They strapped her to the post. I didn't look away.
Public punishment is instruction. It is theatre with teeth. It teaches more than death ever could because the living remember it—how the air smells afterward, how the sound of a body bent forward carries on the wind. I had arranged it this way on purpose. I wanted institution to sit heavy in the bones of anyone who watched.
The first stroke fell.
She gasped. The sound snagged in the crowd like a broken chord. It ricocheted back to me, small and sharp, but I did not flinch. Another stroke landed, leather splitting air and skin with percussion. Another. The blows came in a steady metronome: one, two, three. The world narrowed to the sound of rope creaking, flesh taking punishment, a woman's breath torn between sob and scream.
I counted without moving my lips. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.
