#i wrote this close to midnight because i had thoughts
You have been sentenced to death in a magical court. The court allows all prisoners to pick how they die and they will carry it out immediately. You have it all figured out until the prisoner before you picks old age and is instantly transformed into a dying old man. Your turn approaches.
I stare as the man, previously tall and broad, a baker’s son, shrivels before my eyes, becoming so wizened that he seems to shrink, become mere dust on the ground; the Court was nothing if not cruel, and he went past old age, past death - they wanted a spectacle and that was what they received, his body decaying at heightened speed, bone and muscle and sinew disintegrating and sprinkling the earth at my feet. I can feel the cold air at my brow, my fingers twitching. I don’t want to die, I don’t, I don’t - but that is what everyone thinks and that is what everyone tries to avoid, and yet none have ever avoided a painful death.
The Court works in loopholes, it’s law inhabits the little bumps that our minds fail to cover in their plans - no matter what you say, it will not be a quick death, nor a particularly tidy one.
My name is called and I advance, treading carefully, lightly, so as to respect the man beneath my feet, if there are any dregs of emotion left inside me that have not been swallowed by fear left to truly pity him. My mind is focused, I think, I’ll request an instant beheading, instant, surely no loophole around instant. I’m not even sure what my crime was, it could be anything, the Court knows the workings of the world but do not care to share it with their subjects - lest we avoid it and they have no entertainment.
The Faeking looms upon his throne of petrified wood, spikes grasping outwards like finger-bones of stone, cold as the Faeking is. The Faeking is slender, overlong, like plastic bags when you stretch them too far and they are left saggy, only It is in full control of Its limbs, spidery and luminescent. I cannot see Its eyes properly, there is only shadow, I do not even know if It has eyes, if It even needs to see.
It does not move Its mouth, but I hear it. The Faeking’s voice is a thundering silence, it blasts into mind and leaves with a whisper, I only know what I must say. An instant death. The words stick in my throat. They are locked behind my voice-box, they refuse to leave, time ticks ever forward and if I don’t speak soon then the Court will decide but I can’t have that, I must keep whatever shreds of dignity I can shroud myself with here. New words come unbidden to my tongue, and I mourn, for I will not get the instant death I crave.
How shall you die?
“At the hands of someone wholly good.”
What a pitiful phrase, but it’s too late to rescind, the Court is hollering and the wind whistles through the throne like hollow organ pipes as the Faeking laughs. It stretches a hand towards me and I burn. And then I no longer burn. It is angry, the Faeking, It seethes and fumes on Its wooden throne, a low throbbing sound that fills the hall and makes my heart beat out of my ears. It cannot harm me for It is not wholly good, It is the Faeking, and the Faeking is the embodiment of shades of grey - for as I said, the Court lives in the loopholes.
It gestures to the Court, and turns are taken to fire at me, ice and rocks and searing pain that rends me nerve to nerve but I still do not die. The other sentenced are seized like drooping puppets, clattering across the floor, but they too do nothing, it all does nothing. With crying reluctance, the Faeking sets me free. I know that the other sentenced will not be able to give such an answer ever again.
Years pass, from then, slipping ever on, as time always does, and still I can’t be killed. My own hand is fruitless, as even I aren’t wholly good. The hand of a child does nought, and I soon begin to weary. I stand upon a clifftop, overlooking the sea, and as always my mind strays to what else I could’ve said. I will die at the Faeking’s death would have been good, and that would have helped many. I will die as the Court comes crumbling, for the same reason. But that is why I am not good, because in that moment I thought not of the future or the others but only of my own life.
And now it is time for that life to release itself; I turn my gaze to the sky. The breeze smiles upon my face and caresses my cheeks with airy kisses, and with one last brush of my hair behind my ear, the wind takes my life from my lungs, and the strength from my legs, and the beat from my heart. It shall carry them always, and I can now die, for the world was wholly good, and I died the way I was intended to all along.
