Mickey Reichert: The beasts of Barakhai

The man without the rope, the heavier one, drew a loop in the air with his finger, an obvious gesture to turn.

Collins only blinked, pretending not to understand. It seemed safer than insolence.

The men conversed a moment, then nodded. They lunged for Collins simultaneously. He leaped backward, crashing against the wall with enough force to send pain lurching through his spine and breath huffing from his lungs. A moment later, they had him prone, arms pulled behind him. The ropes tightened around his wrists again, reawakening the previous day's agony. He screamed.

The guards shouted over Collins. The two hauled him to his feet, the door opened, and they all escorted him through the prison hallway. They went through another door, attended by two women in the standard uniform, then emerged into sunshine so bright it seared Collins' eyes. He shut them, allowing the men to guide him blindly, stumblingly forward. Gradually, the sounds of a crowd grew around him, mingled conversations interspersed with an occasional call and sometimes pierced by a bark or whinny. He opened his eyes to slits, seeing a blur of faces, streets, and cottages in a glaze of brilliant sunlight. Then, he caught sight of the gallows towering over the rest, and he forced his eyes fully open despite the pain.

Collins now saw that he walked through a village of mud-and-thatch cottages, shops, and mills. The gathering consisted of a teeming mass of people, as varied in appearance as Americans, except they all wore simple homespun: grizzled elders and slouching adolescents, adults of every age, some clutching children's hands or babies in their arms. The shadow of the gallows loomed over them. Collins pinned his attention on the vast wooden monstrosity. A rope dangled from its uppermost pole, over a high, warped platform with massive, metal hinges. Clearly, the rope went around the victim's throat, then the platform was dropped, suspending him, by his neck, just above the level of the crowd. Him. Collins shivered. Him is me. He would feel his spine snapping, a moment of excruciating pain followed by absolute and permanent nothingness. Permanent. The enormity of death filled his mind with a terror beyond panic, the realization that the world would go on without him in it, that his time on this earth would end, not in years, but in minutes.

Collins reared backward, against his captors, screaming in mindless hysteria. Their grips tightened painfully, nails gouging his arms, then his legs. He felt himself lifted into the air. He squirmed, desperate, howling, aware only of the complete and monstrous need to break free. Though Collins recognized forward motion, the significance of it refused to penetrate the thought-shattering horror that drove his fight.

It all came home moments later.

The noose tickled, then hugged Collins' neck, and he went utterly still. It's going to happen. It's really going to happen. I'm going to die. A hopeless rationality filled him, a strange relief from the previous panic. And I'm not going down in the history books as the hero who faced his end bravely. His mind slid to a story he had read in junior high, about a man hanged from a bridge who hallucinated a grand escape in the moments before death. He wondered if it really happened that way and realized that no one could possibly know. He would, but he could do nothing with the information. If only I'd gone to the Johnsons'. If only I hadn't followed that rat. If only I hadn't eaten that rabbit. Regrets followed, the inability to apologize for small misdeeds, to say good-bye. He thought of all the things he would never get to do: hold a job, marry, coddle his children. Visit Disney World.

A man said something Collins could not understand.

Collins laughed hysterically, screwing his eyes shut. Then, the floor fell out under his feet, and he felt himself plunging. He tightened the muscles of his neck and face, bracing for the final impact.

The fall seemed to last forever. Then, a jolt shocked through his groin. Agony cramped his stomach, and he tumbled forward. His nose struck something hard and hairy, driving more pain through him. The crowd roared. Collins forced his lids open. Immediately, wiry hair slashed his eyes, and he shut them again. He felt forward movement, gaining momentum. The noose lay heavy on the back of his neck. He dared a shuddering breath, and air glided silkily, surprisingly easily, into his lungs.

The crowd continued shouting, sounding like they were in an open air sports stadium. Collins sat, splay-legged, on something warm and furry that carried him at a rocking sprint away from the gallows. He remembered the name of the hanging story: "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," though the significance of knowing it eluded him. Pitching his torso back, without the use of his still-tied arms, he wrenched open his eyes again. His breaths came in pants, due to shock not pressure.

Farm fields flashed past Collins, and forest loomed ahead. Behind, he heard yelling. The noose remained around his neck, trailing a length of rope. He sat astride a horse, its black mane whipping into his face, one golden ear forward, the other flicked backward. A set of saddlebags lay slung across its withers. Falima? he wondered, doubting the possibility. She had seemed so hostile toward him the previous night. He eased more steadily onto the horse's back, not caring who or what had caught him, only glad that he had at least a little longer to live.

The horse lunged around the trees, racing between trunks with a speed that quailed Collins. He wished for the use of his hands. Weight shifts and knee pressure seemed woefully inadequate to keep him astride as the animal kept up its breakneck pace on narrow deer trails through dense tangles of forest. Then, as if in answer to his wish, the ropes loosened on his wrists. He fingered them, his exploration rewarded by frayed areas where it had, apparently, broken. He twisted it blindly over fingers, hands, and wrists, hampered by a warm, sticky liquid. Then, the rope fell away, freeing his hands. He pulled the noose from his neck, rubbed his bleeding wrists, and seized handfuls of mane.

The horse loosed a low nicker and slowed, slogging through denser brush and between more tightly packed trunks. Something buzzed past, irritatingly close to Collins' ear. He swatted at it, missed, and turned his attention to the terrain. The horse wallowed through tangles of brush, forcing Collins to flatten against its neck or side to avoid braining himself on leaning deadfalls and shed branches caught in the crotches of other trees. Time and again, he jerked a leg onto the horse's back to rescue it from being crushed.

Collins had done some riding with his high school girlfriend and realized he could steer the animal better than it could randomly pick its way along the trail. Taking up the rope intended to kill him, he fashioned it into a raw bridle, essentially a loop with reins. Gliding up the horse's neck, he flicked the coil around its nose.

The horse made a sound deep in its throat but otherwise seemed to take no notice of the rudely fashioned tack. As panic receded, Collins considered his situation. He rode on a horse that might, at other times, be human, possibly even Falima. The animals he had thus far seen acted exactly like the creatures they resembled in his own world, except for the too-friendly rabbit. Joetha, he corrected, cringing. Apparently, while in "switch-form," they lost their human memories and fully became animals. He wondered if all humans here had an animal-form, whether he might acquire one if he remained here too long, and how much control they had over the change.

Collins steered the buckskin around a thick, low-hanging branch. It ignored his gentle pull, so he increased the pressure, then drove his opposite heel into its flank.

The ears jerked backward. The horse reared with a sharp squeal, then followed Collins' instruction. The horse's reaction flashed guilt through him. Perhaps the horse did retain at least some of its human understanding. Suddenly he remembered the dogs' unwillingness to share his feast in the field. They must have some crossover between human and animal time. Otherwise, the dogs would never know they could not eat meat.