text: From the front row of a densely packed crowd, Radello locks eyes with the man tied to the post. Bonds support the mans weight and what remains of his strength fixes his eyes on the boy. In truth, the firing squad's job was done before they even arrived; the man had refused what little food had been offered him during his three month imprisonment and now his emaciated body resembled the thin post it was tied to. The only hint of the seditious spirit that once filled the body rested within a dying light behind those once blue, now grey eyes. It was clear to everyone present that today's arrangements had been moved up to intercept what was about to happen naturally; his death was to be made an example of. All that was left to do was pinch, with wetted fingers, the flame at the bottom of its wick, but this by no means made things easier for Radello. Long before the man was brought out, the boy watched a nearby group enact one of the hundred variations on the same scene that took place all across the courtyard; pairs of arms danced violent pas de deux to the tune of resentful voices debating the life that would be soon brought to its end. To some, his life was the dew forming on grass, the flowers blooming, the hoof trots of pegasi, all signalling the coming of dawn; but to others it was the insidious, bitter weeds and the pernicious rootworm threatening to spoil the harvest. Loudest amongst the latter was Radello's father. As with any boy his age, his father served as both a physical model (despite a nose long ago made crooked, one could make out the hereditary blueprints all male Anatez faces were based upon) and a moral one, so over the hour before the execution Radello had begun to hate the unseen man, and with every throb of the green vein on his fathers forehead, his hatred grew stronger. At first the feeling fell odd, as if it were a suit tailored to someone else's body, but after a while he managed to get used to it. Booming cries and cheers abruptly announced the arrival of the prisoner. Radello turned to look and his hatred momentarily stumbled over the sight of a limp man who had all but wasted away, a man unable to make the short journey across the courtyard and had to be dragged by his guards, a man who greatly contrasted the picture-book drawing of 'Blackbeard' Radello had assigned him in the time before his arrival. The emotion tentatively regained momentum once he heard his father's shouting, but the boy couldn't manage to stifle a growing sense of pity. The struggle to tie the flaccid body to the poll sent the clamouring of the crowd to its peak: a quarter, evenly dispersed throughout the courtyard, cried desperately for the soul now withered to sand, and rest spitefully rose in volume just to drown them out. Guards with batons were sent out to enforce order, and those who cried "Murder" were beaten, much to the amusement of those who cried "Good riddance". Once tied to the post, the man regained a vestige of consciousness and his eyes slowly scanned the part of the crowd allowed to him by the position his head hung. Roars from the crowd and overbearing heat and glare from the sun almost completely eclipsed all other sensation; he did not hear as his death sentence was read out to him, and he could hardly make out individual figures in the crowd. Everything appeared as a vague, rippling haze, with the only exception being the solid figure of a boy at the front of the row, with whom, as previously mentioned, he locks eyes. The man's gaze is ice cold, not from any malice or loathing, but from an almost complete separation from anything indicative of life; Radello shivers as it pierces him. The boy tries, tries, then tries once more to hold onto his hatred, but it slips from his grasp. He tries to turn to his father for inspiration but he is unable to move, all he can do is forcefully endure the man's cold, misty stare. At first it's meaning is incomprehensible; Radello searches deeply into the mans eyes, running through the labyrinths but never finding anything, but soon he allows the whole image to soak in and realises that the the man's stare says nothing. There is nothing left inside the man, the breathing corpse was only served as a cruel awakening for Radello, teaching the fragility of his own life. ".... these crimes do we sentence you to die. Have you any last words?" Wails from the crowd are the question's only response. "May God have mercy on your soul" Six guns rise to point at their target, but it's all too much for Radello. The world around him beings to contort as if it were a reflection in a lake someone threw a large stone into, and for the first time he understands that he is the man tied to the post, that he is the plump man with powdered hair who condemned the man to death, that he is every single person in the crowd and every single person outside it. They were all made of the same substance he was, they were all capable of every emotion he was, and they too would one day find themselves delirious, and facing death. Before today death was to Radello just a nebulous concept applied broadly, covering seemingly unlinked objects, from a spider permanently curled in the centre of a cobweb, to a great-grandparent whose picture sat neatly on the mantlepiece. But now death is right in front of him, and - as he realises with terror - directly ahead, waiting for him. Radello now shakes uncontrollably. The order is given and the six guns synchronously fire into the body that feels nothing. The force of the bullets travel along the dead man's gaze and strike the boy, who promptly loses consciousness.