by Nicolas Verhoeven

Created on: February 06, 2009

A nude man took to the streets as a group of guards chased him from the crowd of passers by. The man, white beard and skinny white limbs and torso, went stumbling down the steep and narrow street, frantic for his life and making the most effort he could with a gash in his upper right thigh. Bloodied and sporting a swollen leg that grudgingly held his weight for seconds at a time, the man took to hobbling down Truth street. The guards jeered after him "Why so hasty, Socrates?" as they continued their chase, arms in hand. Only a minute or so went by, in which time the soldiers had caught the nude and were tossing him around within their midst. They asked him why he told such ridiculous stories of so called "Truths" and "wisdom". Before he was able to respond in some form of retaliation, one of the men thrust him to the ground, reached forward, grabbed his long white hair in an effort to whip his head back, pressed on his cheeks to open his mouth, pulled his dagger from it's sheath and violently sliced the poor man's tongue off with many hacking and prodding movements. Promptly, from the first cut to the last, the wild man cried a bitter song. The narrow way was filled with the intensity of a repetitive cave echo of howls of blood muffled pleas to stop. The first word was uttered in clarity and from one slash to the next, the words became more mute, more indistinguishable. The fluid red filled the throat and overflowed the teeth, splattering onto the stone road under his knees. The eyes pushed out salty hatred as Socrates realized his days of word had closed eternally. His torturer stepped away with a grin stretched lazily across his face as he watched the elderly man writhe on the ground sobbing and screaming childishly in pain and absolute loss. His fellows looked on with varying degrees of pleasure pushing itself onto their scripted figures. Each looked at the man with something no less than unmerited anger as they pointed, laughed, and watched the spectacle unravel itself. "Pitiful" they thought, "The gods should damn him, he is of no use spreading distasteful ideas". Socrates' aggressor then suggested: "Why stop there? Let us break his hands and arms so he may no longer preach in any form, not even in mimicry." This was met with joyous acknowledgement and allowance. "Yes, yes!" they shouted, and so it happened. The power was once again dropped upon the nude mute. Two grabbed his arms and threw him flat chested across the road while the previous aggressor

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