If Only they Were Guitars
By: Lunatic with a Hero Complex
Fighting my way through the solid, breathing, sweaty, mass of people. I feel a thick wall of panic welling in my throat, watching that man stand there, with a rope wrapped casually around his neck.
The crowd just will not part. Clearly, I am not Moses, and this is not the red sea.
The drums are starting, I must be there.
There.
There.
There.
There.
There.
The drums.
Beat.
Roll.
Roll.
Stop.
The door goes, his feet follow.
I am nowhere near him.
The rope snaps to a halt, and slowly swings side to side. It jerks sporadically as the man's legs kick out beneath him and I can faintly hear grunts. Hisses.
The jerking stops.
The noises are gone.
The dreadlocks still blow in the wind, as though they themselves are still alive despite the death of their master. But what I really find myself having trouble looking at, are his eyes.
45 seconds ago, he was making a joke about his own exploits.
Now, the eyes are still mysteriously lined with kohl, but the pupils, the eyes themselves, are dead, brown things gazing off into a sunset where his Pearl is always waiting.
There is a moment where I truly stop breathing, and I am suspended.
I view, in a snapshot, the universe. And now, there is a vast blank spot.
Something has been taken. And I feel it.
He was not my favorite person.
I love Elizabeth 100 times more intensely than any emotion I felt towards him.
But he was important.
More important than Elizabeth or me.
He had something that we do not all have.
A quality that we, as people feed on and I cannot move past it.
Because, he was not supposed to be removed.
In this moment, I think to myself, that should be me, not him.
Once again, no great love hangs from that rope.
But I will never do the things that he might have.
I have been here for hours, hours that are condensed into 15 minutes. The crowds have left. I feel Elizabeth's arms snake around me, and the tight weave of her corset presses into my back through the dress.
And I am like a man thawed.
Unfrozen, the universe cuts its strings, and I may once again move my limbs as I wish.
A wet spot on my shoulder tells me that Elizabeth, as well, is feeling this particular loss.
I know now, why he was Captain Jack Sparrow. Because to be any less would be too little space for all that was him.
I move towards the gallows, out of the safe circle of her arms. And she follows me, stopping at the wooden feet as I move up the stairs, towards the rope, and the black head that is currently facing away from me. I raise the sword I intended to save him with, and snap the rope. But I grab his arm before he falls, and I drag him back to lie on the wood.
I gently remove the rope from his neck, and close his eyes. I lean down and kiss his forehead reverently.
I pull two gold coins from my pocket and lay them carefully on his eyelids.
The man was a pirate his whole life, he shouldn't have to steal a ferry ride to peace.