058: Rutkowski

Under the former Palace of Culture, September 29th, 2000


Pain.  There is nothing but pain.  Pain from over stretched shoulders.  Pain from a trunk beaten vivid purple-black.  Pain nothing but pain.

The mind grows divorced.  Punches register; pressure and impact.  Patterns register; Zajac's slower, weaker strikes versus Wosniak's enraged blows

It had said, "You have failed."

The mind falls away from the flesh.  Pain happens to someone else.

Like a child playing telephone with a flexible pipe, the voice had blurred and buzzed.  "Our God does not accept failure."

Until the body accepts defeat, gives up, shuts down.  The world fades, gray then black.


"As Job suffered for the Lord, so shall you.  An example, if nothing else."  I am Job.

"Cut him down," the thing commands.  "Tomorrow, you assemble your men.  I will make the example instructive.  Show what failing the Baron means."  Head scrapping the roof, shoulders touching the walls, the powerful, gray form returns to the depths of the Palace.

The men, Czarny's last Lieutenants, obey with alacrity.  One does not refuse an angel.

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September 30th, 20000

Saint Andrews cross, a bare metal rectangular frame quartered with lumber.  Ropes hand at the corners for hands and feet and another at the X to secure the waist.  A simple implement whose sole function is to immobilize the body and leave it vulnerable.

The men are assembled in the courtyard, many ranks deep.  They've been silent watching the cross.  Not knowing specifics of what is to come, but knowing with certainty that is will.  The Baron stands tall, and as silent, beside the cross.  Some in the crowd, more sensitive than most, fight headaches.

From the Palace the Lieutenants come.  Between them, tight in their grasp, is their fallen comrade, Rutkowski.  Stripped to worn boxers his bare feet stumble in the dust.  The marks of yesterday's session clear on his skin.  A murmur begins.  The Baron's glares out silencing the crowd before it gains any momentum.  It is if he can see into each man's soul and finds them lacking.

Rutkowski can see the thing by the cross.  Why don't the others?  Why isn't there shouting, "Dear God, what is that thing!"  They have guns.  Why aren't they being used?

At the cross, Wozniak takes him by the throat.  Fingers digging forcefully into his larynx as Zajac bends to the ropes.  They have him on the cross.  Yes, his feverish mind drifts, 'The cross for his sins.'

He wanders as the Thing orates to the men.  Speaking of their goals, duty, and the costs of failure.  It spends an inordinate amount of time relishing the costs.  He drifts as the Thing, he won't call it an angel ever again, lists his failing and his punishment.

The men stand sweating in the cold.  Before they had though they'd understood Baron Czarny.  Yes, there would be punishment for violations of his sparse law; reduced rations, punishment duty, a flogging.  But this, this example... too much.

The Baron finishes his declaration.  Turns to Rutkowski on the cross.  Czarny rips away the boxers.  Places his hand on his lower abdomen above the genitals.  Rutkowski crashes back into his body at the touch of sandpaper skin.

The watching men shake as Czarny forces his way into Rutkowski's torso.  His shiny red hand emerging with a length of small intestine.  Hand over hand, foot after foot, as the screams match his efforts.  Slowly pulling three, four, five, before Rutkowski's voice and consciousness fail.  Six, seven, eight, how much can fit into a man?  Nine and ten, a wet pile of rope at slopping over his boots.  He tears the glistening rope.  Drops it on the pile.

Czarny turns back to the troops.  "Remember."

Wozniak steps forward, ramrod straight, "Dismissed!"

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The Thing turns to his loyal followers.  "Take him to physician.  Reattach.  Stitch it up.  My blessing remains on him.  He will be of use."

Zajac wipes the vomit from his chin.  He'd almost made it through.  Almost.  Wozniak cuts Rutkowski down.

"Leave the cross," it rasps, "Later it will be of use."

Tonight there will be more desertions.