The Hanging or A Story of Tobias Wess

The rope was tight around his neck, but he didn't seem to mind. Why would he? Tobias Wess had been dead for several hours now, as the executioner, the priest, and half the villagers who attended the hanging had already confirmed. Without a doubt, Tobias Wess had been found guilty of all charges by Gerard - who acted as Milltown’s mayor and treasurer when it wasn’t hunting season, and head deer hunter when it was - and was hanged for his crimes on an apple tree on a rainy Sunday in front of the god-abiding population of sixty of his most law-abiding peers.

It was remarkably itchy under his beard, though. On instinct, Tobias lifted his arm and scratched his neck. Ah. Much better. He let his arm drop. Then he grimaced, as a thought crossed his mind; he had lifted his arm. His eyes shot open.

Little Samuel Gerbers was standing a few paces ahead - and just below him. The half-eaten apple the boy had plucked from the punishment tree was now rolling on the muddy ground, his jaw dropped more than should be biologically normal, his eyes wide-open. Then he screamed. They both screamed.

The whole village assembled within minutes. Tobias could make out some prominent figures in the baffled crowd; the school teacher, half-shaven with a gash that might have been dangerous if it had occurred a few inches to the right, the butcher with his enormous belly hanging low underneath his nightgown (it was common knowledge that he equally loved naps and meat from his shop), one of the apothecary's young assistants (the clumsy one), and, finally, two people he had gotten to know all too well; the visiting judge who had decided his fate and read his sentence in the steady, impassive voice of an experienced orator, and the borough’s executioner who had non-apologetically placed a braided noose around his neck.

Tobias was still feeling a little groggy, but there was one thing he remembered very clearly: that the whole experience had been very painful, and that he had been tried and hanged for crimes he had not committed.

After a long time of gasping, pointing, staring, whispering, praying, fainting, and general disbelief and confusion, he decided he had had enough. He cleared his throat.

"Ahem."

Clearly not loud enough. His voice felt very coarse, probably because of the recent strain on his vocal cords, but he could breathe well enough to attempt again.

"Ahem."

Still nothing. He eyerolled. There was a squirrel on the branch to his left, looking as perplexed as the onlookers below his feet. One of its cheeks was stuffed, but it was too distracted to stuff the other. Squirrels are not used to moving hanged men. The furry tail soon disappeared back the way it had come from.

"AHEM!"

This time, some people finally noticed the dead body had something to say, and started elbowing and shushing their neighbours. Quickly enough, only faint whispers could still be heard from the crowd.

"Um, greetings, all," Tobias smiled shyly and waved, causing an old man to fall on his knees and reach to the sky with both arms. His wife fainted soon after, but he didn't seem to care once it was clear she wouldn’t collapse on him. "I believe you'd like some explanation as to what is happening," - small pause to assess the response, heads are nodding, very encouraging - "and to be honest, so do I. I woke up to find myself, well, up here. I have no recollection of anything since the…," he gestured lifting his shoulders and hands, "since the hanging I suppose, which at the time seemed to have been successful," Tobias said as he turned to his left to nod at the executioner, who was clearly going through a professional existential crisis and was re-evaluating his whole career path that led to that particular day. The priest was hiding behind him clutching some sort of token tied around his belt with one hand, and the executioner’s bulky arm with the other.

The rest of the crowd was going through a similar emotional turmoil, trying to process, on top of everything else, the image of a body hanging from the head gesturing so casually. Some of them dared to take a step closer to hear better and were met with no resistance from the rest of the not-so-brave - or curious - onlookers.

The judge seemed unimpressed. He wasn't looking at what should have been Tobias's limp body with the same amazement as the rest of the crowd. His lips were pushed together, his eyebrows hanging lower above his eyes, his gaze fixed on the strange occurrence. Bony fingers were wrapped around a dark red book, that was only made visible when the wind made his dark cape dance around his skeletal body. Tobias had initially thought him very old, but he didn’t ever tremble under the cold or the long process of the hanging ceremony, that constituted of a reading of the charges, a long sermon on lawfulness and the importance of denouncing evil, and finally, the unforgettable main affair that was the actual hanging.

Tobias went on, cutting into the whispers that had started to take shape again. "Does anyone have any idea why this is happening?" After a short period of silence, a few theories were offered, one more colourful than the other; God had spared Tobias for a divine reason, the rope was too soft and didn't hold well, the executioner wasn’t very good at his job (at the sound of that, the poor man lowered his broad shoulders even more in utter defeat), Tobias was a witch and couldn't die by hanging… The list of ideas went on and on, comforting and terrifying the villagers in equal measure depending on the theory and the repercussions on them were Tobias to get down from the tree and unleash some sort of demonic wrath on them.

A lone voice echoed over the rest of the general racket.

“So why don’t we try again?”

The voice had spoken with authority, devoid of any passion, practical. Calculating.

Tobias turned to the direction of the judge. He wasn’t the only one. People were slowly parting to look at him, the stranger who was the first to offer a tangible solution to the problem in front of them. Had Tobias been part of the crowd, he would have found this idea fair; try again, see if the second time around things will work as they’re supposed to. You don’t give up immediately if the wheel of a horse carriage jams; you kick it first and see if it works then. Being the one that the second try principle would be tried on, Tobias didn’t feel excited about the prospect.

Naturally, the villagers found the practical approach the best. Who needs to understand things when you can simply kick them back into gear?

“Let’s hang him again!” Gerard the mayor/deer-hunter shouted out, suddenly remembering he was supposed to be a figure of authority.

One-by-one the crowd found an easy-to-achieve purpose and rallied behind their elected leader. The judge had faded in the back, his contribution forgotten, but he was still looking at Tobias, the inquisitive little beads that served as eyes focused on the despairing figure.

“Come on, people. This isn’t fair!” Tobias finally managed to say. “You hanged me once, and I wasn’t guilty by the way, it’s only fair that you let me go now. You had your hanging.”

The blacksmith, who was always carrying a sharp blade with him, had already approached the tree to cut Tobias down for the re-hanging, but his words gave him pause.

“Hey, wait a second,” he turned to the excited mass, “the little lad is right. We did hang him by the neck until he was dead, so he is done.”

His argument flooded through the crowd, finding support with some. As a matter of fact, he found enough support to quell the thirst for immediate resolution. People went back to arguing about the problem at hand, some in support of Tobias and the idea that paying your dues once was enough, and some against him claiming that you haven’t paid enough until you’re as dead as the graveyard they planned to put him in.

The blacksmith, having contributed enough to society with this one argument he had shared, went back to the tree and cut Tobias down. He offered him a seat at the most comfortable looking root of the tree, and went back to the irons he had left cooling in the smithy back when the excitement hungry little Samuel had ignited was still scalding hot.

Tobias stretched his long legs and tried to undo the noose that his liberator had not bothered to cut. Failing to achieve that, he buried his face in his hands, the fatigue washing over him, exhausting his limbs as much as sitting down was restoring blood circulation to them.

“Are you enjoying yourself, Tobias?” The judge standing now before him was tapping his heel down, biting the inside of his lips, and was raising an eyebrow too.

“Are you?”

“How many times are we going to do this?”

“Zero if you leave me be.” Tobias counted on his fingers. “So far, you’ve condemned me to hanging a few times - that’s your favourite-, poisoning, drowning, burning on a pyre…”

“And lashing.”

“Ah, yes, thank you, that was the first one. And it never works. So why won’t you give up?”

“As long as I walk the earth, I will hunt you down.”

“Ah come on, it’s never anything serious. I just like playing. Look at them.” Tobias gestured to the arguing crowd. “So deliciously confused. They’ll wonder for the rest of their lives. They might even learn something from it.”

“Is that what you tell yourself? They hanged the executioner the last time!”

Tobias chuckled. “In my defence, I could not have predicted that. How was I supposed to know they’d want to check if the noose was any good? Ah, but look. If you act fast now, you might be able to save this one.”

The judge turned around to see the executioner pushed to the tree by the villagers. They seemed to have forgotten all about Tobias, having decided, instead, that in such cases it’s not the tool’s fault, but the toolmaker’s.

“For the love of… ,” the judge muttered, and hurried to the mob.

Tobias smiled his crooked smile. It always made him happy to get his best friend in trouble. He took a deep breath and looked around. He would miss this place, but he knew they would be back to play another round.