The early dawn light begins to chase the darkness away. As night begins to fade Eulalia still suffers the torture of the cross.
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Fog fills in around her as she hangs from the wood. There is only a pair of soldiers guarding her not that anyone would risk the wrath of Lord Quercus to rescue the condemned slave!
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I am freezing in addition to the pain of hanging from the cross. I am completely hungry and my throat is parched dry. Why am I still alive?
I hang alone waiting to die. There are only occasional people passing by with few stopping to gawk at me hang naked nailed to the cross. They chat about me as though I cannot hear them. My throat is too dry to even reply to what they say about me.
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I reek of sweat and my own excrement that coats my bum, legs, and feet. I am ready to die but my body will not give up. It is near noon when Lord Quercus, his wife Kathleen, and Lady Messaline arrive in carriage along with the concubine Barbara. Barbara is considerably less clothed wearing only a rope that binds her wrists behind her bare body. Besides her nudity however Barbara is in better shape than I am.
Again they stand below me they discuss both my condition and a proposal for Barbara.
-Eulalia
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“Damn the wench looks like hell” Kathleen notes. “She has shit all over herself!”
“What else could she do? You don’t get privacy breaks to relieve yourself when you are condemned to die on the cross” Lord Quercus says. “She is just fading away.”
“Well, Barbara, what do you think? Can you make it a day crucified” Lady Messaline asks.
Barbara fidgets as she contemplates the dare. As a slave of Quercus he could order her to be crucified but the trio’s goal is to have Barbara agree to submit to being crucified for a day.
Barbara demurs saying “I have done nothing to deserve being crucified. She looks like crap. If you demand I am crucified of course I will be. I don’t want to be crucified and not before a horde of your subjects.”
“But Barbara think how beautiful you will look hanging naked on a cross! Don’t you want to experience that alone with the beautiful pain you will experience” Messaline
Barbara is less than convinced that she will enjoy the experience but she also has little doubt that Lord Quercus will find a way to damn her to the cross until she is dead. Perhaps suffering a day hanging nailed naked to cross would be better than hanging naked waiting more than a day to die.
They walk away. What Barbara decides to do I will never know. I don’t think I will live to see the sun set. I hope I don’t!
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-Eulalia