The black circle above was a mile wide. like an unforgiving storm in the desert sunrise. Ravens waiting for the freshly hung to stop screaming or pass out through pain. The fortunate men died of blood loss as they were being crucified to the T-cross by inexperienced soldiers. Not many, though : I train my men well in the art of death. A professional foot soldier for 20 years and now at the end of my days, I’ve become this.
I walk among the hundreds of crosses in the morning sun with a rag drenched in vinegar that can’t mask the stench. My men walk behind me with iron mallets looking for the ones that are still alive after three days. I give orders to break their legs. This way their legs can’t hold them up and they suffocate.
Vultures with six-foot wing spans land gracefully on top of the crosses. Their curved six-inch beaks are masterful at tearing into dead, and sometimes living flesh. They start with the eyes of the condemned, then the lips and tongue, eventually breaking into the skulls to get to the brain matter.
This is why we named this place “Skull Mountain.” No man, no human, should ever get used to this place. But I did.
The human screams are hard to hear with a 1,ooo hungry birds overhead, but I hear them in the cool, lonely desert nights as I drink myself to sleep. Today, I alone have been chosen by Pilate the Governor to nail and crucify a condemned man. They call him the King of the Jews. The Roman government says it will stop this man who is spreading his seeds of peace, love, and one God for all mankind. But I fear these seeds have already started to take root.
On my days off I go to the games and watch through stone-drunk green eyes as we throw these Christians into the gladiator pit by the hundreds with hungry lions.
Are we this great civilization trying to cleanse our Roman garden of weeds? Though their roots and faith run too deep for even the Great Roman Empire, I can’t stop myself but to look at them with honor. To die for something they truly believe in, like the love I had for the Empire and its Pagan Gods.
He is a ragged, skinny, weak man smelling of urine and feces on the steep roadway packed with onlookers yelling and cursing at him. He falls again with the 200 Ib T-cross on his back. I order the soldiers to untie him and scan the screaming crowd, spot a man named Samson to carry the cross the rest of the way up to Golgotha.
I’ve seen the horrors of hundreds of eyes as we lay them down, beaten and wiped by exhaustion, the screaming, filthy bodies begging me for mercy in low voices. A luxury I don’t have and can’t give.
What hell awaits me in the afterlife? I wonder, looking into this innocent man’s brown eyes.
His arms are tied down with hemp rope. Holding the 9 inch spike in one hand and the hammer in the other, I place the spike just back from his wrist, so not to hit the artery. A dull thud as it pierces flesh and wood. A scaffold is in place with a pulley to lift him up and on top of the T-cross. I nail his feet separate on each side to brace him so he can breathe. I place a crown of thorns on him gently, to keep the birds off of him. Later, I go back and give him vinegar mixed with cocaine leaves to dull his suffering. He drinks some but refuses more as he looks at the dead thief, then the robber that still lives.
“Only for you,” I say. He refuses again with his brown eyes.
This job is technical. I keep records of the condemned men in thick books.
On the third sunrise we break their legs. I look for this man, Jesus. I hold my battle-stained lance ready to end his suffering with one thrust, thinking mercy, and what hell awaits me in the afterlife.
A version of this piece first appeared in “Thursdays 3.0: These Words” (Otter Press, 2009)
Edited by
Elee Kraljiii Gardiner.
