The Steps before me were brown, dust was picked up by the wind and it blew across them. I stepped up on the first one and it gave a creak, the only sound to be heard as the town remained hushed, as I made my way to the Stage. Some may call it morbid, others, the ones who have also walked this path, know that referring to it as a stage is accurate. The wooden platform with a single beam above it and a rope hanging from said beam is a stage. I am just a player on this stage forced by choice and circumstance to follow the part I have been given by the director. 

I see the Director of this maudlin play. He is staring at me from his balcony at city hall. His clothes are bright and clean, fitting for one such as he, being from the east. They think they are civilized out in the east, they are not, we are all animals who will do terrible things if we have to, civilization is just a polite veneer that allows society to function. 

I walk the rest of the way to take center stage. The extras and supporting cast are already waiting for me, their faces dour, their eyes shadowed by their hats from the noon sun. I look out on the crowd, normally a hanging is celebrated with food, dance and song. However, on this day, silence rains, only the wind and the sound of the stage’s wood bending makes a noise. 

I see the audience and in it are those I recognize, there to see me in my final act, a final dance as it were. I see Maggie, standing on the balcony of the saloon, her black hair contrasted by her fair porcelain skin and blood red lips. She sees me look at her and I see her start to lose her composure and she turns away. I should have married her, I should have just gone and married her and settled down somewhere else. We talked often enough about it. I understand seeing me die will be difficult to look at.

I see Molly, my brother's wife and their kids looking down on me. Seeing them I feel a lump in my throat. I failed them. My brother’s last wish was for me to take care of them…and instead I am here waiting to die, and they are up there in the clutches of the man who orchestrated his death. If only I was a better man, one who was not easily swayed by his anger. I should have just taken the money and left, raised my brother's kids and kept them safe. It would have been an easy task and something my brother should have been able to trust me with…in fact he did…

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Next to my brother's family standing there I see the director of this play. He is wearing clothes befitting his station. Festooned in a suit that he no doubt bought back east, crimson colored like the blood on his hands…and the blood on mine. I stand in the middle of the stage, the hangman puts the noose over my head. The rough twine rope gets pulled tight around my neck in preparation for the final act and final drop of my life.  

“Has the condemned any last words?” I hear the priest say. 

“I do Father.” 

“Then speak to them for the community to hear.”

“While I gave my final confession to the Father last night, there is one thing I did not confess to, for it was not a sin. What I am being hanged for today was not a sin but JU..” I hear the door beneath me go before I feel myself fall. I close my eyes and count to the snap. ‘1..2..3.’ and then I feel the rope suddenly go taught. It digs into my throat making me involuntarily try to grab it and get it off. However, with my hands bound behind me this is a pointless and futile gesture. I am not granted the quick death. I open my eyes as I start to choke. I see the crowd gasp and look upon me. Everything starts to become fuzzy slowly as I helplessly dangle and try to get air that won’t come. As my vision starts to fade I lock eyes with a man, who dressed in all black glaring at me with a smirk on his lips, there is a hunger in his eyes, the kind I saw during a harsh winter in the Dakota’s when men lost their veneer of civility and returned to being predators with only hunger in their eyes. As we look at each other I feel an anger well up inside at this whole situation. The injustice, the regret, the man who killed my brother, and the man that put me here. It was a brief flame of anger that fades as I do.  ‘It's a little hot out to be wearing black’ is the last thing that goes through my head as I finally drift away.