I am going to die. That is what I think on the first step. The reality of the situation hits me hard and fast. The pain is as physical as it is quick. I gasp and double over only to receive a rough kick from the guard behind me. I stumble forward but do not take the second step yet. I can’t. It might as well be on the other side of the Earth.

Tears prick my eyes. I want to wipe them away but my hands are bound. For a moment I fight against the rope that ties them together. I feel it bite into my flesh quickly followed by a brilliant blossoming of pain. I would be lying if I told you some wretched part of me did not enjoy it. Tears streak down my cheeks. When they get close enough I lick them away my tongue darting from my mouth. They are hot and taste of salt. I marvel at that for a moment. For a sweet brilliant second that is all that has my attention.

I gasp as a shove from behind jolts me from my thoughts. I take the second step before I even realize what I have done. Fear clutches at my breast. I cannot breathe. I do not belong here. I push back into a wall of flesh. The guard behind me grunts in surprise.

“Please, please, please don’t do this,” I beg. A sob catches my throat.

The guard says nothing.

“Please, just leave me here,” I ask. My breaths are coming hard and fast. Surely I look insane. The idea gives me a sick thrill. My stomach lurches and I bend over to retch.

“Just leave me alone,” I try again. Desperation tinges my voice. It disgusts me. I vomit wishing I could wipe my mouth.

The guard stays silent. I wonder if he can even hear me. Perhaps I am mumbling or ranting. Maybe I am no longer making any sense at all.

The next step is sagging as if preparing itself for my weight. When I step on it, it creaks softly. The air smells of summer, warm, wild, and electric. It ignites my veins sharp and sweet as a mother’s smile. Mother, the word brings an image to mind, old and faded with age of the hard worn woman who raised me. Mother, what would she think if she saw me now? I am dirty and filthy covered in my own waste.



“Let me change,” I demand.

The guard says nothing.

“Please, I just want to wash up,” I sigh.

Silence.

“Please, what if my mother is out there? She’d cry,” I say. I stare angrily down at my shirt as if it has betrayed me, gathering filth in its endeavor to embarrass me, to discredit the name of my mother. The grime stares back unperturbed. The guard shifts behind me annoyed, I must move.

My legs feel like lead by the time I take the fourth step. It looks tainted, its span is dark dingy and worn. It suits me somehow, something like that. Does it feel as I do worn and filthy and used?
What exactly does it mean to be tainted? How does one become as such? Is it a person’s exposure to darkness, or the willingness to accept it? I mull over the idea, tasting it. Am I dirty? Have I sinned enough to be cast away for the rest of eternity? People have called me dirty before, spat on me, kicked me. Was I born this way? Is one born tainted? Was I doomed from the start? My mind shies away from the idea; some innate instinct awakening pushing me away from the deepest recesses of the human psyche, saving me from the insanity that is forever lurking. I should rest, it tells me. And I want nothing more than to close my eyes and surrender to the sweet oblivion of sleep, where I’d no longer have to think, somewhere far away, so very far from this place. The very idea makes me giddy. I sway on my feet. The guard grabs for me, thinking I’m trying to escape. The notion is absurd. How I am I to escape when I can barely stand?

The guard shoves me roughly up to the next step. I become very, very aware that I am forgetting something. I search through my mind, jumbled and wrecked as it is from years of drugs and self medication. I look around quietly, softly, touching gingerly upon half forgotten memories.

Whatever it is I’ve forgotten has buried itself far too deep. I begin to doubt if I’ve anything to remember at all. There is an empty space, a place bare and clear of memories where cobwebs grow clinging to the walls of my mind. In the shadows something has begun to stir, reaching its hand out waiting for me to grasp at it. Waiting for me to remember. I can feel it beginning to disappear its form melding into the corner until there is nothing left but its faint profile and the niggling sensation in the back of my mind. Without even thinking, I step forward.

A burning sensation builds in my chest. This cannot be happening. I have to be somewhere else; anywhere but here. The guard at my back is nothing more than an illusion. The damned steps in front of me do not exist either. I turn on the guard my gaze burning.

“What the Hell do you think you’re doing,” I scream at the top of my lungs. I try to lash out. If nothing else is real, the ropes around my wrists are. Instead I flail at him the best I can. I try to beat him back; even a single step would give me some sense of gratification.

“Why are you following me? Why don’t you go back?” I yell. I try head butting him but I can’t get enough momentum I can’t do any damage without getting a running start. There is something stopping me from taking the next step. Even though I know there is nothing but air before me, all I see are steps.

“Just leave me alone,” I cry.

The guard says nothing.

“Why won’t you speak to me? Can you not understand what I am saying? Which country is this?” I’m shrieking. In my panic I switch through a number of languages that I had forgotten I’d even known. They change quickly the words spilling fluently from my lips. But I’m just saying the same thing over and over again; Speak to me, speak to me, speak to me.

The man remains silent.

“What is wrong with you?” I cry, angry tears burning down my cheeks.

The guard remains silent.

A whimper escapes my throat. I want to hear something anything.

“Will you please just talk to me?” I ask. My voice is barely louder than a whisper.

The only thing the guard does is push me upwards my food landing heavily on the next step.

The whole situation strikes me as absurd. What am I doing? Crying, getting angry, and begging? And what for? What is so important that I would give up my dignity without a second thought?

The word of a man I do not even know the name of? What do I think will happen? Do I think everything would be cleared up if only he spoke to me? I am beyond that, so far beyond hope for change.

Laughter bubbles in my chest a mirthless laugh with edges sharp as glass. The man behind me is nothing more than a pawn, a sacrificial lamb. He has no more answers than a common fool. I will gain nothing even if he speaks to me. I laugh louder, because after all there is not much left to do.

I take the next step without any prompting my foot landing with a non-committal thunk that is so normal, so utterly misplaced that I marvel at it for a moment. I begin to pray. I cannot tell you why I started, whether it was desperation or a flaring up of hope or simply that I was thankful for a bit of normalcy. It’s something that I have not done in a longtime I’ve almost forgotten how. I wonder why it matters to me all of a sudden. I’ve never believed much in God. He was always too far, too distant, too impossible. But as I shuffle along on this step I mumble half-remembered prayers. I’ve had to have heard them hundreds of times and yet I do not know all the words. I think of all the times I’ve been to church and never bothered to listen. I never thought that it would come to matter. Maybe if I’d gotten a bit older things would be different I’d have learned to love God.

Maybe I wouldn’t blame Him for all the things that happened.

A sad smile plants itself on my lips. What cruel irony, in the moment I am meant to believe in Him I am filled with doubt.

I take the ninth step a feeling of hopelessness rising in my chest. I try to ignore it because I was taught that there is always hope. I can’t push the feeling away. I hurry to the next step before the tears return.

The tenth step sags before me. As I take my step I wonder how many other people have stood here, quiet, solemn. Did they think about the same things I’ve thought about? Or did they simply step upon it with a solemn sense of finality, some sort of final stand, their final decision before they reached the top. Did the others think this their last moment of control. I imagine them the hundreds, the thousands that have stood here before me. Had their hands been bound so tightly behind their backs? Had they cried or laughed or gotten angry like some poor trapped beast awaiting the butchers knife?

I look around. I hadn’t realized I was so high up, there are only a few steps separating me from the top. Had the others noticed? Or had the final step been an unpleasant surprise? Had they stepped into thin air shock crossing their features as they realized they were at the top? Had they looked up shocked yearning desperately for the steps they had left behind?

I shake my head and move my feet up to the next step. Someone whispers. I look around frantically. I can hear them, their taunting voice sounding far below. The guard behind me yanks at the ropes trying to keep me still. I look for the voice’s source but I cannot find it. I know that my moving is aggravating the guard but I do it anyway. The whispering is growing louder if I strain I can almost understand what its saying.

“Can you hear that?” I ask the guard. I do not bother waiting for his response. I already know that he has nothing to say. So I ask more for myself than anything. The man behind me might as well be a brick wall.

“The whispering, do you know what its saying?” I ask no one in particular. The whispering continues frustratingly out of reach. The sweet breadth of rosemary reaches my nose.

I take the twelfth step my mind is elsewhere. The rosemary distracts me. It reminds of someone sometime ago something sweet and delicate, the smell of blood.

I feel its warmth dripping down my skin, the feel of flesh, soft and supple under my hands. The crack of bone rings through my ears. The sounds are bright, brilliant and exhilarating. I feel awake as if for the first time in a long time.

The whisper in my ear belongs to a woman. She had broken so easily yet she had refused to scream. She was special, even when I cut her and broke her digging my hands deep inside her blood sopping through my fingers she whispered, cursing me. She promised my name eternal damnation. I had tried to explain to her why I did such things. I knew I should be angry. The weak soft thing under my hands had refused to obey me. But all I felt was sadness; I had desperately wanted her to understand. I told her that she was weak and that I was strong. I told her that was the way the world worked but she refused me my pleasure, down to her last breath. She spent it instead on that whispering, her breath smelling of rosemary, melancholy soft. I truly am damned. I smile a laugh bubbling in my throat.

The guard pushes me to the last step. The thirteenth step. More voices join hers louder voices, screaming my name, begging forgiveness asking me to spare them. I never listened I killed them all. It didn’t matter men, women, children all perished at my hands because they were weak.

The gallows tower above me the noose hanging limply from the end of the rope, my noose. The guard slips a bag over my head; the coarse fabric rubbing against my cheek. A low hum resounds inside; I haven’t realized I’d been humming. The song has a cheerful tune I had learned it when I was younger the lyrics running through my head.

Thirteen steps
And then there’s red
Dangling is a young man’s head
He begged and cried
He cried and begged
And there he swings good and dead
The gallows creak
The mice squeak
Chewing on the young man’s feet
They cried and begged
They begged and cried
And none of them came out alive

The noose is placed around my neck. I start singing trying to drown out the pounding of my heart. The ground beneath me creaks; suddenly the entire situation seems impossible.

I cannot die.

I am the strongest. I cannot be killed. I am a killer, invincible all powerful. I am God. They can’t kill me. I will survive long enough to kill them all. Every last one of them will break under my hands. I laugh, loud and wild and free. No one can kill me. I will live forever. I will live.

The ground beneath my feet shifts and disappears. There is the sound of wind rushing by and a crack, then there is nothing at all.