The Executioner

The Executioner
I never thought that the job would end up like this.  I never expected something so gruesome… the blade comes down again.  The crowd cheers, the head is held to the crowd, and another innocent walks up the scaffold.  The Reign of Terror is just beginning, and hundreds have already been killed needlessly.  People are chained up and executed daily for doing nothing.  A child yesterday was killed for cutting down a tree that was planted in the name of liberty.  A child just like him is in line for beheading… the next victim’s head is placed in the locks.  The blade begins to be lifted; the crowd comes to a hush.  The sun shines off the still-wet blood that was sticking to the dried blood from the day before, and the day before, and the day before, hundreds, thousands, of different people’s lives cut short by the same blade.  The glare disappears as the blade falls again.  We once thought that the Revolution would bring order, but this is anarchy.  People are being killed for mere accusations and hearsay.  A woman walks up the scaffolding.  Tears are running down her face, her cheeks are red from crying.  Her hair is matted, her dress is torn.  She was obviously taken from her home to be executed, and just got here from the one-and-a-half hour trip in a dirty wagon through the crowds.  Some of the crowd began to whisper to themselves.  I heard the name of the woman, along with how she was helping with the Revolution.  I wonder why she is going to be beheaded?  Probably for no specific reason, someone probably just said that she was going to betray the Revolution.  She is laid down at the guillotine, where so many had died before.  I pull the rope. Higher, higher, until its peak, the glare returns, and I can already taste the blood in the air, before the blade falls… and so it does.  I sigh to myself.  The blade must be getting dull, as it did not go all the way through.  Again.  They manually remove the head, yet another disgusting site.  Now the people behind her will be tortured by the crowd, and will want to be killed even sooner.  But until we get a sharpened blade, that nightmarish dream can’t be fulfilled.  I take a deep breath, and I can smell the booze and wine on the breath of the crowd, the thousands of drunkards that seem to reach no limit of hatred for both the aristocracy and their own kind alike.  They wave branches, symbolizing the liberty tree, they wave shovels, symbolizing the fighting in the war of peasant versus aristocracy, and they wave food, simply because they want to see the executions badly enough that they would eat at the courtyard of death.  I can smell the blood as well, as it mixed with the booze to make a hideous scent of death and disease.  One cannot bear the torture of watching them, the innocent townsfolk.  Someone like me watching them being killed is tearing me up on the inside as much as it does them on the outside.  I’m not sure how much longer I can stand being involved in this.  Oh joy, a soldier has arrived with the new blade.  Shining in the light, it replaces the old guillotine.  The crowd cheers as I pull the rope with my calloused, but blistered hands.  The weight of the blade has become unbearable, not only on the body, but on the soul.  The weight it bears on a person, the weight of countless deaths on one’s shoulders, is unbearable to hold, so I release the rope, and release the blade.  Another citizen is executed.  Twelve more to go for the day, that’s all.  Just twelve more.  Any more and I might not be able to sleep tonight.  I have not for the past five, now that I think of it.  I have not had sleep on my mind, only the faces of the people who die, as they look at me with eternal despair.  I try to avoid the vile looks on the faces that come from the basket, the basket that is soaked with blood.  I might not be able to sleep tonight, but I only have a week until I will be done with this job.  Just one more week, one more week, one more week…