Spill Yr Guts | Issue 001 Fall 2017

of night - rather than handing him over to the courts. At least here he was left with his shirt and a scant hope. If he’d followed Will Sinclair down the Tyburn Road, they’d have ripped him to pieces and fought for the scraps; of cloth, hair, flesh, fibres of the rope…

The rope! It fell like a horse collar around his shoulders, with the weight of eternity. If he was strung up on the gallows, someone would cut him down for the rope. Who would cut him down here?

At once he began to draw in great gulps of air, as if to store them up. From nearby came a short barking laugh: they took his gasps for sobs. He bit his lower lip and tasted his blood mingled with hers. The autumn dew from the grass was soaking through his hose and the stream weeping past carried with it the scent of fresh mud that once would have put him in mind of clean meadows but now only brought the stench of the grave. Overhead, a bough creaked.

Someone said, “Say your prayers,” and he realised that his eyes were closed. Then he was lifted abruptly into the air.

Their first heave was full of verve, the following more laboured as they realised how heavy he was, so he swung crazily mid-air with three of them hanging on like a tug-o-war at a fair until they secured the rope-end to a lower branch and stood back to jeer at their handiwork. Their voices barely made it to his ears; he could glimpse only pale smudges of their faces far below, rocking gently in and out of focus as he swung, slower, slower.

“He ain’t dancing much.”

“He’s still alive.”

Struggle, that’s the thing. He tried to bend his legs as he’d seen them do on the Tree, but he felt weak and his bound hands made any movement nigh impossible. Time slowed. He couldn’t count it. How did he look? If he didn’t satisfy them they’d never leave.

Against nature, he let his face fall slack, mouth open and drooling, tongue lolling. He willed his body limp, his bladder releasing, warm down the inside of his thighs. Dangling. Waiting. It seemed like hours. He heard their voices as if from deep underwater; wrecked shipmates. “He’s gone. Cut him down.”

Cut him down. Cut him down!

“No. Leave him.” That was Zachary.

A younger voice, higher pitched, carried further, “But we can sell-“ 37