Saturday, April 28, 2018–Day 118: Katia had been the wife of chieftain of their small village–respected, well-fed and pampered. That all ended when their village had been raided and sacked. Her husband was killed trying, in vain, to defend the villages. She’d watched as the raiders ransacked and burned the village to the ground. Most of the men were quickly slaughtered. The women were a different story. They were all stripped and brutally gang-raped. Then they were all bound in a coffel and were paraded off to begin a new life of degradation and slavery. The young, pretty girls, like her two lovely daughters, were sold to a brothel owner. They’d spend their remaining days on their backs with their legs splayed as man after man used them freely. The older women were all sold off as well, but they faced a far more brutal treatment. Some ended up working all day long in the fields beneath a ruthless, blazing sun. Katia’s fate was even worse. She’d been sold to the owners of one of the galley ships. Her long and lovely black hair had been hacked off and for the next months she spent her long exhausting days trying to pull the heavy oar or being brutally whipped if she couldn’t keep up. They forced her to eat to keep her strength up–each day, a vile, maggot-infested slop was injected down her gullet. Still, despite the brutal treatment she experienced, she proved to be totally worthless as a galley slave. The easiest thing to do would have been to just throw her overboard and watch her drown or see the sharks have their fun with her, but they decided to make an example of her for the other slaves. They brought her to a tiny remote island, and as the other female slaves watched, beneath repeated blows of the whip, they marched her inland where, after raping her one last time, they nailed her to a rough wooden cross and then left her, utterly alone to face a slow and lingering with only the seagulls to keep her company. How the mighty have fallen!
Entitled "Katia’s Fate".
Now THAT is a back story. Well done!