Within the confines of the slowly waning mid-night hours, darkness fled
into the farthest corners of the room. Its paper-thin whisper encased all with its dreary entailment of the days slaughter of victims. The architect behind this indigenous lunacy that they called justice was, of course, the instigator of the axe. It was the executioner.


He sat, sullenly, in the darkened recesses of his entwined madness. The root of this was a rather peculiar specimen: something very odd, indeed, for a taker of souls; a journal.

On the silky, wrinkled parchment he wrote…and he wrote and wrote and wrote. With his quickly flickering quill, he retold the day’s appointments. He delved into how it felt when he’d pilfer a human life, the eerie, and bleak and dooms destined moment that he shared with the subject just before his axe fell swift; it was, in essence, the decay of human society. In that one instant, he could capture the world’s troubles and feel them being neglected upon him. It was an incredible burden, and down in the deepest pits of his heart, he continuously felt the call of the nothingness. It grew larger and stronger with every passing entry.
The most recent went as follows

‘I took three more today; a murderer, a thief, and a relative of the deranged. I had not a notion of sentiment for the murderer. I hate them. The willful taking of a human life sickens me. The thief, king of deception, began to beg. It was quite the sight. The one in which took things without bargaining was craven before the luster of my instrument of peace. But, the third…the mad…I felt a sorrow. Being demented and unaware of his environment, he knew not the dreaded fate that awaited him. In his final moment, the avarice of air was peculiar. He began to breathe heavily, as if, something was caving upon him. I felt it too. I felt it in the bottom of my stomach.
Whilst I pounded out aggression, it wasn’t right. To be struck down of life for being without sanctum seemed odd. I can still hear his screams. I can still sense the entangled webs of his deception. It was an enigma.
I must leave, for I have another arrangement to fulfill. But, things in this old tower are creaking with the intensity of the realm of souls. It’s beginning to boil. I feel a change…’

He got up and looked to the opposite side of the room, and the torrent of sparks that were being spilled upon the floor gave birth to the sight of metal. It was his blade. It gleamed drearily. As the fires of his sharpening pit grew hotter, so did the light that it gave off. He slowly drudged his way across the dark crimson bricks that composed the floor of his chamber. Upon arrival, he reached to a near-side work table that held his veil of the darkest black. He slowly gripped it in his thick, deadly fingers. The mask of black slowly imploded upon the details of his face. His character – his countenance – was draped by the rapid change of identity. He was the executioner. He was this beast.

He stared into the slow dancing trickle of the flame, and when he felt
ready, he menacingly grabbed his tool, and made way for the exit. Upon leaving, he moved down his path of pain…As he continued to stomp slowly and meticulously, he delved down farther into his newly born personality. As he rounded the dark, dank, and bleak stone steps around the central pillar on his way through this spiral staircase, he began to ponder. He wasn’t only descending into the depths of a partially frayed strand of
fate, but he was slowly descending into a palace of his own demons. He was entering his own hell.

His hollow foot-steps rang into a certain rhythm, he was on a mission and upon entering the main lower room; there was his prisoner - a gangly, petrified and beaten man. Standing over by the doorway, with a saintly looking knight of the king’s sword, the man of honor unraveled an olden looking scroll.

“This man has been condemned to death as directed by the King. The undertaking will be of a beheading. The scroll awaits its final seal which must be signed by the executioner who is carrying out the deed. You can make your mark here.”

The page that held the encryption motioned for the wielder of the axe to sign in the space provided to the right of his finger. As the executioner made his way over, his foot steps seemed to echo and be recycled by the four stone walls.

“And his crime?” asked the curious undertaker.
There was a sullen silence that rang so loud, it seemed to deafen all the men involved. The knight was silent, almost as if he was being challenged.

“If I am to end this man, I will know what he is guilty of.”
The knight murmured words of which were obvious lies.

“Disturbing the King’s peace. This man entered and shouted his disregards at the top of lungs. He entered the palace, uninvited and began voicing his unwanted opinions, and thus, the King decided to set an example of all others who plan on carrying out actions like this. The King will not be a mother to man’s problems.”

An eerie silence surrounded them. It became the warm air that filled their lungs. After some time of a cataclysmic stare down, the executioner responded.
“I will not put a man to death on a minor law infraction. Moreover, I will not take a life on the whim of an over-reactive king.”

“Do not forget the charge of treason to those who may slander his name or fail to carry out his wishes…”

Both men stood, once again, in a full entrancement of confrontation. The executioner, without tenure to escape, moved forward and delivered his following statement in a whisper to express his disgust with his preceding call to order.

“You are to seek the end of an innocent man. The blood of this is on your hands.”

The saintly knight simply stood with a smug smirk emerging from the corners of his lips. It ripened into a healthy grin. He tipped his hand, turned over the chains, and exited. There was an atmosphere of grimace, as the angry shadows looked on. If the acclaimed axe were to fall on an innocent man, an honored individual he would be no longer. He looked to his newly acclimated prisoner.

“To death…” the executioner uttered.
The man of chain lowered his head, as if to expect nothing less than a drought of mercy. As they moved across the gigantic, seemingly ceiling less chamber…They both could taste the death that had set in the air.

Upon reaching the big wooden doors set in the opposite side of the palace, they opened with the force of a hand, and creaked like the war-cry of a thousand rotting souls. He drug the prisoner as if he were cattle being led to momentary quench of thirst.

The executioner, axe in the other hand, set the man’s long, fleshy, and delicate looking neck within the spine shaped groove that had been made over so many years worth of victims. The executioner went to the pillared fireplace just above the crest of wreath laid on the floor below it. He lowered his glimmering blade within the joyous children of the flame. It was almost as if they were in existence just for this – just for death. The double-edged axe began to glow red hot.

He slowly picked it up out of the flame and walked to a set out log. He raised the cutter up high and let it fall under its own weight. The log fell in two, as if a scalding butter knife through butter. Satisfied with his own work, he glided across the tiles to the man to be condemned. He looked down through his mask, at the eyes of this hopeless man. Within that moment, he was arrested by their call of despair and plea of mercy. The mask could hide his inner-self no longer. As a fallen lamb might squeal and writhe before slaughter, so the prisoner spoke.

“What of this seems right, I ask you? Nothing! You have a choice!”

The executioner fought with himself. ‘He is innocent! Stop, stop, stop I demand you!’.

The flaming hot sharp metal rose high in the air, as the executioner continued to lock eyes with the executioned. The prisoner’s strong cries of bargain began to reduce to soft whimpers of despondency. They had begun to succumb to the hopeless grave that he knew awaited him.

“Please…”

The prisoner’s words were cut short by the heavy blade falling with all strength. A soft crimson liquid spilled out upon the floor; and in this moment of repetitious butchery that he had carried out so many times, a small salty tear withered its way down his cheek.

Without cleaning up the slay of sightless life, he ran his way up the big stone steps that he had descended earlier; two at a time, back into his sanctuary of thought, and back into his slowly growing and ever mounting gigantic black depression.

He entered the same room, and there it was, just as dark as before. It had been retained exactly the way it was when he left it. He hurried over to his journal, and observed the words forever scratched across the parchment. In tears…and an obvious and unspoken shame, he wrote. He emptied his spirit, drop by drop; and tear by tear, onto that same paper that he had opened to before. The thick, crushing, and endless unhappiness continued to grow more staunch and unbearable with every passing and waking moment.

There was no escaping his demons which had finally come in full to collect him to the world under in which he had sent so many men before him.

The night passed and the next day had arisen. Within the day’s events, was the returning of the knight from before. He had come back to see sure to the beheading of his yester-prisoner.

He entered the big castle with a loud creaking of the stone doors as was made of the same tile that bricked the rest of the property. The air was ripe with a ghastly unseen odor. He shouted for the master of the residence. Nothing.

Again, nothing. Once more, and still nothing. He then made his way to the spiral staircase leading to the master observatory in which he kept so many of his sleepless hours in ponderous philosophical thinking. Upon reaching the top, he called into the room in which the door was closed. He knocked his knuckle upon the olden ripe, experienced wood. Silence.

“Sir…sir are you alright? I’m going to enter!”

When he entered the room, the scene was just as empty and silent as had been the rest of the palace of terror. That was, until he gazed over to the corner.
There he was, hanging by the neck, from the ceiling; just above the fire that he had let light his chamber so many a cold night. There was a slow pitter-patter of blood to the as such colored tiled surface of his floor. The knight’s mouth dropped open in horror.

Just below his feet, laying on the table, with just enough illumination to read the letters inscribed upon it, the knight read.

‘This will not stand. I have stained my hand with crimson that is more innocent than mine own. With the coming storm of the forever, I have decided to take my own pill of death just as I have dealt out to so many. I cannot live, so I must be deprived of such a privilege. I leave this as a sentiment; a sentiment and ode to the solitude of death.
I leave this as the bloodied proof to the world. These are the memoirs of the Executioner.’

Upon finishing the final word, the knight looked up and all around. There was no light. There was no hope and there was no life. He gazed out the window, and the sun had slowly fell below the horizon and gave birth to the devil’s playground and nocturnal resting place of all things…Night was upon him; and in that moment, it seemed as though it would never raise again.