The angelic face, female like, of Saint Sebastian pierced by the arrows. The ecstasy the nuns at my Jesuit school referred to as the highest moment in the martyrdom of a saint.

I grew loving those words. Ecstasy, Passion, Martyrdom. It became a quest.

But it seemed I was living a contradiction. In the one hand I was searching for the perfect image of a martyr while abhorring the practice of torture of the military dictatorships around me.

I had seen pictures of victims who were beaten to a pulp. Young men and women who fell in the hands of the secret police and were made to confess with electric shocks and beatings.

There was no peace in the middle of suffering, there weren't any idealistic images... there was only horror and nothing but horror.

I could hardly stand the sight of blood and yet...

It was not a long process, it lasted only the time it took for the whip to travel through the air to crash against her flesh times fifty. But it felt like an eternity of pain, an unending process that could only be completed at the moment of her death.

The soldier was counting each stroke as he lashed her. He was going to complete the 50 and no more. It was his sad duty and he was not going to go over that.

His voice was soft but firm as he counted.

35 .... and the whistling of the lash underlined his word, announcing the crash, which was number 35, of the whip against Leticia's flesh. Her cry, number 35, of pain, was followed by the soft voice "36!", and again the whistle of the whip cutting through the air.

The first time I lashed someone, my first love, it was part of a game. It was the punishment for something she failed to accomplish. The sentence was always light. 10 lashes, maybe 15... that she counted as I hit her.

She always ended up crying and me licking her tears off her face and mouth. Her lowered dress around her waist, her breasts against my chest, her long black hair all over, my shoulder length hair wet with sweat.

We would make love against the same wall she faced during her lashing.

And I thought I wasn't having enough fun.

Now, after so many years, I had Camille who was not much older than that first love of decades back and she did not cry, not even after more than 100 lashes..

Her flesh hissed each time a piece of burning wood fell on her, to be quickly whipped away with the stroke of the whip.

No one stopped the cruel game. The populace was being distracted away from the events, so they would not wonder of the why and the how of the killing of the young senator.

The servant was now the focus of the attention. Everyone knew she had confessed to the crime and had incriminated her lady, the wife of the dead senator.

No one minded her suffering, few pitied her when she slowly and painfully made her way to her cross.

Leticia shook in pain as the 45th lash hit her under her breasts. The end of this part of her suffering, was nearing. Soon she would taste the cross. A new feeling came to her. A feeling of dread.

As much as she wished for the scourging to end, she dreaded the moment it would be finally over. What was to come was far worse.

"46!", the soldier counted. The servant heard the lash, she was also waiting for Leticia's flogging to end. It would hasten her own end.

She was going to be kept alive until her lady was executed. Leticia's end was her own relief.