Random Horrifying Things That Would Happen to You in an Aztec Flaying Ceremony (10 items)

• 

  (#2) They Stick a Giant Straw Where Your Heart Used to Be

  Now that you’re dead, the real horror begins: your heart is cut out and raised up as an offering to the sun by a terrifying dude called the Night Drinker (the Day Drinker, presumably, passed out hours ago).

  Meanwhile, the rest of your body is treated, bizarrely, like a Capri Sun pouch: a hollow cane is stuck into the gash where your heart used to be, so the sun can “drink” your blood. This “fortifies” the sun, you see, so rest in peace knowing your death wasn’t in vain.
• 

  (#6) They Nail Your Skull to the Wall

  Wrong. Your head is upcycled into a chic bit of interior design, “fastened” to the walls of a temple. Don’t worry, though - you’re definitely not alone up there. In the temple of Huitzilopochtli, for example, the conquering Spanish found “sixty-two thousand skulls of people defeated in wars and sacrificed.” Alas, poor Yoricks!
• 

  (#7) They Make a Stew Out of Your Thigh Meat

  So what about the rest of your body? Don’t worry, it’s not going to waste. One of your thighs will be made into a stew, while the other will be offered to the king. The guy responsible for your capture, oddly enough, won’t eat you out of respect, but he will partake in your fellow P.O.W.s., possibly cooked with peppers and tomatoes and served on beds of maize.

  The guys that made you into an entrée, you’ll be happy to know, will henceforth be “considered gods.”
• 

  (#4) They Make Robes Out of Your Skin

  There’s no gentle way to say this: for the next 20 days, Aztec priests are going to wear your skin like a robe. After carefully skinning you, they dye your dermis yellow to make swanky teocuitlaquemitl, or “golden robes.” The priests then take turns wearing you and your fellow P.O.W.s around town, starting “mock battles” and accepting gifts. Young warriors try to rip chunks of your flesh off to prove their bravery.

  Over the next few weeks, your skin will shrivel and symbolically “fuse” with the priest’s, but it will also begin “stinking like dead dogs.”
• 

  (#8) They Make a Doll Out of Your Femur and Some Heron Feathers

  So you’ve been eaten. Finally you can rest in peace. But wait: what about the inedible parts of you? Is there any way the Aztecs can humiliate those parts? Sure! Your femur, at least, will be used to construct an effigy of you, “dressed in a sleeveless knotted cord jacket and small spray of heron feathers,” which, we’ll have you know, is the height of Aztec femur effigy haute couture.

  To finish the ensemble, the Aztecs will wrap the rest of your femur in paper and give it a little mask. Your effigy will be nicknamed, awesomely, “The God Captive.”
• 

  (#3) They Toss Your Lifeless Body Down the Stairs

  Now that you’ve been relieved of your heart and the sun’s nice and hydrated, your body gets tossed “gently” down the temple stairs, “breaking to pieces” and bouncing “head over heels,” according to the Spaniards observing the scene, trying not to retch. Your limp and heartless meatsack lands in a lump at the base of the temple, leaving an “enormous outpouring of blood” in its wake.

  The worst, unfathomably, is yet to come. They’re just getting started.

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking