Whipping & Flogging

They don't stop at making a point, they keep on past counting, and your back becomes one wound. Blood loss and shock take you somewhere gray before they cut you down, and the lattice of it will never fully fade.

• Face-down bed rest; you cannot lie on your back or wear a shirt against skin for 7 days
• Fever-watch: this many open stripes in 1899 is a sepsis gamble
• Permanent lattice scarring across the whole back
• /me lies face-down, back swathed in linen, voice worn down to short answers

Recovery Weeks face-down under a doctor's daily care, silk sutures and carbolic; alone, blood loss and fever may finish the job.·Doctor, urgently

Somewhere past the fifteenth lash the skin stops holding and the world starts swimming. They cut you down when your knees quit, and your shirt goes into the fire because no washboard will save it.

• Cannot lie on your back or carry anything across your shoulders for 7 days
• Lightheaded when standing quickly for 3 days, blood loss debt
• Broad scarring across the shoulders where the worst stripes crossed

Recovery 3-4 weeks with sutures and daily dressing; untreated, the deep stripes fester and scar jagged and raised.·Doctor required

A dozen lashes laid on with care, and half of them split the skin in long, clean lines. It looks like something read by lamplight in a penny dreadful, and it needs silk sutures more than sympathy.

• Stitched stripes: no bending, lifting, or riding hard for 5 days lest they tear
• Sleeping face-down for 7 days
• /me sits forward in every chair, keeping their back from touching anything

Recovery 2-3 weeks with a doctor's stitching and carbolic; on your own, the open lines sour and the scars come up ropey.·Doctor required

You raised your arms and the quirt found your face anyway, cracking across the brow a half inch above the eye. The eye is spared, barely, but it's swollen shut, and the split brow bleeds like it's paid to.

• One eye swollen shut for 3 days, no depth, no shooting worth a damn
• A split brow stitched and sure to scar thin and white
• Headache that pulses with your heartbeat for 2 days

Recovery Stitched, it heals in 2 weeks with the eye opening in days; unstitched, the brow gapes and scars wide.·Doctor required

Five or six lashes, and two of them opened skin over your shoulder blades. The welts beneath your shirt have their own geography now, and every strap, chair back, and friendly slap is enemy territory.

• No pack, bandolier, or bedroll strap across the back for 4 days
• Two open stripes dressed daily
• /me eases their shirt away from their shoulders with two fingers, wincing

Recovery 10-14 days with clean dressing; let them open and dirty and the stripes scar raised.·Doctor required

The skin held but the flesh beneath did not. Welts thick as dock rope crisscross your back and shoulders, hot to the touch and purple by nightfall, and lying down is a negotiation you lose.

• Sleep face-down or sitting up for 4 days
• No sudden twisting or hauling for 3 days
• Welts visible for 2-4 weeks anytime your shirt is off

Recovery 2-4 weeks for the deep bruising to fade; witch hazel and cold cloths take the edge off the first week.·Doctor required

You wrapped your arms over your head and they took the toll instead. Both forearms are welted and split in defensive stripes, the kind any lawman or doctor reads at a glance and doesn't ask about.

• Forearms welted and cut; gripping and lifting sting for 3 days
• Defensive stripes, long sleeves or long explanations
• /me pulls their cuffs down over welted forearms without thinking

Recovery 10 days to heal clean if dressed; the marks tell their tale for 2-3 weeks.·Doctor required

Three stripes went deep enough to bleed freely, and they show through every shirt you own within the hour. Carbolic and clean linen aren't optional, infected stripes scar jagged, raised, and permanent.

• Bleeds through shirts without fresh dressing twice a day for 3 days
• No lying on your back for 4 days
• Whiskey-and-carbolic washes that hurt nearly as much as the whip

Recovery 2 weeks dressed and clean; fester them and you earn raised jagged scars and a fever besides.·Doctor required

A belt, doubled over, applied like you were a schoolboy caught smoking, which is precisely the humiliation they intended. The bruising is real and banded, but it's your pride wearing the deepest welt.

• Banded bruising across the backside and thighs; sitting a saddle is grim for 3 days
• Choosing to stand at the bar, and everyone slowly working out why

Recovery A week for the bruises; the story, regrettably, lasts longer.·Doctor advised

Three lashes, delivered slow with questions in between. The skin held, but three welts rise across your back like fresh plow lines, and your shirt reminds you of each one all day long.

• Three raised welts that argue with your shirt for 3 days
• No leaning back in chairs for 2 days
• /me stands rather than sits, rolling their shoulders carefully

Recovery Welts flatten in a week to 10 days; cold compresses the first night help most.·Doctor advised

The lash wrapped over your shoulders where a pack would sit, which was no accident. The welts run right along the strap lines, and every bag, bedroll, and rifle sling has become a personal insult.

• Nothing carried on the shoulders for 4 days, saddlebags earn their keep
• Welts across the shoulders visible at any open collar

Recovery About 10 days; padding the strap lines with folded cloth lets you cheat by day 5.·Doctor advised

One flick of the quirt caught your cheek, a red welt from ear to jaw that no collar or hat brim will hide. It will fade, but for the next week or so, your face tells the story before you decide to.

• A visible face welt for 5-7 days that everyone asks about
• Chewing on that side pulls the welt for 2 days
• /me touches the welt along their cheek when they think no one's watching

Recovery Fades in about a week without a trace, unless it split, then a thin line stays.·Doctor advised

The lash landed over clothes more than skin, and what's left is bruising in tidy parallel bands across your back. Ugly as sin in a mirror, stiff as a plank come morning, but whole.

• Stiff back every morning for 4 days; the first hour is the worst
• Parallel banded bruises for 2 weeks anytime your shirt is off

Recovery Bruises fade through their colors in about 2 weeks; a hot bath works wonders.·Doctor advised

They never made you take the coat off, and the wool ate most of what the belt delivered. You're smarting in stripes and your dignity is thoroughly tanned, but the skin barely colored.

• Light smarting stripes for 1 day
• A distinct reluctance to sit hard on wooden benches today

Recovery By tomorrow it's just a story you tell in second person.·No doctor needed

Of the lashes threatened, only one truly landed, a single hot line across the shoulder that has already gone from white to red to complaining. One welt does not make a whipping, but it does make a point.

• A single welt across the shoulder, tender for 2 days
• An involuntary flinch when anything cracks or snaps nearby

Recovery Faded in 4-5 days, no mark left behind.·No doctor needed

Most of it was noise, the whip cracking air a foot from your ear, which your body treated as gospel every single time. A graze or two reddened your neck, but the sweat you lost outweighs the blood.

• Reddened graze at the neck, gone in 2 days
• You duck at loud cracks, whips, doors, distant shots, for a few days
• /me flinches hard at the crack of a wagon whip across the street

Recovery Skin settles in 2 days; nerves take the week.·No doctor needed

You twisted right at the right moment and the lash tip merely clipped you, opening a shallow cut on the point of the shoulder no longer than a thumbnail. It stings smartly and bleeds a thin line, and that's the whole of it.

• A thumbnail-length shallow cut, plastered for 2 days
• Stiff shoulder from all the flinching, gone tomorrow

Recovery Closed in 3 days; not even worth a scar.·No doctor needed

Heavy wool, a lined collar, and poor aim, the lash spent itself on your coat with a sound like beaten carpet. There's a torn seam at the shoulder and a faint pink line on you, and the tailor will suffer more than you did.

• One faint pink line, invisible by morning
• A whip-torn coat seam to get mended, or leave as evidence

Recovery Nothing to heal but the coat.·No doctor needed

Whoever held the whip misjudged the range all night, and the tip kept dying in the air a foot short of your skin. You flinched forty times and were struck approximately once, over cloth, softly.

• A patch of pink on one shoulder blade, gone by morning
• Hoarse from yelling at every crack, honestly the worst of it

Recovery A night's sleep and it never happened, except in your dreams for a day or two.·No doctor needed

On the big wind-up the lash snags the rafter hook above, and physics passes its own sentence, the tip snaps back and stripes the man holding it across his own cheek. You take one soft welt through cloth; he takes the scar and the legend.

• One faint welt through your shirt, gone in a day
• The unshakable memory of his face, and witnesses to swear by it
• /me barely hides a grin at the sound of any whip crack

Recovery Nothing to speak of, he's the one who needs the doctor.·No doctor needed