Eden

48

"Well?' The speech-making man shouts. "Will any speak for her, and set her free, or shall she die, or be given the forgetting?"

"Death," most of the crowd shouts, like they're taking it for granted this is what her fate will be, and continue arguing about how. "The river," a few other people say, disagreeing, but only a few. If this is voting by noise-making, those people are being outvoted.

No-one is saying the prisoner should be spared, and that seems a little sad. Even the prisoner herself seems resigned to dying, I notice.

Not scared, I don't think, but resigned.

I want to help. I don't know what she's done, or why, but killing her horribly seems too much. It seems wrong. I want to help, and so I start thinking about what the speech-making man just said. The part about whether anyone will speak up for her. I think about that, and what will obviously happen to her if no-one does, and I decide I want to help.

I want to help because I feel sorry for her. Just to be clear. That's mostly why I'm so bothered by this, and not for any better reason. I don't know her, or why she did what she did, but I feel sorry for her all the same. And I suppose, also, a strange little part of me is suddenly thinking about those horrible terrorist videos I used to see on TV, back when I was alive, and how this situation seems a lot like them. It seems like it to me, anyway. There's a helpless, resigned person, and an angry crowd filled with self-righteous violence, and the crowd is so excited, so ready to be entertained by the violence that's coming, that no-one actually speaks up against it. No-one says a word of protest, or asks whether killing other people is really such wonderful fun. And I sort of get why, I suppose. I think I do. People so desperately want to be part of the in-crowd, whatever that in-crowd is, that they'll go along with anything which everyone else is doing, just because everyone is, no matter how horrible that thing is.

Or something like that, anyway.

Actually, I don't understand it, to be honest. I don't understand at all. But I can't stop thinking about those videos, and about all the other helpless people who have ever been hurt by vicious crowds like this, just because no-one tried to help them, and I decide that I can't just stand there and do nothing.

I have to try and help.