fauxface
Assistant executioner
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.”