Last Meals

Some people are taken with certain things.

I am not prepared to say I am unusually morbid or macabre, but last meals have always fascinated me.

I don’t know if this story is true or not.

A prisoner was condemned to die.

I don’t know whether he was due to die by hanging, electrocution, firing squad, or a combination of lethal drugs, the common methods of capital punishment in the USA.

Those who may be against capital punishment may aver none of the above methods are humane.

But they are considerably more humane than some other methods of termination with extreme prejudice humans have devised.

During WWII, Japanese soldiers would, on occasion, flay their prisoners.

Other prisoners were killed more slowly.

Lacking refrigeration while on the move, the starving Japanese would sometimes become cannibalistic and would remove parts of the body of their prisoners slowly, while the victim was still alive, the better to preserve freshness.

Flaying was the means by which St. Bartholomew was martyred.

Just in case flaying wasn’t sufficient, he was also beheaded.

But even those acts pale in comparison with the means of cruelty man has devised over time.

The major prophet Isaiah was purported placed in a log.