I said above, I have my theories. But the truth is, I think any reader's take on it is at least as valid as mine. Just because I wrote him doesn't give me any particularly better point of view; in fact, it could be worse for my bias of familiarity.

Chapter 36 (and to a lesser extent the epilogue) gives a little sense of what makes David tick. I will say, I really don't like the guy. He's not just evil (which is obvious), he's kind of an asshole. I see in him some of my own very worst qualities, things I don't like about my own personality, but taken to absurd extremes.

Maybe I'll comment more after the story finishes (only four more installments left).

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXXVI: Marie Nicole​

The men finished their supper sitting at the fire. Carl made a pretty good lamb curry, thought David. The meal done, the two of them sat sipping from bottles of crisp lager, quenching the spice of the curry. Despite the chill, with the fire it was a pleasant evening for the men. They sat quietly for a while, and then Carl cleared his throat.

“David,” he began, hesitatingly. “Okay, you can tell me to mind my own business, but can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” answered David. “What’s on your mind?”

Carl looked at him. “What the hell is it between you and Bijou?”

“What do you mean?” frowned David.

“I’ve known you a long time, David. You’ve never ordered a girl’s final disposition before. You’ve never had a girl put to death. You’ve never cared! When you’re finished with a girl you’ve always just forgotten about her and moved on. You had no clue about Tracy, for example. And Piper! You didn’t even know she was going to be here. Even your former consorts, it’s always been someone else who noticed the drop in demand and called for their removal. You’ve never bothered.”

“Well,” David frowned, “I don’t like to take a girl out of the running, just because I’m done with her. Sometimes there are a lot of other guys who still have interest.”

“Yeah, so why is this one different? And it’s not just that. I’ve seen you at executions before, but only as a spectator, one of the crowd, never involved. Not like this one.” Carl gestured at Bijou gasping in pain on the cross. “And, man, are you involved with this one!”

David remained silent.

“And the scourging, and everything that went along with it. Dressing her up real pretty, just to torture the clothes off of her. And how angry you got during the scourging itself. You were close to losing control, David.”

“Yeah,” said David, noncommittally. Then nothing more.

“You nearly killed her, you know. You wouldn’t listen to Michael when he tried to get you to save something for the cross. From what I saw, she was this close” – he held up his thumb and forefinger – “to being dead by the end of it all. You were lucky Henry could step up and salvage her.” Carl rose and put another log on the fire. The fire crackled and glowed brightly, accepting the gift of the wood.

David chose his words carefully. “My feelings for Bijou are… complicated.”

Carl sat again, and looked at him closely. “Do you love her, David?”

David snorted derisively, “‘Love her’? Hell, no. To tell you the truth Carl, I don’t think I’m capable of love. I’m certainly not the guy you should ask about it. I’m pretty sure when you love someone, the typical thing is not to chain her up and beat her almost to death with scourges, then have her crucified.” He gave a short scoffing laugh. “No, Carl, I’m not sure what to call this, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t love.”

They sat in silence a little longer. “But, yeah, there’s something there, Carl. It may not be love, but it’s something.” A long pause. “It’s like, for a while I was thinking of taking Bijou as a permanent consort. Enjoying her company, sex, all the stuff regular people do. But, come on, I’m not regular people. Neither are you.”

“You could have done that, David. No one would have criticized you,” said Carl.

“I would have!” retorted David. “See, here’s the thing, Carl. I’m evil. I know that; you know it too. So if I was going to keep Bijou, keep her safe and keep her from being hurt, not just by me, but everyone here… Well, I’d have to be a little less evil. That means I’d have to be a little bit less of who I am.” He paused and thought a bit. “And what am I supposed to do with the other women? What’s Bijou going to think if I spend a day raping and torturing someone and then come home and act all sweet with her? How fucked up is that? Am I supposed to give that up? I love that stuff. It’s who I am.”

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXXVI: Marie Nicole (cont'd)​

He was silent for a moment. A log in the fire crackled loudly, sending a sudden flurry of embers upward, then fell quiet again. David continued. “And there’s another thing. I love torturing her, I really do love it. I can’t get enough of it. Look at her!” Both of them looked at the slender Asian woman hanging on the cross, her face contorted in agony, her body limned by the setting sun. “She looks so good in pain. When it wasn’t convenient for me to do it myself, I often stopped by when one of the other guys had her on assignment, just to watch her suffer. I tried not to let her know. I couldn’t have her know the power that she held over me that way… I just don’t think I could give that up. I even thought for a while, find a new girl, built kind of like her, maybe one who even looks a little like her; then I could fantasize about hurting Bijou while I’m torturing the other girl, without really hurting Bijou at all. But that’s just fucked up, even for me.”

He paused. “So there were only two options. Keep her around pretty much forever, or get rid of her. But as long as she was around, as long as she was here, there was the risk, the danger that I’d finish falling for her and settle down with her. Be a regular guy. Not the evil guy you and I both know I am. It’s a power she had over me, Carl.”

He stopped for a moment, looking at Bijou as a particularly energetic moan of pain escaped from the girl, then went on. “The thing is, I like who I am. I like being evil. Evil is what I am. If I stop being evil, I stop being me. Part of me dies.” He looked at the girl on the cross. “It was either me or her, Carl. One of us was going to have to die, and I got to choose. I chose Bijou. She dies. Not me; not even a part of me.”

Silence. Then Carl spoke up. “Well, you were right about one thing, David.” David looked at him, waiting. “Your feelings for Bijou are complicated.”

David laughed. “I guess so. Tell me, Carl, are you familiar with Charles-Henri Sanson?”

“Of course!” responded Carl. “Chief executioner during the French Revolution. Patriarch of the Sanson dynasty of executioners. Master of the guillotine. He even put to death the king who appointed him. Pretty much all of us who put the girls to death are familiar with his work.”

David smiled. “I should have figured. Although I’d quibble about the ‘patriarch’ label. He was fourth in the line. I’d call his great-grandfather Charles the patriarch, he started the family business in the late seventeenth century. One hundred and sixty years, Carl. Six generations. My God, Carl, they had the job until 1847. The year Edison and Bell were born, the dawn of a new era of technology, and this family was still in the business of cutting off heads! But you’re right, Charles-Henri seems to get all the attention, putting his own king to death.” He paused. “Although it was his son Henri who did the lovely Marie Antoinette, after he took over the job from his father. They say she was quite beautiful. That must have been an event.”

He shook away the thought and brought himself back to the conversation at hand. “Okay, how about Marie Nicole Bouchard? Recognize that name?” he asked.

Carl shook his head. “No. Someone Sanson executed?”

“No,” responded David, “not quite. Marie Nicole was a serving girl; she worked for an actress named Marie Grandmaison. It seems that one of Mademoiselle Grandmaison’s friends, a Madame Jeanne de St. Amaranthe, had a fling with Robespierre himself. It’s in dispute what went wrong, whether she was set up by Robespierre’s political rivals, or by Robespierre himself to silence her, but in any event, she was sentenced to death at the guillotine. But not just St. Amaranthe herself. Her nineteen-year-old daughter, Emilie, too, as well as her son, and a number of her friends and their households. The daughter, Emilie, was reportedly one of the most beautiful girls in 1790s Paris; and there was some debate over who was the more attractive of the two, Emilie or her mother Jeanne.”

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXXVI: Marie Nicole (conclusion)​

David paused, imagining the event. “It must have been an incredible day. Reportedly, the mother and daughter weren’t the only beautiful women in the bunch: so were most of the girls that got pulled in with them. I still remember reading about it once. It made quite an impression on me at the time.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and recited from memory: “‘Every eye was raised towards this group of female heads, immediately to be severed from their bodies. The multitude were inebriated with this glare of beauty, which was so soon to be extinguished.’” He smiled. “Pretty heady stuff; no pun intended. Anyway, Marie Grandmaison was one of those friends of St. Amaranthe I mentioned. Marie got sucked into this, and her poor servant girl, little Marie Nicole Bouchard, got swept up along with her. A rounding error, essentially. When you’re putting so many girls to death, what’s one more girl, especially a lowly servant? Marie Nicole was only eighteen years old when she was sent to the guillotine. And Charles-Henri Sanson? Well, he was just captivated by her. ‘Only eighteen years old, and she was so thin and delicate that she did not appear more than fourteen,’ he wrote later.” David paused.

“So what happened to her?” pressed Carl.

David smiled wryly. “He couldn’t do it! This pretty girl was brought to him, and it was his job to put her to death. And he couldn’t do his job.” He paused. “He didn’t save her, of course. He just left it for his nephew to do instead. He claimed he felt ill, walked off the job and went home, and his nephew covered for him and put the girl to death. He took a fucking sick day!”

David shook his head in disgust. “Charles-Henri Sanson had a job to do that day, and he couldn’t do it. He had one task, take that pretty, petite, delicate eighteen-year-old girl, and put her to death. And he couldn’t do it!” David paused again. “I say, he became a lesser man that day, Carl. I say, he let part of himself die.”

David looked at the Korean girl writhing on the cross. “You know, if I hadn’t nominated Bijou for final disposition, if I hadn’t called for her execution, sooner or later someone else would have. She wasn’t getting any more assignments. She was no longer an asset to us. She was going to die here, sooner or later, one way or another. Not today, maybe, but probably no more than six months from now. And, okay, maybe not by crucifixion, maybe she would have been burnt at the stake, or someone would have just tortured her to death, and I’d have heard about it later, for all I know. But she was going to die, one way or the other. This way, she dies on my terms, the way I say.”

David looked at his friend. “Charles-Henri Sanson became a lesser man that day, Carl, and Marie Nicole Bouchard died anyway. What did he accomplish? Nothing!” David spat the last word. He looked at Carl. “I will not become a lesser man, Carl. I will not have part of me die, not for any woman, and certainly not for that bitch hanging there!” He pointed at Bijou, once again excruciatingly struggling to draw a breath.

Carl hesitated. “But you didn’t crucify her, David. You had me do it. Like Sanson used his nephew.”

David laughed. “Nowhere near the same, Carl! It wasn’t because I didn’t want to. To tell you the truth, Carl, I wanted to do it myself. But I’d never crucified a woman, hell, I’d never even ordered a death before, and I didn’t want this one to be my first try. It was too important to me. I know you offered, but if I’d done it myself, come on, you just know I’d have botched it. I’d have made some first-time rookie mistake, and she probably wouldn’t have made it to the first sundown. Hell, remember, after the scourging, you figured she could only last twenty minutes; I didn’t even realize that. If I had been in charge, I’d have nailed her to the cross, and a half-hour later we’d have all gone home.”

He pointed to the struggling girl. “Look at her. Three days, now, and all because of you. You’re the best we have at this, Carl. I didn’t pull a Sanson here. I didn’t ask you to do this so that I could avoid it, I chose you so that you could make the spectacle last, and I was right there with you. I didn’t take a goddamned sick-day and go home to pretend it wasn’t happening. I scourged her, I raped her – twice! – and I held her down and made her watch as you drove the nails. I was right in there. Not like Sanson.” He shook his head in disgust. “Fucking sick day! What an asshole.”

Carl laughed at David’s irreverent characterization of the legendary French executioner. The men went silent for another moment, then Carl looked at David again and turned serious. “But you are going to miss her, aren’t you?”

David hesitated for just a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, Carl. I think I’m really going to miss her.”

 

[fauxface]

By the way, the story of Charles-Henri Sanson and Marie Nicole Bouchard is historically true, so far as I can tell, although David's spin in retelling it is his own. This chapter is the reason for my qualification in the front matter: "Except for references to historical persons or events, all names, characters, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination and are fictitious.'

The quotes David recites are from 19th-century French author Alphonse de Lamartine, reprinted in the preface of the 1912 book The Red Shirts: A Tale of "The Terror" by Paul Gaulot; and from the Sanson family's own memoirs, Memoirs of the Sansons, from private notes and documents, 1688-1847, published in 1876.

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXXVII: Third Night​

The sun was gone now, and the air had begun to take on its nighttime chill as the men gathered the detritus of their supper. The fire had already burned low. The air had a thickness to it now.

“I think I felt a drop,” Carl said.

David looked up; he had felt it too. “Time to get this stuff put away.” The men quickly finished the cleanup and retreated to a cabin. There would be no sleeping outside tonight.

Rain was rare in this part of the country, but it happened occasionally, and tonight was one such occasion. At first the girls, their heads bent in fatigue and pain, took no notice of the initial soft droplets that landed on their heads. But after a moment, Bijou felt the cool liquid as it trickled through her hair and down her back. Painfully she pulled her head up, opening her mouth to catch a few drops. The crown on her head jostled against the cross, but the area where it had cut into her scalp had long ago gone scarred and numb. The thirsty Korean girl actually laughed hoarsely, rejoicing in the wetness.

“Look, Alina! Water!” The words were barely intelligible, and at first the Algerian woman just looked at her blankly; then she, too, understood. The two women arched their suffering backs, opening their mouths to accept the water that came down on them.

It was more than droplets, now. Thick globules of rain pelted down on the dark-haired women, and each gratefully received the water as it fell.

The rain intensified then, now pouring down on the girls. The sun was gone, and the desert chill rose up in earnest. Bijou could hear the sizzling of the last embers of the campfire, as the now torrential downpour extinguished what had been left of the flames.

And suddenly it was cold. The rain was no longer a mercifully invigorating drink for the parched girls. Now it struck at them, soaking them as the wind whipped frigidly at their wet nude bodies, nailed to the wood. Both girls shivered in the cold night air, assailed by the wind and the wet. Bijou could hear Alina softly moaning. The cold had become unbearable.

David looked out the window of the comfortable cabin. There was a flash in the distance, and for an instant he saw the backs of the crosses, the two bodies barely visible on them in brief silhouette. Then it was dark again.

Carl looked over David’s shoulder. “It’s going to be a bad night for them,” he observed.

For hours, the rain continued, through most of the night. Through it all, Bijou trembled from the unbearably wet and windy cold.

Mere yards away, David was in a warm bunk, dreaming of his Korean girl, suffering, wet and naked, crucified in the cold night air. Even in his sleep, a smile came to his face, and an erection to his penis. He awoke, suddenly aware of the quiet outside. The rain had stopped. He looked at the small clock on the nearby desk. It was almost five AM. The sun wouldn’t be up for another hour or two. He rolled over and went back to sleep.

Outside, Bijou hung freezing on the cross. The rain had stopped, but the cold wind continued to blow the frigid night air across her wet body, and she longed to see the pink edge of dawn on the horizon. As unbearable as the hot desert sun was by day, now she longed for it. Finally, the light began to creep over the land, in a dazzling display of red and gold that hurt her eyes.

Soon the men would be up. She wondered what new ways of tormenting her they might produce today. She was almost beyond caring. She was nearly overcome by fatigue and sleep deprivation. When had she last slept? she wondered. When Jessica had given her that sedative, the night before she was scourged. That was, what, two days ago? Five? She no longer had any idea. It seemed to her that she had been on the cross forever.

Bijou was now fading in and out of… not consciousness, exactly, but maybe awareness. It was not escape; it was the furthest thing from it. Rather, it was her agony enveloping her, to the exclusion of everything else. All she knew was pain, and although she could never drift off, sometimes she would drift away: aware of nothing but the pain, hoping to wake from the nightmare, not even knowing where she was, only to suddenly be brought back to the horrifying reality that she was slowly and excruciatingly dying, nailed to a cross.

She closed her eyes tightly, wishing desperately for a sleep that stubbornly kept its distance; as distant as death itself.

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXXVIII: Fourth Morning​

She awoke.

Well, not awoke, exactly; more accurately, Bijou became fully aware again, emerging from the formless cloud of pain to the reality of her crucifixion. The sun was fully up now, and Carl and David had obviously been up for some time. Bijou heard cries of pain and dully looked to the cross on her right. Her hair obscured most of the view, but she could see enough to observe that it was empty. Alina, the Algerian girl, was gone. She must have died, some time in the night, Bijou realized. The Korean girl looked down and saw David eyeing her critically.

The storm had made a mess of Bijou. Her once-sleek hair was a chaotic tangle, damp and matted, blown everywhere by the night’s weather. David brought a ladder to the girl’s cross and ascended. If he couldn’t see the face of the woman he was torturing to death, most of the entertainment value was lost.

Carefully, he pulled the crown of metal thorns from her head. Bijou winced, but did not cry out. The holes in the girl’s scalp were reddened pockmarks, but did not bleed. In the days since she had been crowned, the areas around the tiny punctures had transformed to scar tissue. David set the crown on one corner of the stipes and began brushing the Asian woman’s unkempt tresses. The girl yelped as the brush snagged the unruly mop, and after a few moments, David ceased the effort. It was still a mess, but at least you could see her face now.

He reached for the crown of thorns, to push it back into the wretched girl’s scalp. Why bother? He thought, and instead tossed it to the ground. He descended the ladder, only to see Carl watching him with skepticism.

“This is the endgame, David,” said Carl. “Not much point in trying to pretty her up now.”

David nodded, a bit embarrassed. He wondered how much time he had left with the girl.

Bijou looked to her left and saw for the first time the source of the painful sounds. Another woman had been nailed to the cross there, the one that had previously held Piper. A girl from India, mid-twenties, Bijou couldn’t remember her name… Rakhi, that was it; her name was Rakhi. Bijou didn’t know her well. She must have gone up sometime that morning.

The Indian woman was slender and brown, with dark hair. The men had nailed her feet high on the stipes, so that her buttocks rested on her heels. My god, realized Bijou, they were using the woman’s feet as her sedile; her own body was being pressed into service to protract her dying torment.

Once, Bijou would have been astonished by such cruelty; no longer.

She sagged again, Rakhi’s cries of pain receding into the background, no more a source of interest to her than the screes of the birds that circled overhead.

 

[fauxface]

Chapter XXXIX: Bijou's Release​

It was mid-afternoon. The Indian woman had, for the most part, stopped her screaming, and had settled into the long stretch of quiet suffering, just as the other girls had. Neither Bijou nor Rakhi had yet been watered since the sun had risen, and David was now addressing that. Bijou had gone nearly a day without water, her only relief being what she had managed to obtain from the previous night’s rainstorm.

Rakhi first. David took the water and put it to the Indian woman’s lips. She drank greedily, almost appreciatively.

Then David moved to Bijou’s cross. He was about to give her the precious fluid when he heard Carl call to him.

“Stop, David. Don’t give her any more.”

David looked from the Korean girl to Carl, and then back. He’d expected to see Bijou wince in despair from Carl’s instructions, but there was no reaction.

Carl walked up to him, and gently took the water from him. “It’s time to let her go, David. There’s no point to it any more.”

David began to protest, but Carl cut him off. “She’s practically dead already, David. She’s not going to last much longer in any event; it doesn’t matter what you do. By sundown tonight, she’ll be gone, no matter what.”

“There’s nothing you can do?” asked David.

“Nothing practical,” responded Carl. “But look, David. Look at her! What is it you’re trying to keep alive here?”

David looked at the woman hanging on the cross and suddenly saw that Carl was right. There was little left of the beautiful Asian girl who had enthralled him for so long. The crucified woman’s body, once alluringly slim and slender, was now unappealingly gaunt; her ribs stood out in stark relief, her hip bones sharp and angular. Her once-porcelain skin was burnt red from days of exposure to the unforgiving sun, the soft lips he had kissed only days before were now cracked and broken. Her cheeks were sunken, the skin of her face drawn taut in a rictus of unrelenting pain. Her hands, once so delicate, were now contorted into talons. Even the thin network of lacerations on her legs and torso had transformed, from a vibrant red lattice to dull brown scabrous lines. She could no longer speak, or even whimper, and what sounds she occasionally made came out as harsh rasps, rather than the melodious voice David recalled.

The woman who had enraptured David for so long had gradually ebbed away, leaving only the wretched husk that remained on the cross.

“How long?” he asked Carl, not taking his eyes from the girl.

“An hour, maybe two,” answered Carl, “assuming you leave her be. No water; no nourishment.”

David nodded.

“I’ll stay with you, if you like,” Carl offered.

David cleared the tightness in his throat. “Thanks. But, no, if it’s okay, I’d like to be alone with her.”

“Sure,” Carl said quietly. He went to busy himself elsewhere.

David sat and waited. The Korean girl looked almost peaceful now, eyes closed, hanging limply, her body giving only an occasional twitch or spasm. David thought about what Carl had told him when Piper had been nearing death; that this deceptively placid appearance masked an excruciating agony. He hoped Carl was right; even now, he wanted the girl to hurt.

As it turned out, Carl’s estimate had been optimistic: only forty-five minutes later, Bijou was still, her crucifixion completed. The woman who had enchanted him for so long was gone. David looked at his watch to note the time of death. Startled, he noticed the date for the first time. It was seven years, exactly, from the day Bijou had been captured and brought to Malhaven.