Come upon an old gallows, rotten and rotting but still standing. All the town nearby gone long ago, so long ago and beyond reckoning, and yet the gallows stand, nooses still hanging, ropes frayed. They’ve seen a lot of use, but not in many years, not in a long, long time. 

How many necks have they snapped? How many have they strangled, the murders bungled by stupid and sadistic hooded mongoloids? They hang still in the night. Nineteen nooses hanging there, unmoving despite the wind. A dark purple against the starlit cobalt sky. 

High, high up there. Higher than any gallows I’ve ever seen. Either for hanging giants or just to scare the shit out of the condemned. Must be fifty times the height of a man.

When they hang children, there’s no way to get their necks to break without having their heads pop right off. All of them strangle up there, way up there, feet kicking like mad. Can’t make much sound, too, with their necks all noosed-up. Some gurgling at first. Arms wriggling, tied behind their backs. Kicking like mad. Then more slowly. Then it gets quiet. The madness cools and then it smells like shit, the same smell everyone else makes. Doesn’t much matter how they go out. They all stink just the same. 

That first one on the right up there, that must have been the one they used just for the kids. What’d they do when they had more than one? The other nooses are the wrong size, the wrong height. They must’ve done the kids one by one. Seems that the first one must’ve had it easiest, not knowing what to expect in those last minutes of hypercapnic terror, praying for a sharp crack and the sudden and forever black. The next kid could only look on in a kind of dismay and disbelief and absolute mortal horror that no one else will ever know. 

Surely there were times when a dozen or more child bandits were caught at once. An example would have to be made, of course. Hanging them all would have ages, though smaller bowels surely make for faster cleanup. Smaller bodies need smaller graves, and in any case: they’d all be thrown in the same shallow, muddy ditch anyway.

Have to scare them all half to death, the ones not slated for death that day. Have to keep them afraid. Keep them in line. Keep them headed straight to the end. Deviation from the straight path toward death is worse than death: it brings the death of everyone else. Stay the course. Eyes ahead and ears pricked. But stay with the terror. Look up at the dangling dead and the shit and piss dripping from their feet. Fear them. Fear the dark, grinning and snarling, below you. Fear not fear. Fear doesn’t frighten. The frozen gallowscape and the howling abyss glowing green frighten. If you haven’t seen them, don’t you worry. Everyone sees them eventually. And the sooner the better.