Free Naked, on the Edge by Elizabeth Massie Page A

boiling water over his forearms and hands. The skin erupted, bright and red. Angry, insulted blisters rose.
    He caught his breath.
    "Goin' back to bed, honey," said his mother. She rolled away from the living room window and out of sight.
    He caught his breath. Pale cat hairs, floating in the kitchen, landed on the burns and beneath the pain he almost felt a tickle.
    He dropped to the kitchen chair and lost his breath; he thought of horses running running running on sand toward the beach. He caught his breath again.
    Elliott faced the living room and the front door and he waited for his smiling teacher with the white, billowing sailboat coat.

Forever, Amen
     
    T hen Pilate went out to the people and saith unto them, Behold, I have found no fault with this man. The chief priests and officers cried out, Crucify him!
    Pilate held forth his hand towards Jesus, who bore a crown of thorns and purple robe, and saith, I may release to thee a man on this day of feasting. Whom will ye that I release, the man Barabbas or this man Jesus?
    And the crowd cried, Give us Barabbas! Jesus must die!
    When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing to save the man Jesus and that Jesus was indeed to die to please the crowd, he offered the execution of noble captives, to have the man's wrists slashed with sword and thus causing him to bleed quickly unto death. But from the crowd called up the man Andrew, son of Phinneas the shepherd, who said, Jesus must suffer for his words! Do not give him the gentle death! Crucify Him! The crowd joined in the mocking call, He must suffer for his words!
    Then Pilate went from the crowd and washed his hands, and turned Jesus to the officers and soldiers, who gave unto Him a cross and bearing such went all unto the place of the skull which is called Golgotha.
    There they crucified Him, and two others on either side with Jesus in the midst.
     
    Book of Trials, 7:23-8
     
    D anielle stood against the rough wall, her red eyes turned furiously towards the shrouded figure on the gurney. Marie and Clarice were gone, spun away with dour exasperation, vanished through the small ceiling-high window of the cellar. Their words still echoed in the room like late-season flies caught in a bottle.
    Marie: "He is not Alexandre! He is nothing. He is less than nothing."
    Clarice: "It's done! Come with us. Sister, take my hand. It stinks in here."
    Marie: "Look if you must, gaze for a moment, but be done with it, and then come."
    Danielle had pressed her gloved hands to her ears and shook her head. “No.”
    Marie snapped her fingers sharply as if Danielle were a dog to obey her mistress, and Danielle had simply said, "Leave me be."
    Marie and Clarice had done just that. They thought their companion mad, not a good thing for a creature of the night. Madness could only lead to foolishness and carelessness, and with carelessness, destruction. They had left their mad friend to her own fate.
    Danielle stared at the soiled sheet, the sharp protrusions beneath the cloth where the nose and chin were, the feet. Softer mounds of the shoulders, the fisted hands, the groin. Light from lanterns, hung in this subterranean room by the men who had departed just minutes ago, sputtered from ceiling hooks. Water pipes dripped puddles onto the dirt floor. Spiders and their webs, left in corners by the hasty custodian the day before, held still as if pondering the strange and recent occurrence.
    "Alexandre?" Danielle said softly, tasting the cold of her breath as it passed through her incisors and her protruding canines.
    "Why can that not be you?" She took several steps forward, hesitated. So much she had witnessed in all these many years, so much terror and viciousness and death, yet this one was almost beyond her ken.
    "Why can that not be you?" she repeated, then touched her own face. "Is this not me? Am I not still walking this squalid earth in the form of a young woman, though nearly 120 years of age?"
    The sheet stirred slightly. Danielle