Day Three

On the third day, the tortured young men came very slowly down the stairs in overt discomfort: all movement was horrid by now. Once they got to the bottom of the stairs, they discovered their sister being berated, if at low volume, by their sporadic mother. The woman was standing over her diminutive daughter, sneering quietly through her teeth, holding the hem of the child’s dress, forcibly stitching crude extensions to it, while Fawn cowered, wiping tears from her distraught face.

As the two boys discover their mother haranguing their beloved little sibling, their reaction is extreme and decided. The youngest brother steps between Fawn and their mother as quickly as he can and grasps her by the throat with one hand, the remaining strength of his upper body still making it easy for him to haul her along, at the end of his reach.

He walks away with her suspended by her throat beside him, her feet dragging just off the ground, presses her hard against the pillar furthest from the child and stands before her.

The elder brother moves to where his mother had been standing over his sister, and in one purposed movement, grabs the bladed razor implement off the floor, utterly disregarding the searing pain in his hand, and moves to join his brother at the woman’s side, holding the knife to his mother’s abdomen. The two boys, leering down into her wide eyes, repeat their refrain.

“My life, for her spirit. WE ... have made our choice.”

Their mother had clearly not considered their reaction. Her face was made of fear and anguish, her whole body fraught with misery. Her stomach plummeted as she came to know the hatred they both had for her. To her sons, she was acting like those who would inflict their suffering and take their sister.

With his thoughts moving away from anger and his mother’s actions, the eldest then took the razor to where Fawn was standing, working to slice off not only the extension that had been added to the garment, but a bit more material besides, as he knew that it was what his sister would have done.

The two boys then moved toward the door. Fawn, now rescued from her mother’s prejudice, started to make a noise to stop them from leaving, but realized there was no way she could change anything and fell to the floor in despair.

The youngest opened the door: the eldest stepped out first. Before they shut the door behind them, the eldest discarded the blade onto the floor, in a sharp movement, leaving another portion of the skin from the palm of his hand attached to the handle.

The pain doubled him over, but he still made no sound. As the knife struck the ground, it landed like a tiny corpse, dirt and dust clinging to the bloodied skin it was wrapped in.

They walked with great focus up the hill yet again, repeating the statement in a mumbled loop.

“My life, for her spirit.”

One man obstructed their direction for a brief moment. As he did, it became instantly obvious that the boys were now well beyond his, or any person’s, judgment. Again and again in unison, like there was nothing else in the world for them, they repeated their mantra.

“My life, for her spirit.”

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They got to the tower, struggled into the abhorrent boxes, and prepared themselves. The Cast Soldier strapped them down with a look of indifference. With barely a momentary thought, the Soldier slid the boys out into the sun once again, its darkened rays hitting them like scarlet shards of broken crystal, slowly and inevitably slicing into their already savaged skin.

With renewed belief, but now with little more than a whisper left in their voices, they committed their breath as best they could.

“My ... life.”

With gradual inevitability, the sun tore at them again. An acrid reddish particulate steam rose from their skin as the extreme heat finally came into contact with the precious fluid of their bodies.

The pain was excruciating and beyond measure. Both boys fought to maintain some calm, but it proved impossible. As they desperately tried to alleviate the burning in any way, it became all too apparent that there was no respite to be had. They both began to make a ghastly scratching noise as an attempt to scream in agony escaped their savaged lips. It sounded like a cluster of rusted metal shavings sliding down a bloodied slate.

Mercilessly, the heat and radiation withered and destroyed them, at an unrelenting, yet hideously slow, pace.

Their bodies twitched spasmodically, their fingers curled and constricted, as their tendons shortened.

There was sporadic undulation beneath their skin at various points, as their bodies started to collapse from the accumulated damage and exposure. The agony was matched only by the unimaginable psychological strain of not saving themselves.

Truly, the ultimate cruelty of this horrendous punishment was that it was held in place by its victim, a tortured and tormented person, who was well aware throughout the experience that they could stop it all at any moment.

A mere whisper would be enough to end their horror, but the cost of stopping it was a price so high that ending their misery never even occurred to either of them.

They looked in each other’s direction, seeing nothing but dried blood on timber casket walls.

Finally, the evening came.

In abject agony, dragging what was left of themselves back home was extraordinarily arduous. The journey was taken in short excruciating steps as the villagers watched them in morbid fascination, their common judgment slowly giving way to the awful truth of the boy’s commitment.

They eventually arrived home, the trip taking much longer than any other day, their entire bodies racked with all degrees of burnt destruction. Every nerve, every skin cell, feeling as though it were on fire. Fawn, having prepared herself as best she could, ran in a pained hobble down the stairs, thanks to her sword wound that may well follow her for life.

She threw the door wide, standing there in her shortened dress, looking angelic and delicate against the dull and faded background environment that was her home.

Shock took her over and she stared at the boys as they stumbled through the door, her liquid crystal eyes reflecting her mortified expression as she took in the burns on their bodies, bloodied splits in their skin, and weak fragility of their movements.

The boys moved to sit down at the table as they had always done, but it was not feasible for either of them, and they fell to the floor writhing in pain. No part of their bodies would move correctly: the sun had done its awful work. Their muscles were burnt and cramped, and all their joints were grinding, the fluid in them all but entirely gone. Fawn ran to kneel down with them, so frightened of what this would mean come morning.

Understanding that there would not be the usual reassuring and loving hands on her shoulder, Fawn cowered and began to sob. She made the kind of sound usually reserved for the most bereft and aggrieved of people facing an unimaginable loss after a long and difficult life, never a sound a child should have made.

Neither of the boys had any energy. Their sight was a shadow of its former function, they could only make out blurry approximations of the world they once knew. The eldest reached towards where he hoped his sister’s soft face would be. She turned her head gently to meet his burnt and deformed hand, congealed blood gathered at his fingertips. He expended a measured croak, like that of someone speaking around a broken rock.

“I ... love you.”

The younger brother reached his hand out to find his sister. Resting his bloodied, stripped hand carefully on her head, he spoke to her through a stricken breath.

“I love you too, little Fawn. You are the best of us.”

The child’s emotions began to fold under the weight of the responsibility and culpability she felt, though she nonetheless felt more cared for than anyone. The eldest stood slowly and knelt as best he could in front of her. He placed his now crippled left hand on her bare shoulder, his torn right hand at her side, said nothing, and moved to the floor. His younger brother followed him.

Lacking the strength and mobility to go up to bed, they slumped down on the dirt to try for some rest.

Fawn curled alongside them and cried herself to sleep.

–Garrick M Lynch–