Café Execution
By Kory Vance
The Executioner had scars on her hands, faint and only noticeable when sunlight glinted off them. Chisels and saws take their opportunities against bare skin. Since I never saw her bleed, I assumed her scars were the phantoms of education.
I was the only prisoner awake when she walked into the compound, her entire body drowned in a shadow from the wide rim of her baby blue sunhat. The Executioner wore denim overalls and a sturdy, floral blouse. A wicker basket filled with warm pastries hung from her elbow, and she gripped a copper pot that steamed from its spout. Her treats bothered me, poured lead into my legs even as my mouth engorged with saliva at the smell of yeast. A little sugar and hot coffee couldn't erase the bug-infested tents, the freezing nights, the prowling memories.
"Good morning!" she wailed. Her voice was something like a songbird and something like a donkey braying. I looked forward to it every morning, in spite of myself. My fellow
soldiers grunted and dragged their bodies out of the tents. It reminded me that I ached from how my bones had pressed into the hard ground the night before.
I joined them. Like ants wrapped in gray rags, we shuffled to the corners of our prison, collecting chairs and card tables. We brought them to the center of the compound and arranged the weathered dining set, staggered in the guillotine's shadow. Others laid out chipped plates and cups. Once seated, three to a table, the Executioner served us.
"Hello, friend," she said to me. "How did you sleep?"
Her gentleness didn't enthrall me the way it did for the other prisoners. I wouldn't let it. I wouldn't let her kindness drip a hope I didn't deserve onto my plate. When was she going to stop wasting time on coffee and get the whole thing over with?
"Not so well, I see." Her voice dropped in pitch. She put a croissant on my plate using short tongs and poured my coffee. I had a caffeine addiction and was too weak a man to hunger strike.
"Hello, beautiful!" said one of the prisoners. I rolled my eyes. He was skinny at that point but had come into the camp with a couple extra layers of flesh, an officer. He bore the malnourishment better than most of us.
She put a hand on his shoulder, a kiss on his cheek, so polite. Some of us had scurvy, but it was a garden party all the same.
The Officer donned pouty eyes and said, "I'm sorry for the mess we made last night."
She snapped her chin into a defiant pose and wagged a finger at the Officer in mock rebuke. Some of the other prisoners chuckled. I bit my tongue.
We finished our breakfast while she took turns at each table, having pleasant chats and innocent flirts. She eventually got to work, setting out her tools and inspecting the damage from the night before. It wasn't catastrophic. It hadn't been for months. The other prisoners never touched the ornate carvings she spent so many weeks chiseling and sanding. Vines and blossoms and lions adorned the cherry wood, too beautiful to break. But they would snap tenons, file the edges of dovetails, widen notches. The machinations weren't enough to demolish the entire structure, but less than an hour of calculated destruction added days to her labor. They had been postponing our execution for over a year in this way. For some reason, she let them.
If the Executioner hadn't been so immensely skilled as an artist, and so particular about the details, we probably would have been beheaded months before. But her creation took time. No nails and no glue, I'd spent my imprisonment watching her chisel and join, plane and carve, sand and stain¾create a masterpiece. I watched the Executioner build our guillotine the way a person watches themselves age in a mirror, watches death ride in.
"Boss Executioner! May I speak with you?" The Warden called from the gate. We rarely saw him and were glad for it. A terrifying figure with dark brown eyes and thick forearms, he loomed in the shadows of our detention prison. That strange country where we found ourselves detained had found its most foreboding man to manage our camp. They weren't in the business of keeping prisoners for long, and certainly not accustomed to executions. Most nations wanted their soldiers back, negotiated for them. Within a month of our capture, those from our allied countries were cheerfully escorted home. For our imprisoners, deciding what to do with us must have been a logistical nightmare, one that only a hate-filled soul like the Warden could handle.
At the Warden's voice, the Executioner dropped her tool and dropped her smile. I held my breath with the other prisoners. We could sense the sudden loss of life, the passion muted, the fire quenched. Despite who she was, something balled in my stomach, and I wished, like a madman, to tell her it was okay. She didn't have to talk to the Warden. I would talk to him for her, tell him she didn't have to interrupt her work if she didn't want to. I wanted the Executioner to be happy because she gave me a piece of bread. Insanity.
She chiseled the smile back onto her face before standing.
"Of course!" she called cheerfully, then disappeared behind the wall.
Strangely, she did not return to the compound that day.
