rebog if you wanna pin a girl to a heavy wood door with a ballista bolt 5' long and thick as your wrist
fired - and i cannot emphasize this enough - from a siege engine on the other side of the ballroom
I... but what if we wanna catch her like midway through the room so the force of the bolt picks her up and carries her the rest of the way across to get nailed to the wall?
oh for sure i just mean the siege engine and the door are at opposite ends. you definitely wanna do this when she's 25-35 feet from the door so it catches her full in the chest and she has just an instant of silent graceful time hanging in the air before she slams full against the door, bolt sunk into the wood, toes inches above the fresh-blood-spattered marble tiles & scrambling for purchase
the tips of her toes (she's barefoot, she was trying to sneak into the castle) are just barely able to touch the floor where her blood is pooling and they are slipping on the cold tile leaving little trails in the blood as she tries to get enough contact with the floor to lift herself even a little bit from where her entire bodyweight is sat on the socket of the bolthead, where the shaft is secured, where it sits just below her sternum lodged straight through her, her weight pulling down against the meeting of her ribs & her hands scrambling on the length of the bolt & she can't. quite. breathe
the drips of blood are audible on the stone. only the big ones. it's the middle of the night and the castle is quiet. the baker won't be up for an hour. the door to which you are now literally transfixed has stopped creaking on its old iron hinges from when your body slammed into it a few seconds ago. from across the room you hear me sigh. you listen to the steady click of my calfskin boots on the chessboard marble tiles of the ballroom as i slowly cross to look at you appraisingly.
you're gasping for breath that won't come. i walk up close and tuck a lock of hair behind your ear; wipe a tiny smear of blood from where it's trickled out of your mouth. i taste it. you barely manage a cough. i ask dispassionately if you're still alive. you gurgle. your toes are still slipping against the cold marble. the blood is stickier now that there's more of it. you feel a rib crack as you settle a few centimeters lower. you're fighting to stay awake.
you don't hear it but as you're getting dizzy you suddenly notice my hound has padded to my side and is now licking the puddle of your blood. and now it's licking your toes. you try to keep your eyes open and you see that i'm staring at you unblinking, just watching your face. the dog bites your foot gingerly, like an experiment. all you can manage is a wheezy sexual-sounding whine.
i click my tongue approvingly without looking away from you. you try to scream but instead you spit up blood on your chin and neck: the dog is eating your foot. you can feel it and because you can't scream you can hear it too. the crunching. wet. i'm still just looking at your face. you didn't know it took this long to bleed to death. you try to beg me with your eyes. i lean to one side and take a deep appreciative breath, and watch you die.
