The lowering sky, the spiky conifers,
the cool, meandering stream,
and, over there,
that group of buildings with the tall cypress –
the prison-camp,
its watch-tower hard
against the breast-like hills.

This humid, stormy afternoon,
lonely last walk
through water-meadows,
up the winding, stony path,
to this, the Place of Execution.

They’ve let me wear my crimson coat,
the one I had on when they arrested me.
“You won’t be needing this again,”
one of them tells me as he pulls it off,
and grabs it for his girl.

No teasing subtlety:
“Take off your clothes!”
Obey. It’s futile to resist.
The prison uniform, schoolgirl games kit:
white pumps, blue shirt,
a short, grey pleated skirt,
and pale blue bra and briefs –
fresh colours of the rivers, misty hills,
the clearing sky, all soothing things
I’m forced to put behind me –
strewn on the ground,
like on my bedroom floor at home.

“Untie your hair!”
The ribbon falls
across the plaited tresses of the scourge.

Dry, prickly, dark-leaved plants,
rocks, with their strange, rune-like scratch-marks,
girl’s undies,
whips …

“Stand straight, you slut!
Let’s have a look at you!”
I blush –
no, more –
I feel my nakedness.
A burning glow, tint of my racing blood,
colours my shoulders, collar, neck and breasts.
But why?
It’s not the first time that I’ve had to strip
in front of men.
When they first captured me, and I did not
at once co-operate, confess,
they ripped my kit off, took me down
for ‘routine treatment’.

After they’d finished flogging me
one of them brought me water,
“Two hours!”, he said,
That’s more than most men need –
or can take!”

But in that place they call The Studio
their methods were sophisticated,
hi-tech pain
that leaves no visible marks.
Night after night
stretched out
in that room,
under that lamp,
on that bare metal bed …
They broke me.
That’s why I blush.  

How should a martyr look?
Poised, confident?
Not after that.
Not with these men
who’ve laid me bare, and penetrated me –
not just my flesh, but deep inside my soul.
My anxious eyes are hot with tears.
My lips – I know, erotic, kissable –
they almost quiver, and betray
a hint of doubt, resentment, fear...
I’m younger, softer now
than when they captured me.
They’ve got me where they want me –
vulnerable.

“Turn, Catherine,
Turn and face
your Wheel of Death!”

See how I clutch my breast!
Frisson of terror as I shield soft flesh
from those cruel spikes?
Feeble attempt at self-defence?
Coy femininity?
Just gawky adolescent shame?
Or something else
have these men stirred in me …?

“Your bum will suffer first and worst,”
the Executioner says, as he tugs the chain
between my thighs,
“your shoulders, back, and arms and legs,
they’ll all be forced against the spikes.
You’ll try to keep completely still –
but that of course we won’t allow:
with whips and red-hot irons my boys
are going to make you dance!”

He slaps my rump, orders his men
to fit the manacles –
“Make sure they’re tight!”

“And then the Wheel will start to spin,
tossing you back and forth and up and down
across those spikes,
tearing your flesh to ribbons, bit by bit,
till you're ripped to a bloody rag –
like this!”

He points.
The filthy scrap
tossed over the cross-bar –
knickers off some poor kid
they’ve slaughtered here,
picked up by the engineer
to wipe her blood off his machine.

This nameless relic,
like these stinging-nettles close to my bare legs
(they flourish in this stony ground, disturbed,
fed regularly with girls’ blood),
tells me one thing:
I’m nothing special.
Not some ‘bride of Christ’
chosen for glorious martyrdom.
Just meat
for routine butchery,
a one-night stand as starlet
in their snuff video,
a sleazy night-club showpiece, sexy tart,
dolled up in jingling bondage to perform
my Dance of Death.

There have been many more as young as me,
desirable and innocent as me –
a nubile nineteen, I’m well into
the senior class:
I’ve seen girls
flogged, tortured, fed alive
to the camp guard-dogs,
and leggy youngsters picked out –
they’re special favourites
of the Torture Squads –
and there’ll be plenty more!

Is the destruction of a woman’s flesh
less real than that of Christ and male saints,
an elegant formality?
I want no doubt:
this Wheel’s a means of death for me
prolonged, excruciating, hideous.
No pantomime rescue do I expect,
or even want...
My body’s ready...

Look at their glowing irons prepared
to sear my skin and gouge into my flesh:
the black fangs of those pincers, hungry for
my naked nipples,
the destination of that red-hot poker’s
painfully obvious -
and, don’t forget
his little bit of mischief:
his special branding-iron
with which my Executioner
will sign his handiwork -
Oh, God!

The sun breaks through,
My body’s suddenly spotlit, stood centre-stage,
between the sun and fire,
my right breast glistening, bathed in a golden glow,
my left loin crimson, sharp foretaste …
Surrounded by machinery of death,
‘a wheel within a wheel’,
penned in the midst of fiery mystery,
frightened, excited, roused
beyond my youthful comprehension.

‘Though He be seen in the fire,
that fire is a burning, not a light,
for He enflames desire …’

Yes, I’m ‘enflamed’ all right –
I feel the warmth in my firm tits,
heat surges through my slender nudity,
burns where the cruel chain chafes
my secret parts …

A dark, all-conquering urge,
this passion which incites young girls,
supposed to be submissive, modest, chaste,
to court arrest, humiliation, torture, death …
A wild desire
to wrestle naked, test our inward wells
of tenderness and strength,
to triumph even in extremes
of suffering.
A cruel thirst,
it brings no Christ
to ravish me from pain in mystic trance.
My God’s a cruel Jehovah who demands
blood-sacrifice.

I’m psyched-up for the struggle,
hot with desire …
but the sunlight’s fitful, watery,
compared to the relentless heat
of the Torturers’ fire…

Commanded by the Executioner,
I turn my hips and walk compliantly,
feeling my hair blow free
in the cool evening breeze –
plants, rocks,
girl’s undies,
whips –
with one glance through the woodwork at the sky
I step up on the bloody stone,
and lift my shackled arms for them, prepared...

As they spreadeagle me
against the spikes,
I feel the hints of pain begin...
A dark cloud hides the sun.

‘I see Him as it were in a cloud’…

for still I need,
and at this crucial moment fail to find,
God’s reassurance.

I hear my yelp of pain
as they jerk tight the chains -

Ready.

The men pick up their whips and instruments
and stand appraising
my stretched, quivering girlhood
as they await the Executioner’s word...

“Begin!”

Heaven for me is now
a vague and distant notion,
Hell
the reality …
I lower my eyes submissively...

I’m going to suffer
terribly,
and I know it …