To Deny the Hanged Man

He stalked back and forth in front of his two captives; one boy, one girl. From his hand, a sword hilt protruded and evolved into a blade that scraped noisily across the tiled floor. The captives were bound at the hands and feet and knelt in a submissive position. Their mouths were left free, not so they could talk, but so they could answer.

“Now,” the sword-toting captor spoke. “I’m sure you know why you’re here, don’t you?”

The boy and girl remained silent.

The captor stopped pacing and pointed the point of the sword to the boy’s face.

“You’d best be answering when I talk to you,” he warned.

“Yes,” the boy answered.

The point was poked against his cheek until he felt a line of blood running down.

“Sir,” he added, his voice cracking.

His captor removed the sword and continued on his destination-less journey. His mood was dark and heavy but his face was that of an angry man trying not to smile. It was almost comical.

“You know why you’re here?” he repeated for verification.

“Yes sir,” they replied diligently.

He allowed himself a smile. He stopped in the middle of them and knelt. The sword remained tightly gripped in his hand but the blade rested on the ground.

“Lighten up,” he said. “I’m not mad at you guys.” His brief, happy disposition shifted back to grim and dangerous. “Just terribly disappointed,” he growled.

With a quick thrust, he ran the sword through the boy’s shoulder and pulled it out in the quickest but most uncomfortable way possible. The boy collapsed as much as he could with his restraints. The girl looked over to him, watery concern brimming in her eyes.

The captor stood up. With a mere side glance at the girl, he slashed the weapon across her face, cutting only the cheek. Both injured, they wriggled like insects at the mercy of the omnipotent human. They one that could decide whether they lived or died with a fickle power he would use selfishly.

“I really hate being lied to,” the captor explained, “especially by my friends.”

“We didn’t lie to you!” the boy shouted from his resting place. “It wasn’t official yet!”

The captor furiously drove the sword through his injured shoulder, an inch below the first wound.

“You will be silent until I address you!” he commanded.

The boy bit back his groans so as not to anger the captor further.

“But,” the girl began. She flinched as the captor’s head flipped to her with burning eyes. “We really didn’t lie to you,” she spoke up bravely. “It didn’t happen yet. We each didn’t want to make any assumptions.”

To her surprise, the captor smiled. He drew the sword out of her boyfriend and took a step toward her. The smile seemed almost friendly.

“Is that so?” he asked innocently.

Like the changing of a television channel, the captor’s smile became a satanic grimace. He sent three more lashes across her face, splitting her nose with the third strike. Obviously, she began to cry.

“Do you want us dead this badly?” she sniffled.

A sympathetic look crossed the captor’s face. He dropped the sword and stooped down to be on her level. He cupped her bleeding face into his hands and gazed into her eyes.

“That’s terrible,” he said. “I really don’t want you dead. You just have to understand how betrayed I feel right now.”

The girl smiled to see that she was getting reason out of him.

“I understand,” she agreed. “We should have told you and, for that, we are very sorry.”

The captor’s face lit up.

“Are you really?” he asked happily.

“We are,” the girl confirmed.

Smiling, the boy picked up his sword and stood. He aligned the point with the centre of the girl’s forehead.

“It’s nice to know that you’ll die without regrets,” he informed her.

“No! Don’t!”

The captor looked down in surprise as the boy draped himself over his foot.

“Ugh,” the captor said in annoyance. “You got blood on my sneaks.”

“Don’t do it,” the boy pleaded. “Look, we’re your friends, right? We really didn’t mean to keep it from you, but you have to understand, it has nothing to do with you. We didn’t lie but you aren’t obligated to the truth either. You just need to let it go.”

Involuntarily, the song from Frozen began playing in the captor’s mind. Shortly after, the words hit home.

“Let it go?” he repeated. “Let it go.”

There was a spell of silence. The only sounds that could be heard were the soft, tuneless breathing of all three people.

“I should let it go,” the captor broke the silence nodding.

“Yes,” the boy answered from the floor believing that he’d finally quelled the groundless anger.

The nodding turned to shaking.

“I don’t think so,” the captor declared.

He drove the sword through the boy’s heart from his back. He died before he had time to flail. The girl, at her nerves’ end, began to scream. She was silenced when the captor wiped the blade across her throat with a skilful flick of his wrist. The blood splattered on him but he ignored it. The body fell.

“That’ll teach you to lie to me,” he proclaimed.

On his way out the door, he stabbed the sword into the wall and left it. It was in the unstained parts of the blade that the first flashes of orange could be seen before the entire room was engulfed in flames.