Massacre of the Unfortunate

* All characters are owned by me. Sorry, you all can\'t have Charlotte.

This story may be very grotesque to some, so don\'t read it if you can\'t handle gore.

Torture. It was the only word that could describe what was happening outside of the prison window from which Charlotte Ambrois stood, lips trembling, eyes swollen with tears. The pile of decapitated bodies sat basking in the cruel sun and caused a nauseating stench to fill the air of the French town. There was a separate pile nearby that collected the heads that were severed from their owners’ corpses. Surrounding the instrument of death was a huge crowd of relentless revolutionists who welcomed the mass massacre as a starving, emaciated animal would welcome even the tiniest morsel of meat. They were bloodthirsty monsters, hardly able to contain their lust for aristocratic blood.
There was a sudden encore of applause and cheering as a small child staggered up the steps to greet his death dealer. She was merciless. She was savage. She was without compunction. Her shining blade singed with the blood of hundreds of unfortunate souls, beckoning the loss of yet another one. The large man towering over the child threw him in the direction of the blade as soon as he had managed to conquer the steepness of the stairs. Another grabbed him by his tiny arms and strapped him into the bascule before turning it horizontally. The crowd continued to shout obscenities and threw rotten and maggot infested vegetables at the young boy’s pitiful face. The larger of the two men retreated to untie the ropes holding the blood splattered blade hostage as the other slid the child into position within the lunette. The child’s face displayed little emotion as if he had already accepted his fate, his sentence that was served to him unjustly. He did not even wince as the drops of tainted, stale blood dripped onto his fine blonde hair and trickled down his forehead, stinging his watery eyes. After the smaller man had secured the lunette he gave the signal to his comrade that all was clear and ready.
Charlotte watched in disgust as they went through the routine as if it were part of their everyday lives. It was grotesque really. The boy could not have been older than twelve. Surely, there was no crime he could have committed to deserve such a malevolent ending, but no crime was needed, being the fruit from his aristocratic parents’ loins was enough to convict him and serve him his sentence with a blade of steel.
She turned her back to the barred window and closed her eyes. She could not force herself to watch such a ridiculous and malicious slaughter. She wondered how long she would have until it would be her turn to face Madame Guillotine, the lethal bitch herself. She had been here in this desolate haven for nearly three days, surviving off of scarce rations of watery, meatless soup, sleeping among the rats in the straw. The screams of women and men alike were her only lullaby.
Her faith in God had been severely hindered, but she held onto every ounce of faith she could grasp onto. It was the only thing that could keep her sane anymore, the only thing that suppressed her screams in the cold night’s turmoil.
The crowd grew utterly silent, but only for a brief moment. Their screams resurfaced following the agonizing, ear-splitting impact of the blade on the boy’s fragile neck. Charlotte cringed a little and she felt her body shudder as a cool breeze swept across the vacant cell. She heard heavy footsteps approaching the cell door, which held her captive. The lump in her throat swelled even more as her soul panicked within her burning chest. Were they finally coming for her? Was this the end of her fugacious life? Her doom?
Her shallow breathing sped to an unstable pattern as fear overcame her. Every breath pretending to be her last, leaving her emotionally frantic and bereft of her life, which she had not yet lost to the host of hell. The footsteps became almost stentorian as they intruded her ears and her racing thoughts.
She felt dazed and confused and attempted to cling onto the dingy stone wall in order to give her weak legs support. The sharp crevices in the wall left scarifying cuts on her fingertips and pale hands. She felt herself black out a little and drift to the left, but before she could prevent it, she fell onto her side onto the unmerciful floor. Tears escaped her pale blue eyes and streamed down the sides of her pasty cheeks. She lay motionless for a few seconds before she could regain her senses and strain her muscles to put her in an upright position. She wiped her face, trying to brush away the tears that were mixing with blood form her shaky fingertips. She bit down on her lip in a gesture to keep it form quivering so rapidly, but it was useless. She knew this would be here last moment, her last mortal sensation that pieced together her life.
She drew her knees into her chest, seeking comfort, and rocked back and forth on the hard, uneven floor. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die,” she muttered through her sobs. By this time she had reached the point of no return. The Guillotine had already claimed the spirits of her parents and older brother. Certainly it would be her turn next. After all, she could not hide in this squalid cell forever.
Keys jingled outside of the heavy, oak door as their keeper fumbled through them to find the one that would unlock the door. The door. The safety. The shield that protected her from the tragedy that lurked outside. The tragedy was a dark plague that spread across France leaving only those behind that possessed the same blackness in their souls that possessed Madame Guillotine.
She began to tremble uncontrollably and then the time had arrived. “Death requests that you pay her a visit, Mademoiselle,” one of the two men snickered as they entered the small cell. The other laughed at his spiteful remark, as the two approached the pathetic girl, sobbing in the dark corner of cobwebs. She began to scream furiously when the two men seized her by the arms and dragged her towards the door. The door was now her salvation instead of her captor. It was the only thing between her and death because outside of that door there would be no return.
Upon passing through the door, Charlotte managed to free one of her arms from the shorter man and grasped onto the frigid doorway in an act of desperation, only to be yanked from the small hope of escape that still fought to dwell inside her. This hope was a barely existent flame that was slowly extinguishing as she was dragged down the harsh steps of stone to make acquaintances with the cruel crowd of sanguineous peasants. They craved to watch her and her kind perish at the hands of the lower and looked down upon class.
The fresh air stung her blood-smeared face when she finally reached the outside of the prison’s side entrance. The sight that was now in front of her was ghastly enough to repress her mournful cries. There were raw bodies being piled up in heaping quantities of horse-drawn carriages to be taken away and discarded elsewhere. As for the crowd, they were as fierce and ominous as she had witnessed from her cell throughout the past few days. It consisted of small children as young as five and six year olds to the elderly, who could scarcely see or walk. It made her soul cry to see such passion for blood slaughter in the thirsty eyes of the little children. What kind of sick world was this? How could any parent wish for their children to see such murderous prosecutions?
She felt someone push her from behind causing her to stumble forward into a woman of the crowd, who immediately spun around to confront the imbecile who had ran into her. “What do you think you’re doing?” the woman sneered as soon as she realized the girl was heading to the Guillotine. “It would be a shame to spoil that pretty dress, mademoiselle,” she remarked mockingly as she shoved Charlotte backwards into one of the men that had escorted her from the third floor of the prison. Vindictively, he shoved her forward again only to trip again and fall into the dirt, cutting her hands and elbows. She struggled to stand up but tripped again over her tattered pastel dress. The men recaptured her arms and dragged her off, hardly giving her enough time to stand up.
As they ventured through the dense crowd, everyone turned to mock her and spit upon her. Some little children even kicked her in the shins causing her to cry out in pain. When they finally reached the base of the stairs leading up to the cataclysmic death trap, the men halted her. Through her tear and sweat stroked, straggly, brown hair that was partially covering her face, she could see another man was already secured in the lunette. Charlotte tried to shut her eyes so she did not have to look onto the disgusting sight, so she did not have to watch him experience the same death as the young boy had, the same death that she would experience, but her eyes rebelled against her wishes and she was coerced to watch his demise.
The blade came down swiftly and relentlessly followed by the bickering of two women of the crowd fighting over his head as tow children playing a game. At this point nothing surprised her anymore, not that it would have mattered if it did because her life would be as if it had never existed within the next few minutes.
As soon as the body had been removed and carelessly thrown into the heaping pile of corpses, she was urged up the steps, her face showing no emotion just as the boy’s had not. While the executioner strapped her onto the bascule, she looked over his shoulder to see the people growing wild, becoming more and more savage with every life that the blade stole. She felt dead inside, her soul decaying and helpless from the bitter reality of her situation. She was going to die. There was no way to convince these monsters otherwise, but one thing was certain. She would die bravely as her family had died.
The tilting of the bascule jerked her body down with it until she was lying just in front of the lunette. The top half of the wooded contraption was lifted and the man grabbed her by her thick, brown locks and forced her head to rest within it.
Her scalp was sore from his grasp and small splinters impaled her neck as she wriggled in place. She squinted her eyes a couple times to try to stop the stinging of the nervous sweat that was aggravating them. When she could see clearly again she noticed the still-warm head of the fair-haired child who had been murdered just minutes before she was dragged down the unforgiving steps and left to suffocate in the thick fog of revolutionists who would spare her no mercy. His disheveled hair was blood-soaked and dingy and his eyes pierced her sensitivity. Those pale green eyes, so helpless, so innocent, still reflecting the demonic faces of those who were among the last things he would ever see. The green orbs would haunt Charlotte well through the afterlife, she was sure. Such suffering and sorrow radiated within them, but now they had gone blank and cold, slowly loosing their brightness to the dominant darkness of France’s third class. Her tears dripped onto his unfeigned face and flowed into his eyes causing them to glisten one last time.
It had just started to rain as Charlotte closed her eyes once more. The thunder was vibrantly rumbling over her head and soft flickers of lightening illuminates the rolling hills in the distance. “Put the rest back into their cells!” a man snapped at the others. “This will be the last one of the day, we don’t want the wood to get all soggy.” Had she heard correctly? Was her death going to the last on this wretched day? This storm would spare the rest of the anxious aristocrats for one more night. If only she could have resisted a while longer, perhaps she could have saved her lamentable death for another day as well, but no, she would perish on this day and this day alone. It would be her fate.
The rain started to pour down harder as the thunder neared closer and closer. She opened her mouth to taste the rain to quench her thirst. She had not had the luxury of imbibing the priceless liquid in the last three days of her incarceration. Fresh blood fell from Madame Guillotine’s blade and intermixed with the water inside her chapped lips. Its bitterness stung the inside of her mouth from where she had bitten her lip in her state of nervousness.
She dropped her neck to hang and looked back at the severed head of the young boy. “We will be meeting soon, I imagine,” she whispered to him. “Get ready to pull!” a voice bellowed behind her. Another man answered him. “Oui, ready.”
She began to recite the Lord’s prayer that she had learned in primary school. The words escaped her lips rapidly, evidence of her distress. She clenched her fist at her sides and squinted her eyes as she braced herself. She took a deep breath and held it in as she heard someone yell “Now!” She mustered out a last plea. “Please don’t forget me Lord, please remember me.”
She felt the blade strike the back of her neck, splitting open her clammy skin, sinking in deeper and deeper into her warm flesh. She felt her eyes throb and feel as if they were going to explode. Her vision was fading into darkness from the outside and working its way towards the center of her pupil. Her death had been served to her cold and sour on a plate of frozen steel. In a few days no one would even recognize her face or remember her name. She was only Charlotte Ambrois, another victim of France’s dark hour.