Black Lace And Other Short Stories

Black Lace

Black Lace

It had been bugging her for a week now, keeping her up at night, trying to figure out what to do. Her advisers had been pestering her, telling her that action was necessary, whether it was a hanging or a hand chopped off, or exile. She picked up her pen and began to write.

    "Prisoner 8970 has been sentenced to be hung..."

She stopped and crumpled up the paper. She couldn't do it. The crimes the prisoner had committed would, under normal circumstances, have been punished with a public hanging. But this prisoner, was different, special. A problem that wouldn't go away.

Glancing away from her desk, she looked at the snow-covered landscape, where the deer, the few who still roamed free, walked across the frozen lake. The full moon still hung close to the ground like an old friend who dosn't want to leave. She sighed and decided to spend one more night thinking about it. Before she climbed into bed she promised herself that she would make a decision first thing in the morning.

Her dreams that night where twisted, just like they had been for the past week. It was always the same. First she saw the prisoner about to be hung, then suddenly she was the prisoner. She felt the rope jerk as the trapdoor beneath her fell. Just before her neck broke she woke up screaming. She lay there shaking for a few minutes, until her heart and mind stopped racing. That was the moment that she realized that until the prisoner was swinging from the hangman's noose her nightmares would continue.

She flung herself out of bed and over to her desk. She started writing furisously.

   " Prisoner 8970 has been sentenced to be publicly hung first thing in the morning."

She signed it and summoned a maid to bring it to the captain of the guards. Resting back in her chair, she looked up at the moon, now high up in the sky and tiny. It stared back accusingly. She suddenly wondered if she was doing the right thing. But it was too late now, and what had been done could not be undone.

She fell into another fit full sleep, and when she woke she put on a black lacy dress and walked out to the courtyard. The prisoner was already there, tears running down her face, ghastly bruises all over her body. She walked up to the prisoner and looked into her eyes. No recognition flashed through the prisoners eyes. The moon, still not fully set, hung in the sky like a ghost.

The hangman began counting down. Before he got to one, she closed her eyes. She heard a gasp, and when she opened her eyes the prisoner was dead, hanging in the air like a rag doll. Over the former prisoner's shoulder she moon had disappeared.

She turned her head and looked at the former prisoner. Tears welled in her eyes as she whispered "Oh sister, I am so sorry."