Classroom X

day eight: honesty

Siward Macauly was a murderer.

It was the truth.

After his name was announced, there was quiet in the class; or maybe the quietness was just inside Siward's head, heavy and overwhelming. He felt like someone had thrown a wet blanket on him, wrapping him in an intimate chill and shutting out the rest of the world. A buzz had started somewhere at the ends of his feet, fizzing up his nerves like threads of volatile fumes trying to escape. There was something inside him wobbling precariously, threatening to topple over.

So this is what they felt, he thought, lifting his head and looking at the people who had just sentenced him to death. The eyes he met were either immediately averted or seemed to be conveying the message that they wanted him dead. Those eyes wanted to believe that he was a killer; they yearned for it to be the truth. Guilt and condemnation coloured most faces around him, but there were a few that wore the plain expressions of apathy. However there was not one face that promised him safety, not one face that told him he still had any hope left. So this is what they felt, right before they were killed.

Siward tried to summon his usual cheeky smile, to dredge it up from a gushing river of emotions, but he couldn't carry it as far as his lips.

They want me dead.

In a trance he took the first step forward.

But this is what I deserve.

He thought of all the people who were executed before him. Emryse. Athene. Eliot. Karui. There were others too. None of them had deserved to die. But he deserved to die.

This thought gave him resolve, and he took his next step with more confidence. By the time he was facing the smug-faced Major Strauss, he'd managed to hitch a crooked grin to his face, incorrigible until death.

This is fine, he thought. I can just die.

It's better if the world has less of my kind.

He wasn't a nice person, he knew. He was stridently business-minded-eye for an eye and teeth for teeth; to him every act of kindness was a trade-he expected payment for it. He was selfish and seldom cared for others. He was good at finding the weaknesses of others and better at exploiting them. He could hurt a person and not regret it, he could lie and lie and never feel the stab of conscience. He was vicious and demanding. He was a liar and a killer.

This was the person he was.

Such a person was better off dead.

"You never though this day would come, did you?" Major Strauss asked, quirking his lips. He stroked the gun in his hand lazily, as if to tease Siward with his impending demise. He was watching Siward like a hawk, trapping him in his storm grey eyes, waiting to see what he'd do next. It was as though he expected Siward to pull a trick, as though he wanted to be able to see through it.

Siward sneered. "Well, Old Man, isn't this a first? I thought you never chatted with your victims before you killed them?"

"I must say I'm amply shocked," continued Strauss, never taking his eyes off of Siward. "Siward Macauly dying an early death? I have no idea how many of my subordinates are about to lose their money. About half of them were convinced you'd be the last man standing."

"I apologise for the inconvenience," Siward said mockingly. He thought his tongue tasted sour. "Did you make the wrong bet too?"

Strauss smiled at him callously, then raised his arm so the gun was pointing at the middle of Siward's forehead. His voice was husky and gloating when he spoke. "No. I made the right one."