The Seventeen Moments of He and She
Moment Eleven - Raised
Now that she was permanently nailed the men got up from the ground and took stock of the situation. Her incoherent screams gradually began to decline, and she began to speak, though she was out of breath and hyperventilating. “God... oh God... I... am... nailed... God... oh God, oh God... I am nailed... I am nailed to a cross... please... please help me... deliver me from this agony… this suffering… God... the pain... the pain... it hurts so...”
Meanwhile, the three men collectively gathered their thoughts, trying to come to grips with what they had just done. “Holy shit, that was fucking INTENSE...” said one, shaking his head in disbelief at what he had just taken part in. “Ummm...hey, boss: you ok?” asked the other guard. “That was some fucked up shit you did... What the fuck… Why…? I didn’t think you had it in you. Damn boss… damn…”
He barely acknowledged his friends, instead he was staring at the cross, intently watching her writhe in pain, her now-faint pleas for mercy barely registering in his mind. Turning to his friends he said “That was nothing... It’s about to get even more fucked up... way, way, way more fucked up.... Come on, let’s get her up in the air.”
She throbbed with pain in every fiber of every muscle throughout her body, just as long as she lay still. When she moved, with even the slightest of motions, fresh bolts of electricity-like pain shot from all the places she was pierced. In stillness she would moan and pray, in motion she would howl and shriek: the motion was about to get much, much worse.
The three men approached the cross from below her feet. As soon as she saw them loom above her, she realized what was about to happen. Frantically, she begged them not to continue, that she had suffered enough, that she didn’t want to die, crucified. He knew this was coming and ignored her pleas, convincing as they were. He was still in charge of her body; he would decide if she had suffered enough. She had rejected his offer of mercy before the nails went in, he was rejecting her request for mercy now. His friends followed his lead.
He barked orders over her desperate pleas, shouting: “Ok, remember how we rehearsed this: I have the head, you have the right beam, and you have the left. I will initiate the lift, but you guys need to be ready, she’s gonna squirm as we lift her up so be prepared for the weight to shift. Once you have her at your shoulder height, I’ll start walking up the stipes and get her lined up with the hole. It should be easy enough from there to get her up high, then I’ll push the bottom and she’ll fall right into the hole. You guys will hold the cross steady in the hole while I tap in the wedges to firm everything up. We good? Let’s go.”
They quickly got in position, she prayed with an intensity and desperation that was gut wrenching, if one was listening... She kept repeating over and over “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name... Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name... Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name... Our Fath.... AHHHHHHHHHH......!!!! NOOOOOO...!!!!!! NO, PLEASE... NO....!!!!! NO MORE... IT HURTS!!! IT HURTS!!!!! I CAN’T TAKE THE PAIN...... PLEASE, PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!!! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!”
He had squatted down, locked his fingers beneath the beam, lifted with his legs, and began her journey upwards. Her prayer, interrupted by his lifting, rapidly progressed from pleading to agonizing screams of terror as gravity gradually forced the weight of her body off the wood and onto the nails. She thrashed about less than he anticipated, likely due to her desire to limit her movement and mitigate the pain. As they positioned the beam over the hole her terror had reached fever-pitch, she tried to brace herself for the descent into the hole, and her descent into the brutal hell of crucifixion she would suffer the rest of her life. There was nothing that could have prepared her for what was about to come.
He barked his final command over her ear-shattering screams: “One more push and she’s in. Hold on tight as she’s gonna’ bounce and buck like a demon once this thing bottoms out! Here goes: one, two, threeee!!!” He pushed the cross, and her, over the edge. For a brief moment she felt weightless, relieved from the pressure on her pierced wrists and feet. A very brief moment, it was: once the cross struck the bottom of the whole her inertia kept her moving down, but only as far as the nails would allow... They didn’t allow much.
As the nails ended her descent she felt as if her body exploded into a thousand pieces. Someone was screaming the most intense, inhuman screams beyond imagination. Was it her? Was it him? One of the guards? She felt as if her body was engulfed in flames, as she bounced around all over the place... what took seconds felt more like hours, her eyes rolled back in their sockets as she blacked out. A stream of urine gushed out of her vagina as she momentarily lost control of her bodily functions. The pain literally short-circuited her brain. She hung there, legs open, head bowed, crucified, serving her punishment to God for her sin.
They used her stillness as the opportunity to stabilize her cross. His earlier measurements for the wedges proved to be accurate: she was firmly in place, there was not going to be any instability in this crucifixion. He had also planned for the eventual taking down of the cross once she was buried: each wedge had a rope running through it secured to the bottom. All he had to do was yank on the rope and the wedge would be extracted from the below.
Her crucifixion was now complete. Though he still owned her body the cross began staking its own claim of her… patiently, inexorably, one agonizing moment at a time.
