| War and History Fiction posted November 23, 2020 |
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Ready... Aim... Listen
The Killing Wall
by Jay Squires
The author has placed a warning on this post for violence.
Wrists bound behind me, I trace pocks in the wall.
Before our masking, we faced our executioners. Ten smooth-faced youths. One for each prisoner. None knows which rifle holds the blank.
Didn't Socrates say: “If you hear the shot, yours was the blank.”?
A foreign command. Ten bolts slide across oiled chambers. The “Ready”?
A sudden stench of urine overwhelms.
Another untranslated bark… The “Aim”?
I fish-gulp oxygen. Warmth suffuses my crotch.
I listen intensely.
75 Words Flash Fiction contest entry
Wrists bound behind me, I trace pocks in the wall.
Before our masking, we faced our executioners. Ten smooth-faced youths. One for each prisoner. None knows which rifle holds the blank.
Didn't Socrates say: “If you hear the shot, yours was the blank.”?
A foreign command. Ten bolts slide across oiled chambers. The “Ready”?
A sudden stench of urine overwhelms.
Another untranslated bark… The “Aim”?
I fish-gulp oxygen. Warmth suffuses my crotch.
I listen intensely.
 Recognized |
#104 2020 |
Thanks to Sebastian Leon Prado on Unsplash for the photo.
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