• Sign up or login, and you'll have full access to opportunities of forum.

Carfulena Delia

Go to CruxDreams.com
After crying out Delia gritted her teeth and stayed silent while the legionaries were dragging her backwards by her wrists and the spectators cheered. Twisting to the side, Delia tried to keep the worst of her wounds away from sparse coarse grass. In a a couple of heartbeats she felt the familiar timber under her shoulders, Saturninus and Castus forcing her wrists against the wood, Silo standing astride her legs, towering over her...

She reflexively brought her right leg up and kicked the chief torturer in the balls with all her remaining strength.

Perhaps Silo had grown over-confident – or judged her already broken and incapable of any resistance. Perhaps Silo was growing too old for this. In any case, the questionarius emitted a growl-groan and half-fell, half-sat across Delia’s thighs to the jeers of the public.

Their stares met, full of loathing. Delia knew that the old man would make her pay in full for her act of defiance. His fist crashed into her solar plexus, knocking the breath out of her, making her body jolt under him.

Gasping for breath, the girl saw the movement to her right. Looking away from Silo’s wine-red face, she saw Felix holding a heavy mallet and spikes.
 
Marcius said:
After crying out Delia gritted her teeth and stayed silent while the legionaries were dragging her backwards by her wrists and the spectators cheered. Twisting to the side, Delia tried to keep the worst of her wounds away from sparse coarse grass. In a a couple of heartbeats she felt the familiar timber under her shoulders, Saturninus and Castus forcing her wrists against the wood, Silo standing astride her legs, towering over her...

She reflexively brought her right leg up and kicked the chief torturer in the balls with all her remaining strength.

Perhaps Silo had grown over-confident – or judged her already broken and incapable of any resistance. Perhaps Silo was growing too old for this. In any case, the questionarius emitted a growl-groan and half-fell, half-sat across Delia’s thighs to the jeers of the public.

Their stares met, full of loathing. Delia knew that the old man would make her pay in full for her act of defiance. His fist crashed into her solar plexus, knocking the breath out of her, making her body jolt under him.

Gasping for breath, the girl saw the movement to her right. Looking away from Silo’s wine-red face, she saw Felix holding a heavy mallet and spikes.
Click to expand...
Rash, maybe, but a nice move!
 
Marcius said:
very much a guts-over-fear (and common sense) person.
Click to expand...
common sense otherwise gives good guidance, but has to fail in the face of the cross. There's just not really any common-sense reaction to "I'm getting crucified!". Wild gut reactions, going mad, hysterical, just splitting apart, are all perfectly appropriate ways of not coping with the cross. (ways of coping do not really come to mind...)
 
malins said:
common sense otherwise gives good guidance, but has to fail in the face of the cross. There's just not really any common-sense reaction to "I'm getting crucified!". Wild gut reactions, going mad, hysterical, just splitting apart, are all perfectly appropriate ways of not coping with the cross. (ways of coping do not really come to mind...)
Click to expand...
Quite so, I've tried to convey that she wasn't thinking at all. The common sense bit referred more to her backstory, like talking back to the Prefect of the City while on trial; and, well, the whole prison break-out affair was a long shot even without Crispus recognizing her. I've had in mind describing some of her Roman exploits, but in the end decided on using them in another story (or stories).
 
Her angry stare next found Crispus, standing next to some senator, the men standing out due to their striped tunics – a narrow stripe for Crispus, a wider one for the man from the amplissimus ordo.

‘Why don’t you nail me yourselves, mentulae?’ Delia shouted, raising her voice over the murmur of the spectators. Crispus smiled coldly and motioned to the men to begin.

With Castus stepping back, Silo squeezed her left forearm tight, keeping her wrist properly positioned on the cross-beam while Saturninus held down the other arm. Felix knelt next to her head and pressed the sharp point of the long, tapering iron spike against her wrist, his left hand steady.

Cold iron nicked her skin, drawing a drop of blood. Delia’s hands balled into fists. Her rib-cage rose and fell rapidly, her breasts trembling with the motion. The girl could not look away while Felix slowly raised the mallet over his shoulder, paused for what seemed like an eternity to her and then brought it down hard and straight, driving the nail through her skin and muscles into the wood.

Delia’s torso arched off the ground, and her breath ripped out of her lungs along with a roar which faded into a terrible wail. The pain was piercing and burning and throbbing, as if her very blood was aflame and turning to ash inside the veins of her arm. Black spots danced before her eyes. She saw her blood flecking the wood, mixing with the stains left by those who had suffered before.

Felix drove the spike deeper, iron grating at her bones, until the nail-head was almost flush with her skin. Delia screamed aloud at each blow, her mouth open, the muscles of her face frozen in a twisted rictus of pain and despair, her heels drumming at the ground.

Felix got up. Silo let go of her arm, now nailed securely to the patibulum. The girl was groaning in pain through clenched teeth, her eyes tightly shut.

‘You bitch,’ he growled at Delia, forcing his four fingers hard into her cunnus. Her eyes flew open in shock and disgust at this unexpected violation. Felix moved to nail her right arm while Silo rasped his strong fingers back and forth inside her, the onlookers shouting in appreciation.

‘Just stretching you a little for the cornu, whore,’ he murmured, thumbing her landica with cruel precision. ‘You’ll be thankful yet!’

Delia twisted her head away and closed her eyes, not opening them even when they were nailing her other arm to the patibulum.

But she screamed.

Silo looked at the trembling, sweat-slicked body in front of him, then pulled his fingers out of her and got up, carefully keeping himself away from her legs. Pinned to the cross-beam, Delia was swimming in the sea of pain, its waves breaking over her one after another. The people watched her twisting on the ground, her legs kicking at nothing, her feet raising small clouds of dust.

‘Up!’ ordered Crispus.
 
Delia howled in pain when Saturninus and Castus started raising her patibulum, pulling her nailed arms together with it, their movements multiplying the pain streaming down from her wrists into the very core of her being. Her head thrown back, her legs flexing, the girl frantically tried to get on her feet. Heedless of her efforts, the soldiers hauled her towards the stipes, making her feet slip and eliciting more terrible screams from her.

The cross-beam thunked against the upright post and stayed in place for a heartbeat. Delia got on her scraped knees, her legs splayed wide to the delight of the excited public. The soldiers started sliding the patibulum up the stipes.

It was a short, rounded post, made out of sturdy oak. In life, that tree did no one any harm greater than smacking a pig dozing under it with a heavy acorn. In death, bloodied and holed, it served as the cruellest instrument of Roman justice.

Delia was lifted to her feet. The men kept raising the cross-beam, drawing her inexorably upwards, making her cry out in anguish. Her raw back scraping against the wood, she felt first one foot, then the other lifted clear off the ground and screamed wildly, fresh terrible pain lancing down her outstretched arms, her feet now kicking fruitlessly against the post.

Saturninus and Castus, now standing on their toes, slipped the mortise of the cross-beam over the tenon of the upright post, nodded to one another and let the patibulum fall in place with a thud to the cheers of the spectators. Delia’s body fell along with it, her descent arrested with a wrenching jerk by the spikes in her wrists. White-hot pain exploded in her head as she tilted her contorted face to the sky and bellowed in agony.
 
‘Serves her right,’ said Rectus, motioning to the slave for more wine.

Crispus didn’t respond, drinking in the sight of the suffering girl, her flesh, claimed by him yesterday, now given up to death. Her glistening body hung at full stretch, crimson blood streaking towards her armpits, awful strain visible through her arms and chest where her firm muscles were drawn taut. Tears rolled freely down her cheeks. Her toes fanned out in a desperate attempt to reach the ground, then she tried to wrap her legs round the post to relieve her pierced wrists at least a little, not caring that in doing that she put her cunnus on shameless display, but it was of no help.

Silo approached the cross and showed Delia the cornu. The crowd oohed at the sight of the rough-hewn wood, soon to penetrate her in an act of State-sanctioned rape. Even though tears blurred her vision, Delia let out a hoarse scream and shook violently on the cross, the pools of blood round the spikes in her wrists growing wider. Saturninus and Castus took hold of her legs and arse and pulled her body away from the cross, leaving enough space for Felix to fit the cornu into its slot the cross and to secure it with a wedge. Delia felt the splintery wood with her buttocks when they let her swing back towards the post.

The next thing Delia felt was the men pulling her long, shapely legs up beneath her and placing the soles of her feet flat against the upright. The soldiers worked quickly, and soon her feet were tightly bound to the post, its rounded shape making her thighs splay obscenely and showing the sweaty clump of black hair between her thighs and the red, swollen flesh of her abused cunnus off to perfection.

Still, it was the long-awaited support for her legs, and Delia pulled at her wrists, her body slowly rising as she felt the terrible horn trail down the cleft of her buttocks. Once she cleared the cornu she pressed her back and arse against the post and raised herself, sucking in lungfuls of air, groaning from the strain in her trembling thighs. She could not lock her knees, and the barely bearable tension in her leg muscles was a new torture for her.

Delia looked down. They were about to nail her feet.

‘Noli! Noli!’ she moaned, leaning forwards, straining her arms. Without even looking up, Felix placed the nail against the instep of her right foot and delivered a mallet blow hard enough for the spike to break a bone in her foot and to bite into the timber. Blood spurted from the new wound as Delia keened in excruciating pain. Felix hammered the spike down, each blow reverberating through the wood of the cross, and then moved to the other foot. Her sweat- and blood-slicked arse now sliding against the wood, Delia pushed herself away from the post to avoid the horn and hung from the cross on her wrists and twisted legs, her screams loud and long, while Felix drove the final nail in and removed the ropes tying her legs to the post, then nailed her titulus above her head.

DELIA SERVA POENAE FVGITIVA was crucified.
 
VI

Maxima Mala Crux

The sun floated in the clear July skies over the Roman world, to warm and to nourish it.

The master of the world was up with the grey dawn, as was his wont. There were petitions to be answered, letters to be written, appointments to be made, and the Senate sitting to attend.

The men and women condemned to death in his name, or in the name of the Senate and people, or those to be summarily executed by the magistrates doing the bidding of the masters or having sat in court over errant slaves, had much less to do. As a matter of fact, one thing only.

They had to die.

People on the crosses. Mere specks of dust in the sunbeams.

Most of them were men; however, the screams of four women rent the blue skies along with theirs.

A Jewish slave-girl from Emesa who had killed a Syrian trying to rape her, thus triggering an inter-communal riot, was crucified alongside eight rioters, four Syrians and four Jews, by order of the legate of III Gallica.

A thrice-runaway slave was raised on the cross in the mind-melting heat of Egyptian Oxyrhynchus.

The Eternal City spared its women for the nonce, but Italy took its toll: a tavern-owning freedwoman convicted of poisoning was nailed to the cross in Mediolanum.

Delia was the last woman to suffer crucifixion on that day.

Their lives were about to be wrung out of them by the heat of the sun in the hours and days to come.

As for the Emperor, he would die on another hot July day.
 
That's an impressive movement of the camera, if it was a movie ... zooming out all the way from the 'titulus above her head' to the whole Roman world and the fate of the entirely mortal Emperor...
'specks of dust in the sunbeams' gives an almost cosmic connotation...

the aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there --
everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives --
on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

And some of them were crucified...
 
Wragg134 said:
Marcius.

Absolutely genius writing. I salute you, sir!

:clapping::clapping::clapping::clapping:
Click to expand...
Your Lordship is too kind! :)

malins said:
That's an impressive movement of the camera, if it was a movie ... zooming out all the way from the 'titulus above her head' to the whole Roman world and the fate of the entirely mortal Emperor...
'specks of dust in the sunbeams' gives an almost cosmic connotation...

the aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there --
everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives --
on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

And some of them were crucified...
Click to expand...

Had to Google the quotation -- I haven't read Pale Blue Dot and came up with the mental image while watching the actual specks of dust. :) Then again, I love flying as a passenger, especially when the plane is in descent and I can discern individual trees, cars, and people.
 
All things have been said in praise of this story, and quite eloquently. Beautifully intense. I feel the fear in her defiance, the despair in her defeat. Extremely well done. :clapping::clapping:
 
Marcius said:
VI

Maxima Mala Crux

The sun floated in the clear July skies over the Roman world, to warm and to nourish it.

The master of the world was up with the grey dawn, as was his wont. There were petitions to be answered, letters to be written, appointments to be made, and the Senate sitting to attend.

The men and women condemned to death in his name, or in the name of the Senate and people, or those to be summarily executed by the magistrates doing the bidding of the masters or having sat in court over errant slaves, had much less to do. As a matter of fact, one thing only.

They had to die.

People on the crosses. Mere specks of dust in the sunbeams.

Most of them were men; however, the screams of four women rent the blue skies along with theirs.

A Jewish slave-girl from Emesa who had killed a Syrian trying to rape her, thus triggering an inter-communal riot, was crucified alongside eight rioters, four Syrians and four Jews, by order of the legate of III Gallica.

A thrice-runaway slave was raised on the cross in the mind-melting heat of Egyptian Oxyrhynchus.

The Eternal City spared its women for the nonce, but Italy took its toll: a tavern-owning freedwoman convicted of poisoning was nailed to the cross in Mediolanum.

Delia was the last woman to suffer crucifixion on that day.

Their lives were about to be wrung out of them by the heat of the sun in the hours and days to come.

As for the Emperor, he would die on another hot July day.
Click to expand...
Sorry for my question. Is that "The End"?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom