Cruel - but unusual?
When I gave Stumpy a beating for breaking my computer, he insisted it was 'cruel and unusual punishment'. I think he gets such terms from those conspiracy-theory books he's always reading.
It did set me thinking though. A beating could be considered cruel, but hardly unusual. People have been beating each other since the dawn of mankind. It's one of the more usual forms of punishment, surely?
So I've tried to come up with a really unusual punishment. There's no need to worry about the cruel part - they're all cruel, that's the whole point. But what makes them unusual?
Crucifixion is very cruel indeed, but it dates back to Roman times. They used it a lot so it doesn't count as unusual. Stoning is older still, and still in common use in much of the world. Nothing unusual there.
One of the most imaginative proponents of this particular field of study was Tomas de Torquemada, head of the Spanish Inquisition. Aside from the general-purpose devices such as the rack, the Judas cradle and the iron maiden, Tomas spent a great deal of time researching unusual ways to cause pain and death. The head-clamp was a large vice, tightened a little each day until the victim died or agreed to confess to whatever he was accused of. Note that in those days you were not required to be guilty of anything in order to confess. Committing a crime was optional. Being punished for one was not.
There was one device of particular novelty, a small and portable hand-held torture implement. The pear-shaped metal head was inserted into the victim (yes, up there!) and left a shaft protruding. Turning the shaft rotated a screw-thread. This opened up the pear-shaped thing like the petals of a flower, though not a flower you'd want to sniff. Oh, and the points of the petals were sharp, too.
Once the opening had begun, the pear could not be extracted without literally ripping the guts out of the victim, In fact, it's fair to say that once this had been inserted, death by blood loss was the only possible outcome.
This definitely fits the description of cruel, and I think it's a good candidate for the award of unusual, too. It's a rare implement, and few of Tomas' guests survived his introductory devices so there weren't too many who experienced this one.
Tomas is a tough act to follow. Perhaps next time I'll bludgeon Stumpy with a live otter. That would certainly be unusual, and doubly cruel. Well, he put the idea into my head, so he has nobody to blame but himself.
