Visit the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s for a lively selection of slow and agonizing choices.
Anything that involves gradual dismemberment, being eaten alive slowly (whether by rats, eagles, ants, or whatever), being pierced and suspended from a tender body part, or being cooked would rank pretty high with me. The Tudors series showed us several barbaric methods of dispatch, of which I thought being boiled was probably the worst. In Haing S. Ngor’s book The Killing Fields, being suspended for three days over a slow-burning fire of rice husks seems to have been a standout, but the Khmer Rouge were also gruesomely fond of tying prisoners to a stake, cutting out their liver, and cooking and eating it in front of them. By comparison, a nice, swift beheading or even rapid consumption by piranhas seems merciful.