A (very) short story.

[alexmcchesney]

I don't have anything particularly visual to share, but here's a short story-cum-poem-thing that I wrote a while back and was pleased with.

They hung him from a tree until his face turned blue and his eyes bulged and his tongue lolled out of his mouth, all swollen and black, and his bowels emptied themselves, and the cross they had brought with them was nothing more than a smoldering patch of darkened ground. Then, thinking him dead, they left, talking and laughing. Exalted at the nights fun, but a little bit sad that it was over already. No matter. There'd be another hanging another day, in another field, for sure.

They hung him from a tree and left him for dead, but he did not die. He could not move or talk or breathe, but he did not die. Not quite.

It rained that night. A cold, stinging torrent that soaked him to the bone. But the next morning the sun rose in a clear sky and began to warm and dry the earth beneath his dangling feet, as well as his blood and piss-stained clothes that his wife had laid out for him a day ago, neither of them knowing that they would be the clothes he would be lynched in.

A few ragged crows circled and landed on the tree. Once or twice they pecked at him, half-heartedly. One of them popped his left eye. But they did not stay for much of a meal, sensing that he wasn't quite dead, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

His murderers did not come back to cut him down or bury or burn him. Nobody knew where he was, and nobody came. He hung there for night after day after night, without nourishment or water, and with a noose around his neck and his hands tied so tightly they had drawn blood, but he did not die.

Finally, after weeks unmoving, the only sounds being the patter of rain against the ground and the tree, and the caw of crows, the sodden rope, rotten and pecked-at, gave way, and his almost-corpse thumped to the mud below.

For a day, it lay there in the mud. But then, the first evidence that it was not dead since it stopped kicking all that time ago, manifested itself. A brain that was scarred and scared and starved and could not remember how to move or walk or breathe managed to send a signal and make a leg twitch. Just for a moment, before stopping, exhausted. It wasn't a lot, but it was a start.

The next day, that twitch evolved into a spasm, and over the coming weeks that brain learned about movement again, until the hanged man was able to stand, and, eventually, walk.

And walk he did. Away from the tree and towards the sun and home and those who had hung him and would hang him again and again, but he would not die while they grew older and more feeble, until their liver-spotted hands could no longer tie the rope, and their children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren no longer had any taste for hangings.

And he will not die.

[koworld]

That's cracking. Incredibly strong sense of place and of the event.

I'd have left out the eye-pop bit only because it upset the rhythm of that sentence. and the end of the first para needs a tighter edit. But I can say these things only because the quality of the whole thing is so high.

You should do more of these.

[toxibunny]

that's spot on, that is.

[Acronym]

Fantastic - exactly the kind of thing that'd never get posted in Bleatings. Bravo

[alexmcchesney]

Thanks for the kind words and constructive criticism guys. I've been trying to start writing again after a long break, and I'm finding it quite hard to get into the "zone" again, so that means a lot.

[~D4T45H4T~]

Wow, thats dark stuff man. But also strangely positive.
It almost sounds like a parable - it has a real age to it, like it could've been written centuries ago.

It also could work as part of a screenplay, an old wizened character reciting the story to a bunch of eager hapless adventurers who are out of their depth. Or something.