I felt like I had fainted. As I was returning to reality I felt as if I was floating in a rocking and rolling boat. My head started to clear, but now I felt a nausea like seasickness. Before clarity retuned to me, I was laid on a hard, wooden bed by two men who were wearing black hoods. The eye holes gave them a bug-eyed countenance, the whites of their eyes contrasting sharply with the black cloth. As my vision began to clear, and the weakness of my limbs relented, I could feel that my wrists, waist, and legs were tightly bound. I could hardly move. It was scary being helpless and not know why this was happening.
Was I now lying on a board? “What’s going on?” I asked.
I struggled, but it was too late to help myself. I was restrained with leather straps that were so tight that they buried themselves and my clothes into my skin. I felt myself panic, then become terrified. My screams went unanswered. What had I done wrong? God dammit! What was my crime? I live peacefully. I’m not a criminal. I had a difficulty thinking clearly and focused. Cotton seemed to be stuffed inside my head, and it felt as I insects were voraciously eating my brain as they marched on spiked feet. My scalp and face became heated. The heat migrated to my ears, then cheeks and neck before I calmed enough to realize that I might be delusional. My imagination, my terror, my screams, my confusion all led to the feelings of hopelessness, profuse sweat and tears. I went into a rage and screamed “Help! Someone help me! This is a mistake!”
It was impossible now to calm myself, to be rational, and logical, but my situation seemed to defy both reason and logic, especially when I stared upward at the wooden-framed tower that seemed to pierce the sky. I felt movement, then the board at my feet was lifted about a foot. This inclined plane position made my whole-body slide downward onto a vertical board that ran under my neck and that allowed the back of my neck to slide into a half-circle of a vertical, wooden yoke. I could see it clearly at my shoulders. Then I was startled as the other half-circle, wooden yoke came down to enclose my neck between the two half-circles. My neck was trapped in a device like the Puritans use of stocks and pillories to humiliate people who were judged guilty of committing minor infractions in their community.
But this could not possibly be the consequence of minor infraction? This was wrong, a terrifying mistake. Did I commit bad crime? Did I kill someone? Whatever they think I did, it had to have been extremely serious.
I gazed upward seeing the sun’s rays gleaming off shiny metal, the shiny metal of a sharpened blade at the top of the tower.
About ten to fifteen feet over my head was an angled blade of heavy metal. The blade was attached to a rope that followed the towering wooden frame down to the executioner’s hands.
“No! No!” I screamed as salty sweat ran into my eyes and stung, making me squint hard to clear my vision. But nobody reacted to my screams. Not even the people watching my execution. What? The people were sitting. They were not watching calmly, but with bright eyes and expressions of excitement. How the hell could that be? So many cruel sadists in town? How could this be happening? What could I have done at ten years of age to deserve this kind of punishment?
Could I be in France where the guillotine was invented? Beheading? Decapitation? But criminals faced downward at a basket into which their head would fall. But that was centuries ago. I’m so young. I had my whole life ahead of me. Where’s my mom and dad? Why can’t they stop this? Where’s God? God, please save me. Do the innocent go directly to heaven? God, let these people know that they are executing the wrong person. Stop this from happening, Please.
I focused on the terrifying blade, not the grimly smiling goth dressed executioner. The blade’s edge reflected the sunlight making it look a dull, buttery yellow. Newly sharpened, I thought, which did nothing to assuage my increasing terror. I felt faint. Maybe that was good.
I heard a voice murmuring words from an open black book. The bible? A clergyman.? But that was not comforting knowledge and certainly did not calm my rapid breathing. It was so rapid that I could feel the pain in my chest bones. I could also feel my mouth being as dry as paper.
What are they waiting for? I thought. Waiting is worse than the coming punishment. The blade, oh my God, that blade. So cruel, ugly, and unjust, but I could not look away. It was a person looking down the barrel of a gun held by an assassin. It’s a paralyzing moment of pure terror.
I started to laugh, then giggle when I saw flaws in the blade. Look at the blade,” I said loudly to the executioner. “It has tiny chips along the edge. Look at it. The blade’s edge looks like a piranha’s teeth.” More delusional silliness set in as I shouted, “How much does the blade weigh? How high is it? Hey you. How long does it take the blade to reach my neck? Hey, you, did it take more than one man to raise the blade to the top?” Another silly giggle, then I told myself that panic, terror, and silliness should not be partners, but my mind had been captured as well as corrupted by a surreal mixture of fantasy, misplaced silliness, and the terror of reality.
I noticed the executioner holding a dirty, greasy, grimy rope. I screamed at him, “That rope is dirty! It’s too dirty! You can’t hang someone with a filthy, oily, grimy rope! It’s against the rules.” Now I felt as if I was losing my mind. I screamed whatever entered my head. “Unjust. Unjust. I’m innocent.” I think that’s what I was shouting. Instead of a desert mouth I was salivating so much that I was drooling, or was it blood or was I imagining it?
I tried to scream, again, at the audience for help, but I could only see the people sitting off to the sides by looking over each shoulder. Most people had front and center seats. Better to see the blood spurt and the head fall. Are they without feelings? Without sympathy or pity?
The executioner grunted as he rose from his chair. If I can hear him, how come no one hears me? With his uncharitable grin and his gross, goth appearance he looked like a morbid funeral director from days long ago, goth-dressed in a long, heavy black coat, black pants, shirt, and top hat. All dirty. Even his eyes appeared black to me. I imagined his black boots. Silly me.
I began to accept my fate. I calmed myself down to just a mild terror when the executioner, with his black gloves, grabbed the rope. He bent over, coming close to my head, and paused. His clean-shaven face startled me. I expected it to be stubbled and filthy. How could an executioner’s face look distinguished? Not only distinguished, but familiar. “Go ahead, asshole, do it,” I shouted. I heard mixed male and female laughter. Laughter? From where?
The guy had heavy, dark eyebrows, and penetrating eyes that suddenly became kindly, in combination with his smile, followed by the words, “Happy Birthday, Billy. Don’t you worry, Billy. The blade is fake. It’s a trick in your birthday magic show.”
I closed my eyes anyway, as if I hadn’t heard his words. Then I heard the friction and grinding sound of the descending blade. I felt no pain in my neck, but I still felt shocked and dazed, though unharmed. I opened my eyes and saw that the guillotine was much smaller that I had thought, maybe three feet high, the blade, somehow, looked frail and harmless. My imagination had gone into a rampage of outlandish, but realistic visions. The audience at my birthday party were still laughing so I smiled with them.
The magician was a teacher at my school. That’s why he looked familiar. He said that having a volunteer face upward, looking at the blade was a new version of the old beheading trick. It was supposed to a new look that would involve the audience more by creating more drama and more drama would be followed by heightened excitement.
“What about the crazy thoughts and visions I was having?” I asked him.
“Oh, that’s a rare side effect of hypnotizing someone, but your parents gave me permission because they would be only a few feet away to make sure you were OK.”
I walked away thinking, Yeah. Sure. I was OK and I’m OK now, but I still had a strange feeling, as if I really were strapped into a guillotine. Perhaps in parallel universe.
“OK. Let’s all enjoy some candy, cake, cookies, OJ and whatever else Mom made. Yippee! I’m ten years old.”
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