♔ Execution ♔ - That Really Grinds My Gears
Michael couldn’t see what had happened after the trial, but he did remember a sharp pain to the back of his head right after he was found guilty. When he came to, he found himself hanging upside down for some reason. His head was spinning like crazy, and he could taste blood in his mouth. He must have bitten his tongue when he was knocked out. He tried to move, but he found that he was unable. He looked at his body, and realized he was tied up really tight with steel wire. He struggled against his bondage, but he was unable to break free.
Suddenly, he felt the lights come on, and he felt disorientated. He could tell he was suspended high into the air, but Michael couldn’t see just how high he was. He jerked his head around, to get a better view, and he could see the giant contraption that he was in. The room he was in was enormous, yet completely lit. He was hanging under a giant array of gears and belts above him, all of them slowly moving along. Below him, he saw another pair of gears, but these were far larger, and weren’t powering anything. Before Michael could see anymore, he heard a noise.
Michael froze, confused by the sudden noise. Where did it come from, and why did it sound so loud? Was it some sort of insult for his crime? He tried looking up at where the noise came from, and for a split second, he thought he saw a bird flying through the room, but it quickly disappeared into the giant contraption. At that moment, all the pieces came together. The giant mechanism with the moving parts, being tied up and suspended in the air, and the loud bird noise, all came together in his mind in a flash.
Monoswan had built a giant cuckoo clock.
Michael tried his hardest to swing his body around, and get a better view of the situation. He noticed a giant pendulum swinging above where Michael was hanging, and at the end of the pendulum, sitting like a queen, was Monoswan herself. Michael felt himself get enraged at the swan, and began to yell at her.
“Hey, you damn swan! What’s the whole idea here! What are you trying to do?!?”
Michael could feel the blood begin to collect in his head, and he figured that it was beginning to affect him. Nevertheless, Monoswan stared eerily at the bound boy, and pulled out something shiny from behind her. Michael couldn’t get a good look at what it was, since Monoswan was on the far end of his swing, but it couldn’t be anything good.
As Monoswan swung back around, she whacked the steel wire with the object in her hand, and Michael felt the vibrations of the hit from where he was. He began spinning around like a top, and he felt nauseous from the hit. He had no idea what was happening, or what was going to happen. All he knew right now was that he wanted to be standing right side up, and on solid ground.
Monoswan swung by again, and he felt another hit on the wire. But this time, he had managed to get a clear look at what Monoswan was holding. It was a giant, comically sized meat cleaver, surprisingly unstained and sharp looking. As soon as he saw the cleaver, it hit Michael what was about to happen. He looked down (or up) at the spinning gears below, and was immediately filled with a sense of absolute fear.
He started thrashing against his restraints, hoping that somehow, there was a loose knot or wire, anything to free him and let him get away. The more he tried, however, the tighter the bindings seemed to get. He couldn’t tell if that was the case, or if he was imagining things again. His sense of logic seemed to be missing at the moment, as he felt yet another vibration from the wire as Monoswan hit him again.
He couldn’t think straight anymore, and the dizziness was starting to take hold of him. He tried desperately to keep himself from passing out, and shook his head in an attempt to clear his mind. In the process, he felt his monocle fall lose from his face, and he watched as it fell straight in between the two gears below. He would hear a slight cracking as the glass and metal were pulverized, and he watched in horror as he realized he was headed there himself.
Michael lost his self-restraint, and began to yell at the top of his lungs. He first began yelling belligerent nonsense, but soon his thoughts focused on calling for help, despite the emptiness of the room.
“I KNOW YOU CAN SEE ME! SOMEBODY COME HELP ME, PLEASE! THIS IS INSANITY AND YOU ALL KNOW IT AND I DON’T WANT TO DIE LIKE THIS! OH GOD, DON’T LET ME DIE LIKE THIS!”
His raving was cut short by another shaking of the wire as the pendulum swung by again, and Michael felt the wire choking him now. How long had it been since this torture started?
He was dazed, lost, terrified, and losing his mind as his head got redder and redder from gravity’s effects. His eyes began to water, but whether that was from his fate or the hanging, he couldn’t tell. He tried looking back at Monoswan, and noticed something fly by his face. It was the meat cleaver she had been using, and Michael watched as it fell down onto the gears, and was promptly mangled and pressed. Michael didn’t even react to this, as he had been hung for too long by that point. All he knew was the pain in his head was not subsiding at all.
Michael didn’t notice when Monoswan pulled out the giant machete out of nowhere, and wielded it like a saber. Nor did he see when Monoswan swung harshly at the wire with it, while the momentum of the pendulum added to her force. He did feel the sharp yank as the machete sliced through the wire in one clean sweep. He tried to scream as he fell, but the sound got caught in his throat, and he instead silently plummeted, right into the giant, spinning, crushing gears.
The bird’s final tweet rang out through the room, loud and harsh, and echoed for a few moments before it died out. By then, the show had ended, and it flew back into its mechanical cage, never to come back out. The ground was covered in blood, splattered and misshapen, with the remains of the boy’s body collapsed under the gears. His head and most of his upper body were crushed away, but the bottom half had fallen off before it was crushed.
His time of death was 10 o’clock, right on the dot. Even in death, Michael was punctual.
Michael Stoltz, SHSL Clockmaker, has been executed.
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