Witnessed 1

"Witnessed" I hear said behind me. So simple a word. So very simple a word to end a man's life with.

Swallowing I feel the tight cord biting at my Adam's apple. Looking out over the crowd I wish they would hurry with the hood. I don't want to see these faces looking at me anymore.

I'll still have to hear the voices.

"Ya going to dance for us?" one calls out to me.

"Satin's imps are waiting for ya!" screams out a second.

A woman's voice! I can't place her in the crowd but I know that voice! Little Mary Throward, I danced with her at the Spring Planting Festival. My eyes after a moment find her in the press of people. When our eyes met I see her look uncomfortable for a second then a look of disgust crosses her face and she flings a rotten apple at me.

The soft fruit impacts my chest lightly but burst all the same. The sick sweet smell of it drifts up to cover the less than sweet smells of the other things that have been thrown at me today.

It can't hide one smell though. The stench of fear that's rising up off me. It must hang around me like a fog.

Then the black bag is over my head. Within seconds I wish it wasn't there. The cloth stinks and is sucked in with every breath. I can tell it's never been washed. I taste the last breath of the person who wore it before me.

"For the crime of Rape you will now be hung till dead."

The words of the town Magistrate come through the cloth all too clear.

"Witnessed."

Rape? It wasn't rape. She came willingly into my arms. Her breath a ragged pant... of fear... from the dogs that had been chasing her. I held her to me as she cried and whimpered. Then she stopped crying and turned to look up at me and I had kissed her

Just that, just a kiss.

A started feeling from her then, like a bird caught by hand. She had fluttered in my arms just like that. Frightened just like a little bird caught. Then she had softened, relaxed in my arms, her lips coming to respond to mine. It was her that tumbled us into the hay pile. It was her that began to pull and tear at my clothes to get to me.

How wonderful her teats had been when my mouth closed around her nipple. The simple shift she wore no bar for a growing passion. Then there was the feeling of her hand on my shaft. The fingers unskilled but wonderfully soft.

"For the crime of Adultery you will now be hung until dead."

"Witnessed."

She had not told me she was married. Not then, so very much she didn't tell me then. Not when my length slid into her, not during the whole long time that I drove myself into her. Her hands had clawed at my bare back tearing red gouges across the flesh. Blood had run in carmine rivulets down my back and sides.

The memory of them causes me to flinch a bit, which sets my back aflame again. The blow of the whip...two dozen lashes! I had screamed my throat raw long before the last one landed. When every lash landing on a scratch she had made, till they all disappeared under the larger splits in my skin.

"For the crime of Deflowering an Innocent you will now be hung until dead."

"Witnessed."

The blood on me after we were finished had been a surprise given the fury with which she had attacked me. I can only guess that the fear of the dogs followed by the joy at my rescuing her was enough to unsettle her. When I kissed her I must have broken something in her mind that caused her passion to awaken. Awaken ungoverned by knowledge of how to handle it.

"Ya sick bastard!"

Something hits me then harder than an apple.

The executioner's hand comes to rest on my shoulder to steady me. He gives me a pat of comfort.

I almost chuckle at the. The man about to take my life wishes me to be comforted. I wonder again who might be under the hood. Names were drawn by hidden lot, with only the drawer knowing who would pull the lever. The hood, left on the church steps, had vanished in the night. The man behind me had appeared this morning to do his duty in clothes anyone could wear.

"For the crime of Defilement of a Holy Place you will now be hung till dead."

"Witnessed."

I wish they would just get this over with and at the same time wish it would never end. I can feel the heat already rising up under me. The hot fires of Hell coming to greet the newest lost soul.

They had refused me a priest to hear my sins. Said what I had done warranted the flames and such would be given.

I hear the piece of parchment being rolled up behind me and I know it's time. A soft whimper escapes me then. I wish I had been man enough to contain it. At least only the man in the hood behind me is close enough to have heard it.

"Does the condemned have anything to say?"

If it didn't hurt so much I would chuckle at that. What was done to my tongue makes speech impossible. The Magistrate knows this but asks anyway.

"Given your offence I will not ask for God's mercy as your actions deserve none."

His feet are loud as thunder on the wooden gallows as he walks away from me. So are the steps of the hooded man behind me

My breath is a pant now. I wish I could calm it but I can't, I wish I could speak but I can't, I wish the hood wasn't here so I could see the sky and feel the warmth of the sun on my face. I wish I could look one last time into the face of the woman.

The beautiful woman I made love to. That I held in my arms in a haystack. Comforting her, first with kisses and then with passion when terror had unhinged her.

I wish the hood would vanish so that I could look down from here and see that face that but moments ago I wanted to not have to look at.

That beautiful woman. Her lovely hair now hidden. Her incredible body now hidden. Her swelling belly now hidden.

So many things now hidden from my sight but even though terror blind me... I can still see that one thing that I wish I had never laid my eyes upon.

The black habit of her nuns robes.

I'm still trying to drive that image from my mind when a tightening rope chokes off my last breath...

*

(Wrote for the fun of writing it. Hope it was enjoyable.)