****** Claire's Dream Comes True by VO ******
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Claire's Dream Comes True


She cut a terribly slight figure as she was marched down the road away from the
Voss. There were three escorts in front of her, three behind, and one on either
side - ready to hold her up and hustle her along if her legs failed.

When the small party stopped Claire at first didn't know quite why. She was
looking, without realising it, for a silhouette against the morning sky, and
could see none. How strange for her of all people - or her subconscious rather
- to have forgotten for a moment how a crucifixion starts. She hadn't needed
the years of study that had gone into this extraordinary project to tell her
that nailing even a co-operative human body to an erect cross would be a really
difficult business. She knew perfectly well that wherever that particular death
is institutionalised the actual fixing takes pace with the instrument of
torture laid out horizontally. When Claire looked not up against the sky but
down to the ground, she saw she had no further to go.

It was bigger than she had expected. A really hefty beam crossing an even
heavier one, which looked about twice as long as it needed to be.

The corporal was handing over his charge to the captain.

"Prisoner for execution, Sa. Voss Inmate Number 297, Frost, Sa."

And a smart salute.

"Thank you Corporal. Do you have the toolbox?"

"Sa. Bring the box, Robinson."

One of the escorts brought up the steel box and deposited it in front of the
officer, then stood back and saluted. "Sa."

"Open it up, man", the Captain ordered. Robinson bent and unbolted the lid,
lifting it back on its hinge.

"Let's see now Corporal, what's the drill? You done this before?"

"No, Sir, sorry sir. First time, I'm afraid."

"Um. Well. Common-sense approach then. First thing to do is fix her to the
whatsit. I suppose we've got all the gear here." The Captain bent to the box,
going through the various items it held.

The 4 lb. hammer and the box of nails, some 6 inches and some a full foot, the
Captain had no difficulty with. But there was also a six inch square of wood.
"What's this Corporal, any idea?" He held it up.

"No idea, sir. Shall I ask the men?"

"Yes, do that, Corporal."

The Corporal addressed his squad, standing to attention with Claire in the
midst, hands still handcuffed behind her back, her shorn head averted,
motionless.

"Listen up, you men. Anyone who has been on an execution detail afore, Step
Forward!'.

Two enlisted men responded.

"Fall out you two and step up here!"

One of them turned out to have served only on a firing squad, so he was
returned to the ranks. But the other reckoned he knew. He explained how the
block acted as a kind of a ledge for the victim to half-sit on as she hung. (As
the manual the Captain had failed to study made clear, without that little bit
of support a victim wasn't able to breathe and could die within half an hour or
so. Such a perfunctory exit was not what the court had intended for Claire -
rather it had in its wisdom deemed crucifixion appropriate because of the
prolonged torture it imposed prior to death - its uncompromising promise of at
least twelve hours of the most serious grade of punishment.

"You have to stretch her out as she's going to be, to see where her arse
comes," the voice of experience explained, "sort of offer her up, like, then
move her off while you nail the block where it needs to be. Then you stretch
her out again and fix her down proper."

"Um. Ok.," said the Captain. Then raising his voice for the girl to hear: "Just
a few preparations to make, Frost. We need you to get in position for a moment
so we can take some measurements. This bit won't hurt. You can get up again and
have a final word with the chaplain if you wish. So nothing to worry about at
this stage. You men, just stretch her out in position, will you?"

The Captain's dentist's chair-side manner was peculiar in the extreme.

Jones and Robinson, one on either side, brought her forward.

"Just straddle the wood, and sit down here," said Jones, indicating what was
required.

Turning her back to the cross-piece, the girl put her two feet on either side
of the wood and sat down.

"She'll need her cuffs off, Sir," said Jones.

Who had got the key? It wasn't immediately clear. It was Claire herself who
came to the rescue. "Round my neck" she whispered, overcoming her Voss-
ingrained inhibition of speaking unless specifically addressed. This was the
way at the Voss - it meant prisoners under constraint could be transferred from
task to task within the Centre with a minimum of fuss.

Jones apologised as he pulled on the chain round her neck and unscrewed the
link. He undid her shackles.

"Now lay back."

She did as she was told, feeling for the first time the rough wood , her
intimate on the difficult journey ahead, against her back and head.

"And now your arms, Miss." Jones had picked up the Captain's warm and
reassuring tone. "Just lay them along the beam for us, will you?"

Claire had expected to have the guards manhandle her into position, but these
ordinary drafted soldiers were clearly different from the psychopaths who had
been selected to staff the Voss, and they were clearly greatly embarrassed by
what they had to do. For the first time since her arrest, in spite of the
circumstances, she was being spoken to like a human being.

She held out her arms, and moved them until they encountered the cross piece.

"That about right, d'y think, Private?" asked the Captain.

"No Sir. Needs to be lower Sir. A foot I'd say." Then, directly to Claire:
"just work you bottom down a bit, would you?" Jones, the only one who appeared
to know anything about the task they had been allotted, was warming to a
commanding role.

The Captain didn't interfere. He was just grateful there was somebody available
who knew how to do these things.

As for Claire, she wriggled down as instructed. Her mac rucked, in a way that
would have earned her six strokes in the Voss. But all that had come to an end
with the passing of sentence and the early morning walk that had just itself
come to an end.

"About here then, Sir, I'd say." Jones put his hand on the upright, just at the
top of Claire's thighs. "Sorry about this, Miss," he said to her at the
immodest contact involved.

"See to it then, Private," the Captain ordered.

Jones, become the executioner now, and rising to his responsibilities,
explained to his charge that she could get up again and have words with the
chaplain if she wished.

Claire had no need of a chaplain. But she got up and stood aside as she had
been asked. For the first time she saw the simple instruments they would use to
carry out her sentence - the heavy, bull-nose hammer and a trayful of nails,
some very large but otherwise very ordinary-looking.

As the first blow struck, hammer against steel, fixing the block in place,
without meaning to, she clasped her left wrist in her hand. Her body knew, what
her mind seemed blissfully untroubled by, that in a few moments there would be
a similar blow, driving a similar nail: into wood again, but only after it had
traversed the gristle at the distal extremity of her arm, between ulna and
humerus where these two structures twisted almost round each other and
articulated with the lesser bones of the hand.

It took a couple of minutes only to make the block secure.

"That's it, then, Sir. Firm as a rock."

The Captain bent and tested the fixture. "Good." He stood up. "Excellent. Right
then. We're ready to go I think - is that right, Corporal?"

"Sa'.

"Now then, young woman," he addressed Claire, "sorry about this, but it has to
be done. You have any last requests?"

"No Sir, thank you Sir," she said, head down, eyes fixed on where the rubber
caps of her gymshoes would have been, following the formula her months in the
Voss had made second nature.

"Right then. Good. Well then. Better get on with it I suppose." The Captain
wasn't really enjoying his job today. "Now then Corporal, your show, I think?
Girl has to strip I suppose?"

"Dunno, Sir. Robinson!"

Robinson thought she didn't have to strip. He knew that the white cotton mac
was part of the Voss discipline, and he couldn't imagine them allowing a girl
not to wear it whatever the circumstances.

"Well, I don't know," said the Captain. "It was the Voss people who took off
her boots, wasn't it? You sure they won't want her mac off as well? Corporal?"
the Captain worried. "Brass'll be along shortly to check the op out. We need to
get it right."

"Manual in the box, Sa," said the Corporal.

"Good one, Corporal. Good thinking there! The very thing."

But what the manual said was that prisoners had to be stripped for crucifixion
- unless the local institution had a different practice.

"Well, what the bloody hell to do?" said the Captain, rather loudly, getting
worked up rather.

Again his prisoner solved the problem. "We have to strip", she said quietly.
"Permission to speak, Sir," she added hurriedly.

"Yes, of course. You know the drill?" the Captain asked, anxiously.

"I've watched, Sir. They make you watch the one before yours. They took her
boots for the march here, like they did me, and then she had to strip before
being nailed out."

"Oh. Good. Um... Well. Thanks." Poor Captain. "Righto, then. Your show I think
Corporal," he said again.

"Sa. Robinson!"

It was going to be down to Robinson. He was bottom of the line.

"Position the prisoner and affix" said the Corporal, with some resourcefulness
of language.

"Yes, Corporal," said Robinson.

"Permission to speak? Sir," asked Claire, Voss-fashion again.

"Yes?"

"Shall I take this off, then, Sir?" asked Claire, to Robinson, quietly, in her
matter-of-fact way, putting her hands on her belt. "Only it'll need unlocking."


The intimate indignities inflicted by the Voss mac were not obvious to anyone
who hadn't worn one. The bare truth was this: a web of heavy rubber straps sewn
into the inside gave the authorities control over the prisoner's basic
functions. A crotch strap held plugs for both openings between the legs, and a
harness pulling the wearer's breasts into a permanent straining pout carried
clamps for the nipples. Plugged and strapped up like this, girls always had to
seek permission to use the lavatory, and as a matter of routine had to bend
over and touch their toes to have themselves unlocked - and locked again when
they had finished.

Robinson didn't know, and once again the victim herself had to explain. He got
the key - the one for her handcuffs doubled for her mac - and she turned her
back to him opened her legs and bent over, touching her toes. There was just
the one lock keeping the whole web in place. "That's it," he said, unlocking
her.

She followed the Voss protocol. "Permission to my remove my anal discipline,
please sir?" she asked, still bent double.

"Yes, whatever," said Robinson, embarrassed and amazed.

With one hand she reached back between her legs and pulled the strap out of the
crack between her buttocks; then stretched for her toes with both hands once
more.

"Permission to remove my vaginal discipline, sir?

"Ok, yes, of course."

She pulled some more and the strap fell free. Robinson could now see the pair
of plugs which Claire had long since become accustomed to having pretty well
permanently strapped inside her as part of the Voss way of life.

"Permission to stand up please sir," was the next formula, her hands having
returned to the downward stretch. And when granted: "Permission to take my mac
off please sir."

"Yes, yes, just slip it off, Miss, thank you Miss." said Robinson, unable
really to respond in the sort of ritual way that no doubt Claire's ingrained
monotone staccato normally called forth. Yes indeed. In the Voss, she would
have had to take three cuts of the cane while she remained bent over, so as to
learn that it was correct to say "Permission to take off my mac" but not
"Permission to take my mac off."

"And then I'm afraid you must get into position," Robinson added, miserably.
"I'll be quick as I can." Then: "I'm truly sorry about this, Miss. I don't
agree with it. Don't agree at all. But I must do as I'm told."

Getting rid of the wet, warm, clinging discomfort of the mackintosh was bliss
of a kind, and it was coupled with the surging physical relief experienced in
her parts, free, all of them for once, of the vile intrusions of the Voss
discipline. At this portentous moment, for a moment, she was free. She went to
stretch her limbs in celebration - only to realise that her freedom meant that
she stood there utterly naked.

The flush of shame brought back the last time she had been made to strip in
public - when she had first been admitted to the Voss. They made you strip at
the outset, and shower. Then they did your hair - regulation length. Then you
were given your mac, which you had to get into and arrange and button up to
your Mistress" satisfaction. She told you which hole you had to select for
buckling the belt, made you get the wrist-straps and epaulettes absolutely
straight and the back vent (with the button done up) central and vertical. And
she showed you how to bend over, and to your absolute horror how you had to
pull up that hateful strap, pull it so that its double shame pushed into you,
pull it so they both were driven deep, locked deep, leaving you with feelings
you never had before ... and then, while you were in the midst of that
whirlpool, your Mistress showed you how your breast harness was to be pulled up
tight, and the nipple clamps screwed down hard. These things were hard to take,
and the ritual formulae hard to learn. Your Mistress kept a tally of punishment
points as you got things wrong and every time you scored five you had to bend
over for the cane. You learnt. Then, looking cleaner and healthier than you
ever would be again, and faultlessly smart in your perfectly fitted immaculate
new white mackintosh which perfectly concealed the humiliating harness beneath,
the official photograph was taken. The photograph didn't show the chains you
were then fitted with - steel cuffs joined with a single chain link, holding
your wrists close together behind your back, and steel anklets joined with 50
cm of chain. Nor did the photograph show your prison number, which, after the
chaining, they proceeded to burn on, with a sort of soldering iron, between
your breasts.

Instinctively, as the searing pain of that early Voss experience came back to
her, her hand went up to where the three digits of her Prison Number stood out
livid in the middle of her chest. And the thought assailed her as it never had
before: what kind of intensity of suffering was she now about to endure? The
burning of her flesh for those few seconds had produced a power of sensation
that had quite overwhelmed her, in spite of all the preparation, the training,
the relentless discipline of feeling and response to which she had subjected
herself against the very eventuality that now had come to pass. It had come on
her so quickly - that, she said to herself afterwards, brooding on her shame,
had been her undoing. Within half an hour of them breaking into her flat she
been stripped, showered, shaved, photographed and manacled: and "369" was
blistering angrily across her chest. The surprise, and the dread, and the
humiliation, following each other so quickly and mingling so chaotically had
made her vulnerable to the physical pain: and she had cried out - screamed, to
be plain, like any amateur, she insisted to herself, as the marking instrument
was pressed against her chest and the acrid odour of burnt flesh surged briefly
into the air.

She had never screamed again, in the face even of the more considerable
severities to which the Voss subjected its inmates.

But what faced her now was different from any and all of that. It was the
branding, multiplied by ten, not beginning, building and softening in a matter
of seconds but going on, and on, and on, - the respite of oblivion set by the
ingenious engineers of her punishment at a point so distant (twelve hours? a
day? two days?) as to create in the mentality of the victim the sense that for
all practical purposes their punishment was agony unending - that their fate
was to hang from their nailed wrists, in a degree of agony which hardly had a
parallel, for eternity itself.

Claire's knees weakened suddenly, and Robinson's touch on her breasts as he
reached out to steady her was a reminder of her nakedness. Shame swept through
her afresh, and as she handed Robinson the mackintosh, her other hand went to
cover her shaven crotch.

There were more turns of her abasement to come of course: the public exhibition
of her suffering , now moments away, as her wrists and feet were actually fixed
to the wood, and then the long hours of display on the cross, her slight frame
stretched out naked, savagely open, suffering the intense and relentless
torture the Court had pronounced was no more than she deserved.

"Now lie down, Miss, if you would, Miss," Robinson asked, quietly. "Where you
sat afore."

She sat, her buttocks this time feeling directly in their nakedness the
roughness of the wood. She lay back, feeling the nakedness of her breasts, and
even more the exposure of her poor, abused genitals, as she had to use her arms
for support.

"Arms out Miss, please Miss."

Of course. Now the full sense of her vulnerability flooded through her as she
reached her arms out and lay there with breasts and sex decisively exposed.

The time had almost come.

Robinson explained to the Corporal that it would be better if someone would
hold her other arm while the first nail was driven in. "Best if someone holds
you still," he whispered to Claire. "You'll probably want to struggle, and if
someone's holding you you'll be more comfortable."

"Yes, sir, thank you sir," was again Claire's Voss-ingrained response. Her
voice was faint, now, taught but faint. At last she seemed to sense the tidal
wave of agony rumbling towards her.

Robinson had hold of her right wrist. He pulled her arm out along the wood -
but gently, with the ridiculous thought to himself that he didn't want her to
get splinters - and tried it for position. He had to get the tension right so
that when she was hanging the little seat would be in the right place.

He was also conscious of the need to get the right angle for the nail into the
wrist. He knew that if you got it wrong the flesh would tear through and the
prisoner would fall or half-fall, and the Brass wouldn't think much of that.

He tried to share responsibility with his NCO. "Where would you put it then?"
He indicated with his finger. "Bout there? Got to get it right."

Claire was the one who really knew about crucifixion. She had been thinking of
it for years now. She knew where it had to go. "Permission to speak, Sir?

"Of course"

"It has to go between the bones, Sir" she said, looking up from her position
into the faces of the two men. "May I show, Sir?"

"Er, yes, thanks ... that would be appreciated Miss," said Robinson, though a
little unsure what the Brass would think of advice being taken from this
quarter.

She left her wrist in place and used the other to point to the spot where the
nail should penetrate, twisting onto her side. "There," she said. "Just there.
In the depression, with the wrist absolutely flat. And on me one and a half
inches from the base of the hand. And it has to go in straight."

Then as an afterthought: "Permission to speak, Sir."

"What?"

"You know how to do the feet, Sir?"

"Er - not sure. I was going to do the same I suppose. Through the ankles ..."
Robinson hadn't been trained for this.

"No, that's no good, Sir. First you make sure the knees are flexed, and then
you put one foot on top of the other," she demonstrated, "and put the nail in
here." She indicated the middle of the top foot. As she had the two feet
positioned, the nail would emerge from the sole, then pass through the centre
of the other foot before driving into the wood.

Robinson saw how it would work. The ankles didn't come into it at all ...
Looking at them now, slim and insubstantial he realised they would be very
difficult to pin securely. The feet offered something substantial to drive
through - a fan of small bones with ligament, and muscle - whereas the legs and
ankles offered only thin solid bone. If she hadn't explained he would have got
into a terrible mess.

"Thank you, Miss. That's very helpful. I'll be quick as I can, Miss." He added,
just to make sure: "The arms first, though, isn't it?"

"Yes, Sir, Thank you Sir." Claire's voice was more tense and more faint as the
rumble was almost upon her. She lay back, stretched her arms out a final time.

Robinson was kneeling again by the left arm of the cross. Now he had a four-
inch nail in one hand and the hammer in the other. He pulled her left arm
taught and flattened the wrist against the wood, making sure it was in the
centre of the width of the beam. He felt for the depression Claire had pointed
out to him, found it, and pricked the point of the nail into the flesh. It was
as she had said, about an inch and a half up from where the hand began its
spread.

She felt the prick deepen as he gripped the hammer. "Christ, I'm really sorry,
Miss. For Christ's sake forgive me." There was not the least sign of her
flinching. "Of course I forgive you, Sir" she said. "Just your job. Thank you,
Sir."

"Bless you, Miss," he said.

He raised the hammer, raised the nail to the vertical - and then noticed that
though the small group of men were clustered round and watching with some
fascination, nobody was holding her down on the other side.

"Someone hold her down for Chrissake," he shouted.

Jones and the Corporal crouched down, the Corporal pinning her legs, Jones her
right arm.

Again the prick sharpened as Robinson tensed up a second time. She tensed
herself this time, the wave now looming in a towering mass above her.

"Christ, Miss, I'm sorry," poor Robinson said again, and brought the hammer
down hard, as he knew he had to. The girl would not have thanked him for an
indecisive blow that left more to be done than it achieved.

The nail went clean through flesh and ligament, clean through the gap between
the two bones of the forearm, and a good inch into the wood. Claire had got the
positioning exactly right.

In the midst of the pain and horror of that first moment of her terminal agony,
this was something Claire herself recognised. "It's gone clean through: perfect
job," was what she thought as she felt the big pain and sensed the solidity
with which her wrist was skewered to the beam. Those watching saw her face
clench as the nail went in, and her mouth go into rictus, but incredibly she
remained silent.

The second blow, again heavy and determined, jolted through her, and a third.
Still no noise, although her other arm tried to flex as Jones held it down, and
the Corporal had to struggle to keep her legs under control.

Robinson moved across to the other arm.

Claire opened her eyes and looked up at him. "Permission to speak, Sir," she
whispered.

"Yes, Miss?"

"Good clean job, Sir," she said. "Thank you, Sir."

He looked down at her slight figure, at her splayed right hand, at the big
bright new nail sticking out from her tiny wrist and at the trickle of blood
now beginning to discolour the new wood.

He couldn't find anything to say, thinking only that the more speedily he could
fix the remaining nails, the kinder it would be.

This was probably not at all true. Though the nailing of the arms and feet
exerted the most fascination on the sadistic imagination, as the most unnatural
and grotesque intrusion into the human frame, it wasn't by any means the most
painful aspect of the punishment. It was painful, certainly, agonisingly so,
and Claire was absolutely unusual in her stoicism. Usually, the prisoner fought
and screamed quite ferociously as the nails were actually going in, and carried
on screaming immediately afterwards, lying there transfixed, suddenly
completely immobile, while soldiers made preparations for pulling the cross
into its upright position. But that was only the beginning.

It was only as the cross reared up, and jolted into the hole prepared for it,
that the true agony of crucifixion made itself known. For jolt by jolt the
weight of the body was transferred, as this operation proceeded, to the torn
flesh and bruised bone in contact with those two narrow slivers of steel at the
ends of her arms. It was the excruciating agony of this that was a fairer
introduction to the experience that lay ahead, the true beginning of the
unparalleled torture that was crucifixion. It involved an extreme of sensation
quite unlike the periodic flashing of agony caused by a whip, for example, or a
programme of electric shocks, a series of momentary excesses , and quite unlike
too the other torture all the Voss inmates had become familiar with, the
"wooden horse", awful, awful, but, in the end, passing. The agony of
crucifixion was an agony of the sharpest kind, but one which stayed in
consciousness, took up residence there, sustaining an unrelieved, unrelievable,
overwhelming intensity of agony which gave this particular punishment its
absolute notoriety.

Claire knew this was coming, knew that the pain of having nails skewering your
wrists was really rather small beer in comparison, and she was able to treat
what had happened to her so far as a minor surgical operation about which one
simply had to be brave.

Robinson's idea that it would be kindest to speed the joinery was therefore not
obviously correct. But at least the sooner he got that part of the job done the
sooner he would be able to go away and try and forget that slight, vulnerable
figure and his part in her abominable torture.

He was pulling her right arm taught now, flattening the fragile wrist against
the wood, and feeling for the right spot with a second nail. One and a half
inches up the wrist. Claire felt the nail located. A pause and it sharpened.
Then the crashing pain as the hammer drove the nail down and through. Again she
felt her wrist pinned with a solid finality. The right spot again.

Two more crashing blows and the main structural carpentry was done: body and
wood had been jointed, crudely but effectively. The fixtures were not bearing
weight yet, but it was clear that they would do so comfortably. When the cross
was erected there would be no tearing to embarrass the Inspection Party, no
threat of nails loosening or coming out - no need for running repairs. Robinson
had done an excellent job. Claire would hang from her wrists perfectly securely
for as long as she took to die.

Still she kept silent, her face in rictus and her legs in spasm as the second
nail drove through: but no noise. Her eyes closed, but only momentarily, though
when they opened they were clouded in the pain that was now beginning to drench
her.

Robinson's work was not yet complete of course. He didn't want to look at his
handiwork as he moved to the feet, but couldn't avoid it. He saw the symmetry
of her spread-eagled arms completed as blood began to thread from the second
wound. The nail-heads looked so large against the slimness of her slim wrists,
the incongruity of the steel sticking out of flesh so brutal. Claire's temples
were at last beading with sweat, her head rolling a little as she tried to
absorb and adjust to the pain. Her mouth remained in rictus, and though her
eyes were open, she made no effort to communicate with Robinson as he leant
across to retrieve the nail he had put down while dealing with her left arm.

This was the enormously long piece of sharpened steel that he presumed could
only be meant for the feet. The feet were not meant of course to bear much
weight - the central idea of crucifixion as a torture was that the body should
hang from the wrists, parts of the body too weak for the purpose. It was also
important however - to those looking for a punishment fit for the worst of
crimes - for this torture of suspension not to be terminated prematurely. For
the worst of crimes, such as Claire's was alleged to be, it was vital not only
for the death of the offender to be an agonising one, but for it to be drawn
out over a proper, deterrent, period. The problem with any technique of
suspension lay in the mechanism of breathing. Suspension from the wrists places
a formidable strain on the musculature responsible for respiration, a strain to
which the organism succumbs rather quickly. Breathing stops and death ensues in
as short a period as half an hour. However - provide just a small degree of
support for the arms, and breathing can continue - indefinitely in principle,
but under the circumstances of an execution for as long as it takes other
organic crises to develop. It is these other traumas - lack of water, lack of
food, loss of body temperature - that in the end bring a well-planned and
executed crucifixion slowly, very slowly, to a close.

The basic solution is then to fix the feet also to the wood, with the legs
bent, so that while she has energy left at all the prisoner is able from time
to time to straighten her legs somewhat by pushing down against the fixture and
so give her chest muscles the freedom to expel exhausted air. And if the
fixture of the feet is by nail - this is the real refinement of the design -
each push upwards, each irresistible animal urge to breathe, involves the
driving of wounded flesh against skewering steel. The agony flowing from her
riven feet is refreshed over and over and over as the hours pass and she
succumbs, against every determination of the rational will, to the
irrepressible organic imperative at all costs to keep fresh breath in the body.

All this Claire knows well, from a theoretical point of view. She has read all
there is to read about crucifixion, its history, its theory, its physiological
impact on the body, the sadistic refinement of technique to which it is
susceptible. Her fate, at last encountered, is a strange kind of fulfilment.

The first blaze of the wounding of her wrists is easing a fraction and she is
able to notice Robinson trying to apply her advice for fixing her legs.

She does what she can to help. This involves drawing her legs up somewhat and
swivelling them to one side. The twisting causes an involuntary pull on her
left arm: rictus again and a gasp as this pulls at the nailed wrist. The pain
blazes again. But also again: no noise. Claire knows she will be screaming soon
enough. It is as though she wants to keep her response to the stages of her
torture in proportion.

Robinson fears if he attempts to hit the nail into the top foot while it is
sort of balanced on the one underneath it could go in at the wrong angle. He
decides to rest one foot firmly against the wood while he drives the nail
through, and then to move it to its correct position and hit it through the
second foot as a second operation.

He explains this to Claire, whose eyes are active but who seeks to keep as
still as possible now. "Safer this way," he concluded. "Sorry."

Her face is bathed in sweat. "Right," she manages, "good idea. Thank you, Sir."
Girls have the "Thank you, Sir (or Miss)" routine driven into them by the Voss,
but as Claire says it now, it is as though she really means it. It is quite
conceivable that indeed she does.

Her right sole is flat against the wood now. Pricking against the top of it.

Robinson has to judge this blow carefully. Too light and the nail won't get
started properly. Too heavy and it will bury in the wood. He has no experience
of the resistance feet offer to a quarter-inch diameter sharpened shaft of
steel.

The prick sharpens. Claire positions herself mentally to master the fresh beast
about to launch on her. She feels a tremendous jolt, hears steel on steel,
feels her wrists snagging at their nails, feels the lancing agony of that - and
then is engulfed by the new awfulness in her feet and legs, worse, deeper,
terrible. Almost immediately the whole sequence is repeated: Robinson has to
deliver a second blow to get the nail through the other side. It breaks into
the wood this time, by a half inch. Claire has not had time to get properly
clear of the first wave before the second roars in. She manages to smother the
scream that comes to her lips, but her undamaged leg kicks out in outrage. The
foot with the nail through it flexes too, pulling the nail out of the wood.
Robinson feels sick. What is he doing? Can anyone have decided that this should
happen to a fellow human being?

But he is well-trained. He has been detailed to a job and he must finish it.
Muttering his horror, and with Claire doing her best, from the midst of her
agony, to help, he brings the second leg under control and pins it with his
knee. Then slowly he manoeuvres the other into position over it. The object now
is to bury the nail into the wood as far as it will go: the moment gets the
limbs positioned he drives the nail as hard as he can.

With that awful blow for the first time Claire begins to scream. The noise is
loud and it is agonised. But then it stops. Amazingly, even under that terribly
brutal assault, which drives the quarter inch of nail straight through the
second foot and three inches into the wood, even as the blood gathers round the
steel, even in these surely overwhelming circumstances, she manages to regain
control...

But her torture now is well and truly underway. Though she manages to stifle
the end of that first awful scream, her body reacts to the outrage of the
skewering by going into spasm, each limb snatching blindly at the nail that
pins it. None of the nails shift in the slightest, and the movement gives a
blinding freshness to the agony in her arms. In particular the median nerve in
either arm, now sharing the narrow channel between radius and ulna with a
sliver of steel, is gently scraped as the muscles spasm. The excruciating pain
which then shoots along the fingers and up the arm is the agony with which she
is to become familiar, the special agony of crucifixion by nailing. From now
on, since they will now be pulling the cross upright, it will be the role of
the median nerves to bring the freshest, sharpest, most agonising pain to their
owner every time she is forced to pull on her arms as she struggles over the
long hours (despite herself) to keep breath coming and going.

Robinson has done a good job. "Forgive me! Forgive me!" he begs her, rising,
nauseated, from her skewered body. Somehow, though the torture is tightening
its grip, she hears him, and somehow even as the tide rises, manages an
absolution. She has enough control to quieten. And then she whispers her
absolution: "I forgive you, Sir, I forgive you, thank you, Sir," she whispers.

One step away and he is sick.

But the task he was needed for is done, and the Captain is able to resume the
initiative. "Now then Corporal! Get that cross erected at the double if you
please!"

Preparations for this phase of the operation have been laid. A breakdown truck
is in position, with its light derrick on the back. Now the cable is run out
and attached to the hasp at the top of the cross. It runs between Claire's
breasts and up her face. Instinctively, her head turns sideways to try and
shake it off. But almost immediately the wire pulls taught and begins to take
the strain. Smoothly at first, the top of the wooden structure rises, the
bottom pivoting against the kerb of the brick socket. Then a jolt as the wood
slips against the brick. The steel through Claire's wrists works against the
nerves, scraping and compressing.

In that earthquake of feeling all her defences crumble in the instant. She is
at last quite powerless to mitigate in the least degree whatever comes
naturally to her poor transfixed body. She screams, and screams, and screams
again as the cross jolts and scrapes and jolts into its socket. And as her
wrists learn to carry what they must - the full dead weight of her body
transferred to flesh and bone and nerve through those merciless slivers of
steel - she goes on screaming. Her consciousness is now transfixed, just as her
body has been, the distinctive agony of hanging spread-eagle from nails through
the wrists asserting its unassailable authority.

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