© 2012 Marvin E. Fuller
Staring up at the patches of mortar he had slapped onto the ceiling those years ago, Skady wished he felt as defiant as he sounded. Had he not done such a good job making the gaol rope-proof, he would have been severely tempted to take Valerie up on her offer.
By itself, his – shrinkage – bothered him a lot, but not to the point of suicide. Had he been free, he might have sought out some hedge witch for a cure or just endured the shame of his vanishing malehood the best he could. Throw his coming punishment into the mix, however, and his future promised to be a lot worse than a simple case of disappearing male bits.
Unless held over for some reason, prisoners didn't stay in the gaol for more than a few days before sentences were passed and punishment meted out. Most of the time, the punishments amounted to a fine or some minor service, but on occasion someone had been sentenced to death. Thankfully, Ringers hadn't normally been the sort for the more painful executions, even when required by law, but Skady didn't harbor any illusions his former boss' replacement would be so merciful. Another possibility, perhaps as bad as an execution, would result in him sent off to one of the kingdom's prisons, either to waste away in some dark hole for who knew how long or work his fingers to the bone at hard labor until he collapsed from overwork and exhaustion. The worst possible fate would be for Skady to be sold into slavery, becoming nothing more than property to be disposed of when he outlasted his usefulness.
Like it or not, no longer impressing the girls, whether willing or unwilling, would be the least of his problems.
The gaol door squeaked open again. The mink considered cracking an eye open to check on who had just entered, but decided against it. If they wanted his attention, they would start yelling at him before too long.
"Neddy!" Skady heard Lulubelle squeal.
"Ack! Hi, Lulubelle, Bert," from the sound of Ned's breathless voice, Skady figured Lulubelle had just squeezed her future brother-in-law in one of her rib-cracking hugs. He counted himself lucky he never had to deal with her while working for Ringers. The magistrate had managed long ago to get her into his bed with a minimum of fuss. Afterward, she had met Bert, and the two had hit it off. Sometimes, good things had happened thanks to Ringers' lust.
"Skady behaving himself, Ned?" Bert asked.
"Eh, he's not the problem," Bert's brother replied, a touch of his mother's hot temper entering his voice. "Val was in here a little earlier. She tried to slip him some rope so he could hang himself."
"He go for it?" Bert wanted to know. Skady couldn't tell if he sounded hopeful or amused.
"It was Skady who figured it out," Ned told him. "He blew Val's mind at least."
Bert laughed.
"Am I missing something, Bert?" Ned didn't sound happy with his brother's reaction.
"Not that I know of, li'l brother," snickered Bert. "Don't worry about it."
"I know the neighbors are riled, Bert," Ned pressed.
"Ah, well..." Bert hemmed and hawed. Skady might have rolled his eyes had they been open. Of course, the townsfolk would be peeved. How many wives and daughters did Ringers have his way with? What of the nearly a score Skady and his two cohorts had dealt with for Ringers? With the magistrate gone, they would want someone to take their anger out on. The real question, the one Ned no doubt wanted an answer to, was, "What were the townsfolk going to do?"
Skady didn't mind knowing the answer either.
"Bert..." Ned wouldn't have any of it.
"You'd better tell him, Bert," Lulubelle added. "Especially since Skady's listening anyway."
"All right," Bert gave in, a little too easily in Skady's opinion. "Father Louie's sermon has gotten some of the town thinking. Skady's done some rotten things. You were there when Pa got him to confess."
"I know," Ned sighed impatiently. Skady suppressed a shudder. After the rain of blows the old opossum had landed on Skady's head, the interrogation had passed in something of a blur. All he could recall for sure was that Ol' Bill never laid a paw on him after that first punch-up. It galled Skady to admit it, but he had probably told Ol' Bill everything he wanted to know without any trouble just to avoid any more beating. The old opossum could be meaner and nastier in a fight than almost anyone else Skady knew.
"Father Louie told us to 'do unto others as you would have others do unto you,'" Lulubelle said, clarifying Bert's words. "That whatever we do to others means we give them permission to it back."
"So, considering what all Skady's done," Bert continued. "Some are thinking prison is going easy on him. They're out for blood. He really should have hung himself." For some reason, that worried Skady.
"Not on my watch," Ned growled stubbornly. "Skady's living to see the magistrate, whenever he finally gets here. Justice will be served for the girls properly, not because their pas and husbands are all bent out of shape."
"I know! I know!" Bert soothed his brother. "I'm with you, li'l brother, but you sound like you need a break. It's my turn on watch now. Get some sleep. Skady'll be here when you get back."
"Yeah," Ned sounded reluctant. The young opossum did sound tired. Skady found himself regretting he could no longer pull his own weight among the town guard.
"Ooo! Let me tell you all about the sermon!" exclaimed Lulubelle.
"Sure," Ned brightened up. "I wanted to listen to it, too. Blast that new magistrate. When's he supposed to get here?"
The door squeaked once more, cutting off whatever Lulubelle might have told him. Skady heard Bert settle into the chair Ned had recently vacated. Bert didn't seem inclined to speak, and Skady no longer felt like grousing about his shrinking male mink bits. Silence settled over the gaol like a pall. Skady tried not to think of how the girls would react when they saw how un-minkly he had become.
Unbidden, his thoughts flew back to the girl who had hung herself, an elfin fennec fox vixen who wasted her fine and delicate curves with a shoddy attempt at suicide. The vixen hadn't done a very good job at hanging herself. Instead of cleanly break her neck, she ended up painfully strangling herself for several minutes by the time Skady found her and cut her down, dying before he could get the rope off her crushed neck. Since then, Skady couldn't bear to kill anyone, the horrible rictus on the little fennec's face shoving itself into his mind's eye any time the subject came up.
That didn't present much of a problem as a town guard. He could fight as nastily as the rest of them, and his sometimes neurotic attention to detail had served the guard well. Jail them, torture them, bury them, as long as he didn't have to take anyone's life he could do what needed to be done at his job and more, but as the leader of the three town guards working directly for Ringers in the red panda's quest for bedtime companions, his quirk posed a big problem. Since Ringers sometimes wanted some of the females he had coerced into his bed to disappear, never to be seen again, that meant someone had to kill them after the males had their fun. Fortunately for Skady, his now dead sister Tammi never hesitated to do the deed for him, always hoping vainly she would impress Ringers into letting her be his next bed companion.
Another squeak from the door and a murmur of voices threatened to intrude on his fantasies of making that ill-fated vixen squeal in carnal ecstasy, but Skady resolutely ignored them in favor of his imaginary girl, except she kept laughing herself silly at the tininess of his fading glory. He threatened to have Tammi kill her, even tried to force himself on her, but the fantasy fennec wouldn't stop giggling. Bert's raised voice announcing someone had just left and another squeak from the door didn't help.
Skady ground his teeth in frustration. Even his imagination betrayed him. Just how much had that stinking Winterfur skatch ruined him?
Something about the quiet in the gaol bothered him. Sitting up, Skady looked around and saw no sign of Bert or anyone else. He was alone in the gaol, a blatant breach of the rules while a prisoner awaited judgment.
That did not bode well for him, Skady was sure. Bert lead the town guards and would not have left Skady unguarded unless something extremely important had happened. At any other time, that wouldn't result in anything more than a reprimand and some token punishment for Bert. Right now, though, it made Skady very nervous.
"Bert?" the mink got up and peered through the bars, half expecting the opossum to have somehow concealed himself. If one didn't count the entry area, Bert didn't have any place to hide.
"Bert? This isn't funny. You're supposed to be keeping an eye on me," Skady called out. Bert failed to show up to angrily remind him that the opossum took his duties too seriously just to play a joke on Skady. Worry continued to gnaw on the mink. He should have paid attention when Bert had been talking to someone. Damn that Winterfur! If he hadn't been worrying about what she had done to him, he might have learned where Bert had gotten off to.
Several tense, opossum-free minutes crawled by before the door creaked open yet again.
"Bert! Where you get off– you're not Bert," Skady's heart hammered in his chest as a raccoon and a trio of rats bearing cudgels climbed the stairs to the main floor. "Uhhh, if you want Bert, Mister Coonacutty, he's not here now."
"We ain't after Bert," growled the raccoon, an elderly fellow still wearing his Sämasday best, a cane clutched in his gnarled black paw. One of the rats picked up the cell door keys that just so happened to be lying on the table. Something didn't add up as Skady never remembered Bert being so careless before.
"You should really let a guard handle those," Skady backed away from the bars, a pit yawning open deep in his stomach. The rat fiddled with the keys before choosing one and slipping it into the cell's lock. It opened with a thunk that managed to rattle around in Skady's guts as if echoing down the pit in his stomach. His back pressed against the stone wall of the gaol, Skady watched helplessly as the rats filed in, brandishing their cudgels threateningly. Coonacutty passed some rope to the rat who had opened the cell door, swapping it for the keys which the raccoon put back on the table.
"Make sure he's tied good and tight," Coonacutty ordered. "We don't want him wiggling his way out of this one."
"What's– what's going on?" Skady squeaked, silently praying it wasn't what he feared was going on.
"Justice," Coonacutty's eyes coldly regarded Skady from behind the mask on his fur. "For li'l Maddy and all those you've had your filthy paws on."
"Look, I didn't do nothin' to your daughter," Skady protested. He tried to pull free of the rats, but one jammed a cudgel against his throat, freezing him in his tracks. Coonacutty nodded in approval once the rats finished binding Skady's arms securely to his body.
"Got somethin' for his muzzle, Joe?" one of the rats asked. "Don't want his whinin' warnin' Ned before we get to the tree."
Coonacutty gave the rat a strip of cloth. Skady tried to jerk his face out of the way, but the other rats held his head still long enough for their companion to tie his muzzle so he couldn't speak. Finally, the rats shoved the bound and gagged Skady forward. He stumbled and felt the tug of a makeshift leash around his neck. Despite the lack of rope binding his legs, he knew deep in that pit in his stomach he didn't stand a chance at successfully running away from his captors. Coonacutty grabbed Skady's tunic and hauled the mink level to his eyes with a strength deceptive to his aging body.
"Time for you to pay the piper, Skady," Coonacutty's breath washed over Skady's face. "You won't kill any more of our girls."
I didn't kill anyone! The cloth about his muzzle prevented Skady from yelling the truth. I never touched your daughter!
Coonacutty let go of Skady and beckoned to the rats, leading the way out of the gaol. Skady struggled to keep ahead of the rats as they marched him after the raccoon. Outside, a wagon waited, another raccoon sitting on the buckboard.
"Be quick, Joe," said the raccoon on the wagon. "We need to get this over quick."
"I know, I know," Coonacutty climbed onto the buckboard beside him. "I'm old, not witless."
Skady tried to resist being hauled onto the back of the wagon, but one of the rats put a stop to that by smacking him in the stomach with a cudgel. Winded, he couldn't fight them as they lifted him like a sack of grain into the wagon before climbing in themselves. Trying to get his breath back, he squirmed listlessly on the floor of the wagon as the raccoon driver clicked his tongue at the drey hitched to the wagon. Skady managed a faint moan as the wagon lurched into motion.
The mink tried to tell himself he lay there in the wagon because he wanted to gather his strength for his coming escape, but he couldn't get himself to believe it. In reality, he was scared out of his wits. He was going to die just like that fennec vixen, dangling on the end of a rope, slowly choking as the rope mangled his throat, his eyes bugging out horribly as he kicked feebly at nothing until finally death deigned to end the last few miserable moments of his life. Skady gave a sob through his gag. He didn't want to die like that! Why couldn't Valerie have offered him a knife or something like that?
The wagon juddered to a stop. The rats pulled Skady to his feet. He blinked at the townsfolk gathered silently around the wagon. Looking up, he realized the wagon now sat under a sturdy branch growing out of a tall elm tree at the edge of town. Skady rocked unsteadily on his feet as the raccoon driver nudged the drey forward under the direction of one of the rats until the very back of the wagon was just past the branch. Satisfied, the driver set the brake and got off the wagon. Coonacutty grunted as he maneuvered himself around so he could step into the wagon. Someone set a wood box on the back of the wagon. A rat forced Skady to step onto it. His heart tried to leap into his throat with every unsteady wobble of the box.
Skady's eyes frantically darted among the familiar faces in the crowd, but the only opossum he saw was Valerie whose expression he couldn't read. A well-dressed cougar watched curiously a little ways nearby, a human and two wolves standing alertly beside him, but Skady didn't know who they could be. He couldn't see any of the few town guards left over from the night the undead attacked. Skady's whimper died in his throat, choked off by his thundering heart.
"Here he is," Coonacutty grunted shortly at the crowd. "Thief of our daughters' virtues, breaker of our wives' vows. Aw, hell. I ain't as good a speechmaker as Father Louie. I don't need to tell you what all this jeeter has done for Ringers. I'll eat my hat if nobody here knows someone Ringers has ruined. How many gals did you kill for him, Skady? How many?!"
Cooncutty choked on his growing rage, a fury mirrored by the townsfolk assembled around the wagon. An ugly murmur rumbled through the crowd, slowly building in intensity.
"Die horribly, you —" one of the females, Skady couldn't tell whom, screeched profanely at him. As if some emotional floodgates had opened, a chorus of jeers and curses burst from the crowd's throats. They jostled each other, shaking their fists at the terrified mink. He watched them helplessly, his eyes wide with fright.
A rat tugged the rope leash from around his neck and replaced it with a hangman's noose. Skady couldn't help but gag as the noose tightened around his throat. With a "hup!", the rat threw the rope over the branch above and caught the dangling loose end. He carried it out of sight behind Skady, pulling it so that the mink had to almost stand on his toes to keep from choking. The rope jiggled, and Skady knew it was being tied down. He was going to die, his neck crushed, his face turned into a horrid mask of agony. Just like the vixen!
"Hey, look at this! Look at what he thinks the girls like," another rat yanked Skady's trousers down around his legs. Catcalls and mocking comments greeted the sight. Feeling the breeze between what little remained between his legs, Skady wept and wished he would just die. Not only would they hang him, but now everyone could see his failure as a male. Why couldn't Valerie have just slipped him a knife or something?
"Wellzer, is this a private hangin' or can anyone join in?" a grizzled opossum wandered around the elm tree. The townsfolk quieted down like children with their paws caught in the cookie jar. A flood of relief washed through Skady. Surely, Ol' Bill wouldn't let the townsfolk kill Skady, right?
With a grunt, Ol' Bill clambered onto the wagon beside Coonacutty. Skady gave a squeak through his nose as his box wobbled, but he managed to somehow not topple off the wagon. He barely noticed Ned and Bert standing by a wagon wheel, Bert with a paw gently on his little brother's shoulder.
"Now that's a good job your boys do, Ben," Ol' Bill remarked in approval.
"Thanks, Ol' Bill," one of the rats said.
"You think you're going to stop this, Ol' Bill?" Coonacutty confronted the opossum elder, but Skady could tell the raccoon's heart was not in it.
"What makes you think I'm here to stop it?" Ol' Bill grinned one of those big, toothy opossum grins. He reached for the cloth bound around Skady's muzzle. "I mean, it just ain't a good makeshift hangin' unless the condemned gets to beg for the mercy he don't deserve."
"I didn't kill anyone!" screamed Skady almost before the cloth cleared his mouth. "It was Tammi! She did it!"
"Your sister ain't here no more," Ol' Bill reminded him. "Died kind of like this, her neck broken just like yours will be. 'Course, we ain't black witches, so you're gettin' off lucky with much less suffering."
"I didn't do it!" sobbed the mink. "I didn't kill anyone!"
"So what? What of those girls?" Ol' Bill's voice took on a dangerous tone. "You know, the ones Ringers had you dispose of? What of the pain and sufferin' you gave them before Tammi got to them? What of the folks you helped put in the gaol for no other reason than Ringers wanted someone in his bed? What of the nun, Skady? What of the nun?"
"They were pretty girls! What do you do to pretty girls?" Skady felt the pit in his stomach widen. Why couldn't anyone understand him? "I just wanted to have a good time with some pretty girls! Why can't you see that?!"
"I courted and married mine, same as any good male," Ol' Bill's voice dipped menacingly low. "You killed yours just as surely as if it had been you instead of Tammi. You ain't right in the head, Skady, and we're takin' you out before you can do more harm.
"You all remember what Father Louie told us this mornin'," Ol' Bill addressed the crowd. "'Do unto others as we would have others do unto us'? I kind of figure, and I'm sure the rest of you do too, that means all the nasty things Skady did to those girls before they died was him givin' us permission to do those sorts of things right back at him. What do you say, Coonacutty?"
"I'd say you're right, Ol' Bill," smugness laced Coonacutty's smile. "So, we going to hang him?"
"Skady's a lot of things, but I reckon he ain't no killer," Ol' Bill patted Skady on the back. The mink wobbled, but kept his balance. He didn't know how much longer he could last. His legs and feet ached from trying to keep him from choking. "I don't think it'd be right to hang him."
"I think so to," Coonacutty said carefully, a hint of glee in his voice.
"On the other paw," added Ol' Bill. "Humiliatin' is another story."
With that, Ol' Bill gave Skady a good shove, pushing the mink off the wagon. For a moment, the noose tightened about Skady's neck. His screams didn't stop until his body hit the ground.
