The Executioner

 

The executioner raised his axe high, holding it there for the crowd to see, even turning it some so that the sun flashed along its broad clean blade. The victim knelt below, neck bared, head over the basket, eyes squinted shut. At a slight flexing of the fingers of the king, whose face wore a mask of supreme boredom, the axe man started his downward sweep.

Just then, a voice cried out above the hushed throng of onlookers. “Stop, you’ve got the wrong woman up there,” the female voice extolled.

The executioner halted the axe’s downward arc and looked to the King for direction.

The King held a hand up and peered into the crowd to find the woman. Anyone who dared interrupt the King’s business would be the next to face his wrath. But to his surprise the objecting call didn’t come from the crowd, but from the box seating provided for the King’s court.

The executioner held the axe in the ready position, yearning for the word to continue. His forearm muscles twitched with fatigue as he maintained the weapon aloft.

No such word came.

An elegantly dressed woman stood and faced the King. It was Minister of War’s wife, Miriam.

“Speak your mind quickly and wisely, madam,” the King snapped.

Miriam approached the King’s balcony.

The prisoner opened her eyes and turned her head on the chopping block as best she could, to see what was transpiring.

“It was I, your Majesty, who sabotaged the Royal wedding and I who should be punished for it.”

The executioner was beginning to sweat at the effort of holding the axe overhead. His trembling became noticeable. But the King was looking elsewhere.

“Explain yourself, madam,” the King demanded.

“Well, it’s a long story,” she began.

The executioner’s face went ashen.

“It all started when Mary, you know the youngest daughter of the Earl of Wichville, started talking about her feelings of insecurity and I thought to myself ‘that’s what you have, insecurity feelings’….

Twelve minutes and forty-four seconds into Miriam’s story, the axe fell from the executioner’s now numb hands and hit the block with a sickening thud. The King, Miriam, and the crowd turned to the chopping block.  Rubbing his arms to regain the feeling, the executioner stood over the shackled prisoner, the chopping block and the embedded axe. The prisoner’s body twitched erratically.  It was her body’s auto-nervous system responding to the axe that had just landed with its razor-sharp edge less than an inch from her bared neck.

The executioner shrugged as the King began to wonder if he’d rather be on the block than to have to listen to the rest of Miriam’s story.