The day was bright, at least I assumed it was. Most of my days were spent in the dungeons below the queen's castle which stood at the top of mount Pharis (the mountain which our city was so elegantly named after). The tunnels which made up the dungeon that I occupied were cool and damp, causing the inhabitants to develop a myriad of health issues, most of which lacked names. Some caused terrible fevers that would eventually lead to the demise of the victim. The corpses would lie dormant in the cells for weeks, which would cause a pungent stench because no one wished to catch whatever ailment the prisoner succumbed to.

I hardly had to interact with the prisoners, it was deemed unprofessional for the executioner (I was hardly ever referred to as my official title, as most people just called me "hangman") to socialize with the scum that rotted within the queen's pit. I held a respected position, which granted me the privilege of my own room within the dungeon that held a warm fireplace, a table and chair, and a few bookshelves for my own pleasure. The room wasn't too comfortable, but its doors served as a barrier from the awful moans and screams of the criminals.

It was in this office that I resided, reading a small brown political book when I was disturbed by one of the guards. " Hangman! We've had too many guards fall bedridden to the plague, and need you to secure today's scum for the public execution."

"The hanging is tomorrow, not today man!" I asserted, dropping my book to the table, rather frustrated by the disturbance and utter incompetence displayed by the guard.

"Apologies sir, but the queen insists we move it up a day, to ease the despair caused by the plague and all" He stood in the open door for a second, most likely envying the room before taking his leave with a simple "I'll allow you to prepare".

I let out a long-winded sigh as I stood up from my desk and took my black hood that hung off of the spoke in the wall and slid my book into my pocket. I didn't care for the criminals that I executed, and I had no desire to do anything other than pull the lever on the gallows.

I made my way down the halls of the dungeon, the smell was the primary thing I noticed. The air smelled of decay and rotting flesh. I looked down at my list of two cell numbers. There were no names by the numbers and I preferred it that way.

They didn't make much of a fuss as I moved them from their cells onto the wagon. One of the prisoners winced and limped the entire way to the cart due to a gangrenous leg. It was rather cumbersome and an annoyance to deal with, as it meant that I would have to work the horses doubly hard in order to ensure that we arrived on time.

Things got a bit more uncomfortably talkative as soon as we began to move the wagon down from the castle and towards the gallows, which were situated at the commons between all three districts of the city.

The first one to speak stuttered through a sentence that I barely paid attention to complaining of thirst. I ignored the complaint, expecting them to quiet down once they realized the water would be better spent on cattle.

"Don't worry friend, there will be no thirst where we're headed" said an older and raspier voice. "Soon we'll know freedom once again"

The prisoner complaining of thirst was also wailing in pain, his moans cut through the air like the pained howls of feral dogs wandering the streets. His pathetic whining finally sent me over the edge. "Silence back there! Your pain will subside soon enough", I yelled.

"I-I-I'm so sorry sir, I tried to get help for the infection but no one came. After my leg perished, I tried to call a surgeon to amputate, but no one arrived. Many times in the cold nights I've been awakened by the rats gnawing on my bloodied flesh" He stammered.

It really sounded like an awful fate, living in constant pain and becoming food for vermin. Though I suppose the prisoners were indeed vermin. I felt the need to remind them of their status. "I suppose you should've thought about the consequences of your actions before you did something to get you locked up in the dungeon," I stated bluntly. I'd seen the stutterer's leg briefly as I hauled him to the wagon, but I paid little mind to it before, now the image lingered inside my head. The bloody, peeling flesh began to make my skin crawl.

I was knocked out of my stupor when the old raspy voice let out a long sigh that was immediately followed by a violent cough. A slight frustration found its way into my head, however, I was pleased to have taken my mind off of the mutilated leg. "What ails you old man?" As soon as the words left my mouth, I wondered why I had said that surely I didn't actually care. I took a moment to notice where we were in the city, as I had hardly been paying attention to the journey. We were about halfway to the gallows as I saw the gate from the queen's district to the middle district.

The cough subsided and the raspy voice emerged, "Bah, you speak as if you know why we were locked into that pit of hell."

I chucked a bit, this should be entertaining, "enlighten me then, old man"

He huffed with an obvious distaste for my tone before beginning. "I simply wrote my thoughts down in my journal" he declared.

I let out a loud and ugly bout of laughter "you got arrested...for a journal?" What a pathetic story indeed. The old man must've been lying to make me feel sorry for him. It wasn't going to work, sure I was beginning to feel sympathy for the man with the rotting leg, but a filthy liar? No way.

"But sir, I tell a true tale. When I was a boy, I wrote extensively in my own personal booklet. I took great pride as I was one of the few children on my street in the lower district that could read and write. Children always wrestled for anything they could obtain in the lower district that wasn't rubbish. My journal was no exception. I was cornered by a group of boys who were much larger than myself. They must've spotted me clutching tightly to my journal from across the street before chasing me into a nearby ally, where they proceeded to beat me before I finally surrendered the book. They took off running with it, probably looking to sell it for a few coins or some bread. BAH! It disgusts me how little respect they had for the book." He paused for a second, probably recalling his distaste for the thieves. "Not long after they left my tiny body in a pool of my own blood, they returned with a pair of guards. Strong and intimidating looking men with long and sharp halberds. Without a word, the guards grabbed me by the collar of my rags and dragged me through the streets and imprisoned me. It was more than a year before I heard the reason for my imprisonment."

"And what was that reason?" I asked, partly intrigued by his words. It was a tale so fantastical it seemed impossible for it to be truth.

"Inside my journal, I had expressed my hatred for the monarchy. They had expected a twelve-year-old boy to know that it was legal to express distaste for the queen verbally, but not through writing." The few minutes of spoken words had made his voice sound like his throat was filled with sandpaper.

"N-N-No way Y-You've been locked up since you were a mere b-boy" exclaimed the stuttering prisoner before the carriage hit a rather deep hole and he screamed in agony.

I let out a long-winded bout of laughter. What a joke! The man was ancient, there's no way he waited in a cell to be hung for that long. There was no way writing ill about the monarchy was illegal either. "Good one jester!" I hollered mockingly and through tears. "Look we've arrived!" I pointed out as I noticed the gallows with a crowd of people slowly coming into view. My comment was met with no response.

As I unloaded the prisoners from the back of the carriage and moved them towards the gallows, I ruminated over the old man's story. That was a long time to wait for a sentence to end, but the man with a gangrenous leg had waited months to receive some kind of help for his leg and none arrived. As I thought more and more upon the matter, I realized that I knew hardly anything about the prisoners that resided in the dungeon or how they got there, perhaps I was simply ignorant to the matter.

I was the first on gallows, as was tradition for the hangman to take his place on the lever before the prisoners are moved onto the stage. The gallows had three nooses to make the ceremony as efficient as possible. I took a moment to look upon the crowd. There were hundreds of people gathered tightly together in the cobblestone streets, some were hollering and chanting, others stood trapped in violent fits of coughing. The houses that formed the walls of the large, open commons, had entire families poking their heads out of their dilapidated windows. Even our secondary district looked like a rat infested amalgamation of timber, stone, and garbage. There was human waste in the streets and I even spotted a corpse slumped against a wall in an alleyway.

The sky looked furious, the clouds were black but it refused to rain. It looked as though it were ready to strike me down with an onslaught of lightning at any second.

The prisoners were escorted by the guards up to the gallows. The stutterer limped up the stairs to the elevated platform and I winced each time I saw him take a step.

It all moved so fast, and on most days I would be giddy with anticipation for the coming events, but not today, something was different. Perhaps it was because the sun refused to show his face.

I must've been lost in thought when I was awakened by the roar of the crowd. Their attention was held on the nooses. The stutterer was crumpled into a heap onto the wooden floor, unable to stand. Before I caught myself I was moving, my hand almost left the lever as I began to take steps toward him. Was I really trying to help this criminal whom I was about to hang? I shook the ridiculous thought out of my mind and retreated back to my post.

The guard grabbed him by the collar and forced him upright. Before he could collapse from the pain again, the soldier slipped his neck through the noose, dangling him by his throat. The noises he made as he choked made my skin crawl. The guard gave him a quick examination before kicking his leg with his massive boot.

A huge chunk of flesh flew off of his leg which amplified the smell of rotting meat. From my post on the leaver, I could make out the tiny, white maggots that fed upon his flesh. Blood as black as the pits of hell dropped in globs from the seething wound. Worst of all was the wail that rang through the air. It was a scream worse than any death I had witnessed. The crowd cheered with absolute glee as I vomited over the side of the gallows.

The old man stood peacefully as the noose was secured and another literate soul began to read the crimes of the victims.

"For assault of a nobel... Charles Malcome!" The speaker gestured to the man whose leg was about to, quite literally, separate from his body.

"For the highest case of treason... Alexander Flores" The man spoke, gesturing to the man with the raspy voice.

That name…it was eerily familiar. I had heard it before...somewhere. I know I had! The speaker read off the rest of his script, praying for the souls of the prisoners and saying a few words on behalf of the queen as I painstakingly racked my brain trying to figure out just where I had heard that name before.

Suddenly it clicked, and my hand bolted into my pocket before pulling out the small, leather-encased booklet. Pressed directly onto the cover, it stared into my soul. "ALEXANDER FLORES". The book plummeted to the floor as my muscles seized up throughout my body. It was true, the old man's story, the entire thing was truth! I was about to hang a man who had been imprisoned for writing his ideas down inside his journal! I was to kill a man simply for being ignorant of a law restricting one's thoughts.

"HANGMAN!" The call knocked me out of my stupor, dragging me back into reality. The crowd was silent and smiles were plastered upon all of their faces. "Pull the damn lever!" The speaker commanded.

I refused to respond, my tongue couldn't form a single sound and beads of sweat began to soak through my black hood. My hands shook as I reached for the lever. Images of the rotten leg and a poor child beaten bloody filled my mind.

Without thinking, I looked up. "No" I whispered meekly.

The speaker chuckled "Enough games, pull the damned lever man!"

Somehow, I managed the courage to pull the breath into my lungs. "No, this is wrong! These men have suffered more than enough for whatever crime they allegedly committed! That man was wrongfully imprisoned!" I pointed with conviction at Flores "and assault is hardly worth a damned life sentence!" I declared. I hadn't been thinking about any of my speech, the words simply rolled off of my tongue.

The crowd and the speaker looked at me, bewildered that a hangman had been the one to speak out about one of the community's most beloved pastimes.

Before I could do anything else, my stomach was struck with the blunt side of a halberd and my arms were wrestled behind me and shackled. The blow had forced the air from my lungs and I could no longer speak as the hands on my shoulders and the blade on my back corralled me towards the third noose on the gallows.

As I was forced past the prisoners, I heard a voice that sounded like sandpaper. "Thank you hangman." was all he said.

I was forced upright, and the noose was slid around my neck. The man who spoke read off my name and the rest of his script before he marched toward the lever out of my sight.

The last thing I saw was the sun peering at me as he came out of hiding when I heard the trapdoor swing open.