impactful short story 
 feels like being immersed immediately in protagonist's terror and despair. 
 facing an unknown punishment at hands of Inquisition. 
 variously accepting his fate, fighting to live and consumed by apparent and unknown fate. 
 the periodic murderous pendulum, the inevitable approach of death as our time ticks by, momenti mori 
 That the result would be death, and a death of more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the character of my judges to doubt. The mode and the hour were all that occupied or distracted me. 
 Days passed--it might have been that many days passed--ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath. The odor of the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed--I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm, and lay smiling at the glittering death, as a child at some rare bauble