Next

Next

We were going to die. No questioning it, no denying it. We could only accept it. Together, trapped in this small room, we were each other's last glimpse at humankind. I considered my cellmates; one a brutish man and the other a thin ex-professor. One would think that these two very different characters would not run in the same circle. But the connection between the two of them is what caused all three of us to end up where we currently are. And what a dismal place it was. Light from the outside weakly filtered down upon us from a small window near the ceiling of the cell. Every once a while, the sounds of either wheels or feet crossed past our pathetic window. I did not know under what or where our cell was located. But it was a constant reminder that the three of us were no longer welcome or apart of the rest of society. Through the bars of cell we could see the executioner sitting at his desk, waiting to call us forth and end our lives. His black hood was back, revealing a blank face framed by thin, graying brown hair. His eyes looked like they belonged in the body of a corpse.

"What do you think will happen to us when they come for us?" The thin professor asked, his voice thin with fear. His hands shook as he adjusted small, circular glasses.

"Do you truly not know the answer to that question?" I sneered. Really? I thought. And here I thought he was an educated, intelligent man.

"When we leave this room, we will be dead." The brutish man said simply.

"I heard you become daisies in the next life."

"That's stupid," He snorted, rejecting the idea immediately. A rat crawled out of the wall near the brutish man and in a blink of an eye, it was in the man's hands. He petted the rodent while it fought for it's freedom. Sighing, the brutish man released it and the rat shot away towards the other side of the cell. Pausing once, it hissed at all of us before disappearing in a different hole next to the professor. The thin man yelp and tried to jerk away from the rat, but the chains connected to his wrists prevented him from going very far.

"And where did you hear that Professor? I heard that if you were good in your life, you would move on. If not, there would be nothing waiting for you." I sneered, crossing my arms, own chains rattling.

"Nothing?" The professor said, confused.

I shrugged and explained. "Yeah, nothing. Complete Darkness. No moving forward, no moving backwards. No thoughts, no memories. No nothing." I rolled my eyes at the professor's suddenly pale face. "Well... that's bleak." He whispered.

"It is, considering that is our future." The brutish man said, no emotion on his face. It appeared that he did not really care as to what would happen to him once he left this cell.

And it would appear that the brutish man would find out what exactly happened on the other side. The executioner got up from his desk and stomped towards our cell. When he reached it, his keys jangled together as he unlocked the cell. "Next," He said, his voice deep and uncaring. He only stepped in far enough to unlock the brutish man from his chains and drag him from the cell. Neither the thin professor nor I watched as the brutish man passed onto the next life. His body lay crumpled on the ground. The executioner went back to his desk and began filling out paper work, his quill scratching on the paper.

"Oh God," the professor gasped, his already pale face paling even more.

"I doubt that he will be willing to listen to your pleas," I said.

"And why not?" He snapped.

"Because you had planned out how to kill the King." I snorted. "And don't even deny it; there was no way that brutish man could've thought of such a complicated plan."

"You didn't exactly stop us," The professor snapped back.

But before I could reply, the executioner was back. "Next," he said, unchaining the professor and dragging him away to his death. I studied my fingernails as the professor's body joined the brutish man's. "Yeah, but perhaps I had my own agenda." I muttered to myself. "Then the two of you had to go and ruin it."

Originally, I would've been nowhere near the palace since it was nearly guaranteed that a thief like me would've gotten caught instantly. That was before I heard that the King was going to be assassinated, and those who were going to do the deed needed my help sneaking into the palace. Since there was particularly expensive jewels in the palace that have been calling my name for years, I accepted. I didn't care about who was King or if the middle class was feeling the pressure of taxes. No, all I cared about was how much money I could shove into my pockets and get away with it. And this was my chance to be remembered as the greatest thief of all time.

Clearly, it didn't work to my advantage. It was all the professor's fault; he had left out one of the important details of his plan; an escape route. And since he was going down, he tried to buy his freedom with revealing my name and my part in the plot. All he earned was the freedom of this life...which, he had already been given.

Once more the executioner got up from his desk, chair scraping across the floor. Keys jangling, he unlocked the cell door and then my personal chains that bolted me to the wall.

"Next."