The Good Slave (11 page)

The stoning stopped for a brief few moments as the crowd watched with great intensity.
 
The prisoner let out a low moan as he squeezed his eyes shut.
 
He couldn’t close his mouth now, though, and his left jaw hung lower than is usually humanly possible.
 
Then, not fifteen seconds later, the stadium went wild as a large molar slowly slid out from between the prisoner’s lips and rode a stream of red drool down to the white tarp.

Then the stones came steadily, one after the other.
 
The executioners had been instructed to hit the condemned’s torso with the larger ones and his head with smaller ones in order to avoid killing him too quickly.
 
Fortunately, when one of the larger rocks inadvertently smashed against the back of Stephen’s head it didn’t kill him, but it did rip his scalp clean from his skull, flipping the skin up and over the top of his head like a windblown toupee.
 
The boy let out a gut-wrenching cry of agony that sounded more like a wounded animal than a human being.
 
Another large stone smashed his nose and a torrent of blood came gushing out.

The most vicious impact, however, came from a stone that smashed the eggshell-thin bone of his temple.
 
His eyeball erupted from its socket still tethered to a cord of veins and nerves.
 
It snapped back a few inches from his face and then dangled against his check.
 
Everyone in the stadium jumped to his feet, screaming and yelling and mad with bloodlust.

Tessa wailed and ran from the room.
 
Phoebus, who had begun crying uncontrollably, threw up as George howled with delight.

“Did you see that?!” exclaimed Paul Walton.
 
“Knocked the sinner’s eyeball clean out of its socket!”

Everyone saw it again and again as the crushing blow was broadcast a second time in slow motion in the stadium jumbotron and across America.

“God certainly is making his wrath felt here today,” old Bart Merryweather added.

“Amen to that, Bart!” Pete McIntosh concurred.

Another rock hit the other side of Stephen’s face with the broken jaw, ripping the flesh clean away from his cheek.
 
He reared back as his jaw, now completely unhinged, dropped horrifyingly low, exposing the inside of his mouth—teeth, tongue and all.

The teen was a piteous, broken, battered and completely unrecognizable creature.
 
Both arms and most ribs were broken in several places by this point and the pink jumpsuit had turned a deep, glistening red.
 
Although he’d passed out with the last blow, he was still visibly breathing.

The head executioner blew his whistle and gingerly navigated through a moonscape of rocks.
 
The crowd grew silent, fearful that their joyous spectacle had already come to an end.

The man paused when he reached the boy, a not altogether subtle combination of fascination and shock on his face, captured on the giant screen from multiple angles.
 
There wasn’t a square inch of skin on Stephen’s body or head that wasn’t scratched or split open and leaking blood.
 
The man winced at the gaping red eye socket (the eyeball itself having been cut loose sometime during the assault) half covered by a loose and shapeless lid.
 
Stephen’s other eye was swollen shut.
 
Smelling salts were once again waved under the mass of pounded flesh that was once a nose.
 
The prisoner barely jerked back to consciousness and the crowd erupted in cheers and applause.

The executioners had to bend over low to grab some rocks from their depleted piles.

The stadium went ballistic.

After Stephen Messinjure was certifiably dead, preselected men and boys—about a hundred of them—marched past him, kicked and spat on his slumped over corpse.
 
Afterward, the stadium slaves dug him out of the hole and rolled him up in the white tarp, in essence a leakproof body bag.
 
All this was under the ever watchful eyes of the television cameras still broadcasting as Pete McIntosh observed what a successful and exciting execution it had been.
 
Jimmy Valentine, who had joined his senior colleagues behind the anchor desk and was eager to get as much airtime as possible, noted how “God’s will has been done with aplomb.”

It seemed to escaped the notice of the sportscasters that the slaves on the field had lifted Stephen Messinjure’s body up onto their shoulders.
 
They carried it with more than a modicum of dignity even though they could have—and perhaps
should
have—simply dragged it on the ground.

“Be sure to join us back here in two months for the lapidation of nymphomaniac Scarlet Smyth,” Pete said over the image, “as well as the simultaneous immolation of the high school drop-out who whored her, Ethan Andrews.
 
Both were convicted last week of adultery.
 
When Scarlet Smyth was still Scarlet Ferguson she married Joshua Smyth under the false pretense that she was still a virgin.”

“Tragic story,” Paul said.
 
“Poor Joshua Smyth, who comes from a very good family, by the way, was devastated—simply
devastated
—to discover that his new bride had, in fact, allowed this whore-monger Ethan Andrews to spoil her.”

The would be pallbearers were approaching the edge of the field.

“
Quite
the sensational trial,” ol’ Bart added.
 
“You’d think they’d never read Deuteronomy.”

The slaves walked through a door another slave was holding open for them and disappeared into the darkness.
 
The picture switched to an outside metal door with a dumpster next to it.

“Poor Joshua Smyth said at the trial that he’d planned out his whole life—career, children, retirement—before discovering that his bride was a whore.”
 
Pete sounded despondent.
 
“His marriage was a sham, and his life had been ruined by the disgrace.”

“Just proves the destructiveness of selfish whores and heretics.
 
The only thing that matters to them is what’s between their legs.”

The metal door on the TV screen opened and the slaves bearing Stephen Messinjure’s body marched out.

“Joshua Smyth will have the pleasure of lobbing the first stone at his adulterous wife, and personally lighting the fire that will end her whore-monger’s life.
 
Hopefully that will give him some measure of solace—and it should be a real crowd-pleaser to boot!”

The slaves walked over to the dumpster and gently lowered the corpse inside before gingerly closing it.

“I’m sure God has no mercy for Stephen Messinger’s eternal soul,” Paul said.

“Next stop—the city dump!” Bart blurted out.

“You mean the
final destination
, don’t you, Bart?” Pete said, and all three men were having a good laugh as the screen faded to black.