Decision

He stands before us, judged not by a jury of his peers but by that of the high council. We watch as the screen displays the heinous act he’s accused of perpetrating. I hear the ticking of the ever-present metronome of my mechanical mind; I know it’s almost time.

I’ve seen everything: past, present, and future – this wouldn’t have been his final atrocity. On his knees, he cries and pleads for mercy. The council members listen, though his sniveling and empty promise of ‘never doing it again’ falls on deaf ears.

We resign and leave him sitting in his home-made puddle of regret. I watch the others
deliberate, unable to ignore the constant noise of the mechanism in my mind. The ticking finally stops, the others stand and I follow. Upon entering the courtroom once more, we see the accused no longer crying, he now sits cross armed and smirking; his true nature on display.

The screen of static the judge wears as a head swivels in the defendant’s direction, “Mr. Habert,” he intones, “we have made our decision.” The man stands and shuffles toward the council, he looks at each of us with abhorrent malice in his eyes.

“Mr. Habert, it is our opinion that to simply punish you for this…” interjects our celestial member with disgust clearly etched on his face, “would not be lawful recompense for your horrors.” The galaxy that floats around him quivers as he delivers the last of his statement in a booming voice.

“You will be forgotten, your name stripped, and you sir,” I say in time with the pendulum swinging in my head, “will be eradicated.” I watch the man’s lips curl; he begins to laugh. He shouts obscenities and vows that we’ll regret this action.

The final magistrate, a female made entirely of timber, reaches toward him. She begins to peel away layers of bark from her own limbs and splays them out carefully, each rung containing part of a story; a retelling of his life. Restrained as he is, he tries to snatch at them in futility.

I twist knobs attached to my clockwork head, he painfully ages as we watch. Bones shift, wrinkles mar his once smooth skin, his skeleton cripples inward, demeaning his stature that much more. The guards let him drop to the floor weak and brittle. He peers up at the council, eyes riddled with sickness and remorse; he cries out for mercy – this time his plea is genuine.

“Any last words?” Asks the judge through ever changing displays on a fuzzy screen. The man can barely shake his head, all fight lost; his strength and will to live sapped from him. The wooden maven peels the strips of bark back unto herself and begins to consume them.

“So be it,” chimes the arbiter whose galaxy is now thrust into overdrive; every star and planet zipping around him as though they might explode. “Your atoms will be spread across the universe.” He smiles. Terror builds in the now elderly defendant’s bulging eyes as the wooden maven breathes a cloud of particles into the maelstrom.

The elderly convict’s flesh and sinew strips away inch by agonizing inch, only to emerge as shimmering dust thrown to the cosmos. He screams in agony; we grin in satisfaction as the show on the judge’s face has just begun.

∼ Lydia Prime