They said that we would all be better off if we just strung him up by his you know whats out in the town square and let everyone take a swing at him. One by one they would come with their baseball bats and their old glass Bubble Up bottles and they would line us all up, single file fashion, of course and we would shuffle in for our turn.
He was a monster, an alien, and an outcast. And those were all the most pedestrian of euphemisms for what many said when referring to this creature. The air was full of assumptions and silent accusations. Although normally a colorful group of townspeople, happy even--when she disappeared last Thursday, there was zero tolerance for grey.
At this point, it was the surge of anger, not the details of her disappearance, that mattered most. The sheriff brought her cold and limp little body out in the town square. Having merely draped her in a thin, white sheet, he paraded her around like a circus ringleader. They were waiting for him to say, "Step right up, step right up," but he never did.
Instead, he kicked the small wooden stool out from under the beast and under the gallows. He let him squirm for a moment until moved the stool until it was right in front of the fidgety criminal and then he stepped up on it, shoving her little body right in his face.
There were no words needed anymore. She was lifeless and soon he would join her ranks. Tears ran down the sheriff's face as he locked in on the villain. He pushed her up against his nose so he could smell that rigor mortis was in full effect, so that he could get a whiff of the infinite sorrow he had brought to them.
And once the sheriff had turned her body over to the undertakers, he went right for the knees.
This was a sad day, just like they always said of days in Mudville. It was the end of the line, it seemed.
And the beginning for the rest of them, for Casey and his bat.
A very haunting series of thoughts. I hope Casey gets a hit. We need it!!!
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