Posted by Sawney Beane on August 03, 2006 at 21:39:42:
The Collected Works of Sawney Beane: Volume 46
PLAYING WITH FIRE
by Sawney Beane
16 February 1997
611 words
DISTRIBUTION NOTICE and DISCLAIMER: Sawney Beane requests that any distribution of this work of fiction remain within the realm of social responsibility. This story is suitable neither for minors nor for the seeming majority of adults who have difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. It is pure fantasy, which means that, for whatever reason, someone has found it interesting to think about the events depicted herein. It does not in any way mean that the author would like to see this fantasy become reality, so if you are the type of person who might be swayed into doing something irrational by reading a work of fiction, the author respectfully requests that you decline to read further.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sawney Beane, originally a native of Edinburgh, lived for twenty-five years in a cave on the coast of County Galloway, subsisting on the flesh of unfortunate travellers, roughly a thousand of them all told. He and his wife raised a large family of eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grandsons, and fourteen granddaughters. Eventually, the family was captured, and the whole lot was brutally and unjustifiably tortured and executed without trial. Since his death in the early 17th century, Beane has reformed his ways and now confines his atrocities to his literary endeavours.
WARNING: This story contains scenes of non-consensual female snuff. If you find such things offensive, please steer clear; you have been warned.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Joan is the guest of honour at an auto-da-fe. This story was clearly a passing whim and was written very quickly. It is my only work of historical fiction (maybe it's fictionalised history). Basically, though, this is another one of my psychological portraits of a damsel in distress.
------------------------
Joan tried desperately to find a comfortable position. It wasn't an easy task, standing as she was in the middle of the public square with her wrists chained far above her head to a thick wooden post. She tried to lean on the post to take some of the weight off her arms, but the rough surface abraded her sensitive bare back. There was really nothing she could do, and her entire body was hurting.
She'd been like that for nearly six hours. It was at six o'clock that morning that the guards had dragged her from her tiny cell and stripped her naked before chaining her arms to the pole in the centre of the public square. For six hour her shapely young body had been leered at by crowds of strangers, and that was the least of her worries. The pain in her arms and legs and back had grown more intense with each passing moment. To top it all off, the scorching sun had burned her pale arms and breasts mercilessly. She was almost eager for noon to arrive.
And arrive it did. Precisely at noon, the magistrate and his guards arrived and began the long task of stacking the logs. They began in a small circle around Joan's feet, but the log pile grew and grew until it reached her waist. When everything was done, Joan looked like a topless maiden wearing an immense wooden hoop skirt.
It was almost time for Joan to depart this world, and she was scared beyond comprehension. She was determined to remain calm in the face of death, but the effort took her entire will. The voices she had heard, those which had comforted and guided her throughout her brief life, indeed those same voices which had gotten her here on a conviction of witchcraft, were nowhere to be heard. She'd heard no voices since her hasty trial. Perhaps they were right; perhaps the voices were those of demons rather than that of the Blessed Virgin.
But this was not the time to doubt her faith. The hooded man was setting fire to the bottom of the woodpile. The multitudinous crowd was cheering rowdily for her imminent demise. How could they be so heartless? She was just a young, innocent girl. Yes, she had been so much more in her brief life than most young, innocent girls, but deep down that was what she was, and the air near her feet was getting very hot.
The first real problem she had was not the heat near her feet but the smoke that was rising up through the woodpile and threatening to suffocate her. It made her eyes water and caused her to cough, but there was just enough air to keep her alive.
Then the first flames began to lick her toes. It was quite a shock to her, and had she had enough air she would have screamed. As it was she just moaned and gurgled and tried to pull her feet away, but there was no place for them to go. Before long her ankles and calves were ablaze with pain. The fire was spreading quickly now, and her silky thighs erupted in flames.
Joan's mind was racing in random directions as her entire body from the waist down quivered with her dress of flame. Blood, muscle, and bone sizzled and burned, and the smoke increased. Joan slipped into shock and fell unconscious not long before the smoke suffocated her. The crowd was able to watch her beautiful body's destruction far longer than she was. They were still cheering her on a full fifteen minutes after she had died.