Corday

There are clouds gathering on the horizon, pregnant with the long awaited rain. Above, in the azure sky, the sun beats down, bright, sharp, and unforgiving. The air itself is hazy, thick, a miasma of heat and dust and tightly packed bodies. Sweat, the multi-scented salts from thousands of onlookers, clings to the nostrils and drips from perspiring brows. It sticks to the skin like bedclothes after a night of exertion, and yet you are almost thankful for its presence, its humane odor, for it serves, like lace bed sheets, to cover the rancid mattress underneath. And there is something there: something lingering, ripening, rotting - something you can never ignore, but never quite acknowledge. It is a scent, heavier than the sweat, that moves in a slow current through the roads and alleys, choking the city in its bitter-sweet scent. This scent turns the air to mud: to walk is to slog through murky marshes, your legs becoming more enveloped as you near the center of the city. This is not a scent that clings: it is a scent that tarnishes. Coppery, rancid, repulsive, stirred up by the heat of the sun and the tramping of feet over the red stained ground. It is a smell of blood, a smell of gore and corpses, of inevitability, and most of all, death.

The sounds of mourning cut through the haze. Someone, somewhere, is weeping. Perhaps, on this day, there are many who are weeping, but it is near impossible to tell. There is always someone, in every district of the city, who is crying. It is a testament to the times.

The clouds are growing closer now, sweeping in broad strokes to swallow up the blue of the sky. There is a charge in the air, something metallic and electrical. The crowd is infected with it. It hums and buzzes, thrumming with an insistent, repressed energy that is at once connective and alienating. It's hard to see through the throng.

Somewhere, to your left, a gate opens. The crowd surges forward, a wave of bodies flinging themselves against the poor ship in their midst. You're jostled from all sides, elbows, hands, and knees shoved ungracefully against your person. One hits you under the ribs, and you topple slightly into the broad back of the woman before you. She doesn't seem unduly concerned: it's difficult to be when from all sides you are being bombarded by pieces of humanity. There is a roar gathering in the throats of the crowd, bubbling up from a deep pit of anger and resentment. The push of the throng becomes more insistent, purposeful. They want to see. They want to blame. They want to punish. An intoxicating, animalistic urge to wrest the cargo from its hold and tear it limb from limb. You are yourself overcome by this feeling, this urge to harm. Elbows, knees, shoulders: you push your way forcefully through the throng.

The wave of sound is breaking. It precedes the ship, screaming, hurling insults and lamentations and noise up at the cargo. A barrage of verbal weaponry. You burst through the crowd, your own cries arching up and away. You aim them with precision at the approaching tumbril. The cargo of this poorly equipped vessel is just visible behind the driver's back.

It is filled with convicts. Hair short, clothes dirtied, most sit with their eyes down cast. A few are weeping. A few trade insults with the crowd. One is begging, screaming, senseless before his inevitable demise. In your eyes they are all pitiful. They are all repugnant, vile excuses for humanity. They are traitors. But there's one you seek above the rest. As the tumbril draws level, you ready a string of insults and curses to let lose on this specific target. So impudent. So deserving. And yet, when your eyes catch site of her the words dry up in your throat. No. It is as through they have been snatched away, drawn out, cut from your tongue by this beautiful, stoic woman.

She stands at the back of the tumbril, knees rested against the rails so as not to fall. Her soft, simple, white dress is covered by a red chemise: the mark of a murderer. She is a murderer. You know this, in your body, your mind, and yet.... And yet, with the image of this woman before you, reality becomes disjointed. Her hands are small, plump, tied peacefully before her. It is hard to imagine them holding a knife, directed with murderous intent, sinking swiftly downwards, downwards until it meet flesh. Breaking the flesh, onward, farther, piercing lungs, arteries, almost to the bone. She holds her head regally. The roughly cut hair floats about her face, and delicately caresses her serene features. Her eyes are brown, calm; her mouth a small pink bow beneath her long, straight nose. It's difficult to imagine this face twisted with hatred, with vengeance. Yet, despite this, there is a strength to her. A power of spirit. It shines through her soft exterior, an unbelievable force. It radiates from every pore of her being, commanding and awe-inspiring. The crowd hushes in its wake. Predetermined insults and curses freeze on their lips, discarded. The collective rage is subdued by the regal strength of this individual soul.

The tumbril continues on its path, bumping along the cobbled roads. As it nears the city center, the stench of death and decomposition worsens. But even this is not enough to shake the impeccable composure of the murderess. The clouds, which have gradually overshadowed the sun, choose this moment to empty their bellies on the crowd. Fat drops of rain begin to fall, turning quickly into a slippery, slicing curtain of daggers that pierce. As though through a predestined plan, the people collectively pull their caps further down about their ears. Red caps, a sea of red, bloody, liberty, through which the murderess, the red shirted murderess, appears to float along. You are struck by this image, this queen, drenched in the blood of the people. The people who bleed from a wound she herself inflicted.

The tumbril halts in the central square. The stench here is almost unbearable. The rain, so long awaited, does little to cleanse the air. Wet, breathless, the people push close together. Scattered jeers and cheers are heard from all around. If possible, the people are even more closely packed here, and there is a suffocating electricity that sparks with each labored breath. A powder keg, unhindered by the rain.

The tumbril halts. The gate at the back is opened, and one by one the prisoners climb out. One man, a balding skinny fellow with a face so white it could be used as parchment, stumbles as he steps down. He falls, and it's clear by the time he hits the ground that he has fainted dead away. Laughter rustles through the crowd. One assistant makes a show of puppeteering the unconscious man, drawing forth another wave of laughter, more boisterous than the last.

One by one, the convicts are led up the scaffold. One by one their heads fall, and another spout of blood douses the scaffold's tragic stage and the ground around it. The death and gore in the air is so thick its tangible. There's a nervous, almost frantic energy in the crowd now. They are growing impatient.

Finally, no one is left but the scarlet clad murderess. Her foot meets the first stair, and the crowd collectively, instinctively, holds its breath. Another step: one of the assistants holds out his hand to assist her, but she ignores him. She climbs, head held high, eyes bright and clear. There is not a spark of fear in her expression; if anything she appears slightly curious. There is a soft curl to her lips, and an almost playful sparkle to her eyes.

The executioner steps forward. He is a big man, burly and bloodstained. His hands are large and rough, but he handles her with a gentle gruffness. Her hands are untied, then refastened behind her back. She doesn't protest as she's strapped to a large plank, just like those before her. The look of amusement is still tugging at her features as she is lowered, stomach first, onto the bed of the machine. The executioner himself secures her head in place.

The anticipation in the crowd is building. A righteous call for justice is singing through their veins.

Ropes creak. One hand, five digits, are all that stand now between this woman and death. The energy in the mob has now built to an orgasmic pitch. All eyes are trained on the hand of the executioner, all minds retelling the story of how the people were wronged.

A letter. A knife. A bath of blood.

The fingers release, the crowd perceiving it in slow motion.

A paper. An advocate. A voice. A friend. Silenced forever with one cruel thrust of the arm.

The blade sings down, the guiding grooves oiled with use and rain. Downward, downward, further downward. It meets flesh. It meets muscle. It meets bone. And it keeps going. It severs all and with a final satisfying thunk it settles into place. The head falls. Blood, paid for by blood. The crowd releases its breath as one, satisfied.

Even in death the murderess looks peaceful. Her lips still hold their amused twist. An assistant, the puppeteer, holds the head out to the crowd, and in an search for approval, he slaps it. This action sends a ripple of shock and disgust through the crowd. A woman, so proud and regal, to be dishonored in death. It brings forth an angry murmur, and the assistant, realizing his mistake, quickly places the head back in the basket.

The bodies of the convicts are carried off, and the crowd slowly begins to disperse. The rains have dragged the blood from the executions through the streets, so that to walk through them paints the soles of the feet. You alone stay standing by the scaffold. The scaffold saturated with the blood of traitors and innocent alike. And above it all, the wooden body of carnage, gore, and death. It's blade has been washed clean by the rain, and glints dully in the sparse light. You stand below, feet soaked by the water and the dead. And as you stare, gazing up at this machine, you cannot help but be filled with a sense of frightening awe. It freezes you to the core. A premonition, a terrifying knowledge that at some unknown time you will be sent to the embrace of this goddess of death. You feel it approaching. A time when the air is so impregnated with death that it cannot be cleaned. A time when

the city is flooded with corpses. When everyone is separated and alone, when familiarity is a threat. A city torn apart by petty quarrels, where arguments are solved by death, and the populace is filed through this machine, cutting them down, and back, and back.

A chill drop of rain sluices down your back, breaking you out of your reverie. You shiver, both from cold and from fear. Your feet splash hurriedly away, away, away. Away from the cobbles coated in gore, away from the red stained scaffold, but most of all away from the machine. That tall, haunting, dominating machine. You pull your red cap farther down over your eyes and flee. Towards home. Towards warmth and safety and a good meal. Away from the haunting after image burned onto your eyelids.

Away from the guillotine.