Am I supposed to feel guilty?

They stand me here, dictate my deeds to a governing crowd, but what's the point? Ain't no way to take back what I'd done. I'd done what I'd done, time to move on. But they all seem so set on parading me for some sort of entertainment, some sick show masquerading as justice. My actions were my choice; don't seem to be much sense in proving me guilty.

The man beside me don't seem to get that.

He blubbers on and on, sometimes audible, sometimes not, sometimes coherent, mostly not. Something about his wife, maybe kids. Second cousin? Sister? I dunno. It's not important who he's leaving behind. If it was, he'd articulate.

The man in power here steps onto the platform, hugging the edge, as if his pastoral shoes have never touched such sinful ground as this. He mops the sheen adorning his forehead and adjusts the intersecting medallion adorning his chest. His mouth opens; words spill from his nervously coated lips. He must be new. This ain't so rare an event.

Pulling out his little blue book, he lays his hand on the cover, eyes fluttering closed, reverent rhymes crawling from under his fuzz of an upper lip. Addressing the crowd, his arms rise, hundreds of lips mimicking his own.

The man beside me chokes back a sob.

Another powerful figure rises beside the first, announces to the crowd again, begins by pointing an official looking finger at my compatriot. With each recounted tally against him the tears fall a little quicker down his sunken cheeks, desperate eyes widening as the gravity of his fate befalls him. I stand still, staring out into the crowd.

The people stare stonily back.

Before long, the finger migrates to point south, drawing an accusatory line through the middle of my chest. My list is much shorter than the crying man's, but apparently worthy of the same show. After a pause, the judicial leader states our obvious consequence. The crowd's silence is almost enough to make a man falter. He doesn't.

Another bout of formality before the first man clambers quickly to the ground, patriarchal robs fluttering in his haste to abandon the souls engraved in the wood grain. The pointing finger follows, and shortly after the crisp echo of a snare rolls across the dewy lawn. The sun has come up hours ago, but still shines almost gently on the square, avoiding the platform beneath the oak like it, too, is wary of the eternity of the place. The man wearing the cross moves to stand in the light. The sun shines a mite brighter for him.

The platform rattles with the weight of the sorrowful gentleman who mounts it. I nod as he passes, hobbling on bones and leather, a grandfather deprived of any offspring. He refuses eye contact. I'm not surprised. His milky eyes seem devoted to naught but his job.

With well-rehearsed steps, he shambles behind my line of sight and fiddles with his pulleys, checks his knots, tightens his grip. My companion is bestowed upon first; I don't turn to watch, but his broken sob filters through my mounting concern. Seven shuffled steps, before I feel my own gift.

The shadow of a man does his job well and despite my feigned indifference I begin to hate him for it. My searching eyes move quicker, scouring face after face with no sign of my goal, and for the first time I start to doubt my promised savior.

Nah. Doubt ain't got a home in my seasoned mind. I've seen enough—hell, I've done enough to know what to expect. According to the public, I'd done enough to warrant punishment. The man who'd found me—he's good people. I can trust him to prevent this disaster.

So why, then, if I am so certain, why then do my palms bleed salt from their pores?

A sharper wind whistles through the leaves above me, shaking the branches and their rotten fruit, the creaking of wood and thread seeping through my front of steely calm. I muster the courage to swallow; my feet shuffle momentarily on the fragile planks below them. Suddenly I am aware of their temporary nature. My gaze flickers to the lever to my right, to the shivering harbinger's skeletal digits splayed obediently atop of it.

Ain't nothing to worry about. I'd did what I'd done, but I ain't deserve what's to come. They surely will recognize it.

The pastoral head raises his arms again, the gargantuan sleeves of his robe unfurling at his sides like great wings, and the company bows their heads, folding their hands. I scan the horizon, and then the buildings surrounding the plaza. He's still not here. He promised he'd be here, where is he?

The proctor steps forward, a comforting presence to the crowd, again lifting his finger to punctuate the markings in his speech, and as he continues to highlight the wrongs I and my fellow prisoner have done, the people's lowered lips move in unison to continue the chant their winged guardian began. The gnarled bones of the barren grandfather creak to attention when the proctor's finger flies up and as if attached to strings, the crowd's eyes soar skyward, basking in the half-shadowed light shining through the great tree. Panic surges in my skin from their hollow stares and my own nose points to the sun.

Directly above, an empty branch, sturdy and bare except for two knotted ropes dangling to rest on the platform. But this barren branch is an oddity on this tree, for swaying gently in the chilling breeze are the leftovers of those who had shattered the law before me, porcelain spines and off-white skulls missing jaws and arms, rags stained with bird droppings and mildew clinging desperately to the shells of what once were humans, some still dropping pockets of oozing flesh to the speckled ground where crows gather in flocks to pick at the ripened treats before them. Leaves flash verdant in the wind, knocking against the strings holding souls tight to this world, fluttering down to blanket the ground where savaged ghosts will trod. Several threads have frayed and dropped their luggage down to the soiled earth, but still others are looped again through each building block of humanity, leaving bones hanging like beads from a knotted bracelet, branches adorned again after the long death of those they carried. Frozen, here, on this raised dais like a lamb brought to the slaughter I stand, staring up at my future, my eternity, cursed to spend tasting the wind as it whistles through my jaw, watching the lives of those who had condemned me through eye sockets empty of reason or rhyme. That high, I am sure, it can be seen the whole of the town spread before this tree. My death, it seems, is to be hung above for a perfect view of life.

Back my head falls, until the crown of my skull bumps the knot on the joining of my necklace, until the rope tied to the branch above me shifts from the motion and suddenly my chin hits my chest again and I'm staring back at the crowd, grasping for anything I can say to stop this. What need have I to stop it, however, if my savior is on his way? Is it not better to stay silent and let the professionals handle this?

I gulp in breath after breath as Proctor continues, storing oxygen as if it can help me when the boards beneath my feet hit the tainted floor and the pulleys on the deck crank my body up, up, up until my neck can't survive the pressure and it snaps, dripping saliva like essence from my slackened jaw—unlike Mary, my body will not be lying exposed in the front room of a speechless little house, my sins won't be buried under the blame of a mourning husband. The man that had found me first, he'd told me I was different, that most would not deem a broken spine as a suitable excuse for welcoming another man between one's legs, that what I'd done was rash and ill-thought-out but I'd done what I'd done and now was time to move on. But now I see what I have done wrong, now I see that my wife's sentence was not one that I had the right of discerning; now I see that if I had simply exposed her as she breathed, it would be her neck cracking under the deadly pressure of this damn rope, not me, it is not I who should be reduced to this gasping mess atop a platform, shown to the masses that all who live in this plucky town shall abide by the law, or the law will punish all. But, again, it ain't the law who pulls the lever but the shadowed son of a bitch resting beside the latch as if he'd ordered his Sunday pie, so it is truly he who has done the murdering, not I. Not I.

My lips pull into a smile, triumphant, my logic sound, my reasoning exact for surely this will save me from this wretched fate but as the words sink in from that deadly, deadly finger I realize that I have not said my piece, that the logic I moments ago was so proud of, did not leave my cursed head and thus am resigned to this slaughter.

A twitch of that finger and the latch on the lever falls to the side, the slack on my puppet's string pulling taught and I rise to my toes to keep from dancing so soon. I refuse to simply go quietly into the leaves, but my lungs are preoccupied with filling with enough oxygen to satisfy my raging heart so no refusal moves past the fear gathering in the corners of my eyes. Chafing wrists pull tighter, closer together, shaking fingers dripping sweat to the deck and suddenly my desperation is coupled by a fury so complete it scorches the wood beneath my toes. How dare they assume they have the right to condemn me, how dare they believe that they can exact this justice. No man can decree the death of another, for if it is done, the death will simply outweigh the life. But through my shadowed eyes I can see no accusatory fingers pointed back at the judicial decree, only the finger stabbing blame into my soul like a stamp for all of Heaven to see how he deemed me unworthy.

That finger opens and the gremlin shifts at his post, and the fury is replaced by terror, white-hot against the backs of my eyes and burning down the length of my spin. My lips stutter into motion, hoping to plea for a change of heart, a shift in moral belief, a bloody heart attack to distract from this, anything at all—but my wheezing breaths are cut from my lungs and they flop languidly on the floor like fish as the man behind the finger calls for any last words.

For once, the man beside me is silent.

Attention shifts to me and I scan the crowd again and again, desperate to see an unfamiliar face, for a chance at my salvation but none appears and as the seconds drag on I come to the realization that I have wasted precious time, time better spent explaining my logic, pleading, crying, begging on my knees for any possibility of survival, time that should be devoted to demanding to be released, time deprived from the fragrance of this massive tree and suddenly I find the words to say, suddenly I know just how to explain to their empty faces that I was just like them and I can continue to be, to convince them that the very last thing I wish in this world is to dance in the sky as the crows scavenge their food from my rotting skin, to show them that by doing this to me they are deserving of the same fate they decided I was.

But the words trip over my tongue and the only thing I can say is a low, guttural whine.

A pause.

And in this pause I can see the outline of every hair, head the chirp of the birds nestled beside the carcasses of those outlaws long gone from this time, in this pause I can see with unlimited length, watch the clock chime in the town across the river, taste the baking bread left in the ovens of the farmhouses too far away for a visit, and for this instant, a moment encompassed by this pause, I can only wait and breath as they make their final decision.

The moment ends. The world resumes. The preacher man moans a final prayer about dust and belonging to it, his bejeweled cross shimmering in sun's favorable shin. The judge closes his powerful, lethal fingers into an angry fist, punctuating the end of his talk. The shadow-man's bones curl around the wooden stake and crank backward. The man beside me closes his eyes, tears like sunken rivers on his cheeks as he stands resolute in this darkness. With a snap, the crowd's faces all turn to see me at once, see me naked as I sway on a braided string, my sins and deeds spread open over the dirt and decidedly not enough. The pulleys creak, wood shifting, the wind kicks up to blow fiercely through the people, stealing the cry of anguish from my teeth and tossing it to the lackluster chorus above me.

The lever hits the back of the platform.

My feet touch air.