September 5, 1793

On the evening, about half-past seven o’clock, from the main gate of La Conciergerie, to a city all on tiptoe, the people have crowd in the central square.  Today a public beheading will be taking place.

The people cheer as a fair young creature, who is barely twenty, riding in a wooden cart, wearing an old, ratty, dirty peasant’s dress in red, instead of the fine pearls and silken gowns she is use to.  Her slender wrists were bound together behind her back with a piece of tough leather, pulling the knows so tight that it cut off the circulation in her arms.  The roar of the crowd began to fill her ears.  Fear is apparent in her eyes, hiding behind her long messy brown hair around her face.  Tears flow on her cheek.  She look so different, her expression.  The young woman is clutching for her dear life while panic is in her eyes as she stares ahead to where her fate lies; journey towards death, -- alone amid the world.  She does not wish to meet the “madam” of France.

She was taken from her home and put on trial.  She was declared guilty of a crime she didn’t commit nor have any knowledge about.  There were whispers throughout the city that she was going to betray France.  Condemned without delay to be executed.

While in her cell, she wrote a goodbye letter to her family, her mother, her father, her grandmother, and her baby brother who she’ll never see grow up; her best friends who were like sisters to her; her boyfriend; and other loved ones.  They were not allowed to see her, for the crime she was accused of doing was so hateful that a person like her was not allowed to have any visitors.  The previous night all she did was curled up in her danky bed and cried and pray to God to save her.

Through the streets, packed with a yelling, abusive Paris mob, the tumbrel bearing her made its way.  Her body trembled visibly.  She had never experienced being abandoned to the control of another; she wasn’t accustomed to moaning in fear instead of in anticipation.

More people cheer and throw rotten vegetables at the girl, but all she does is bow her head in revered silence.  All around her were incessant screaming, cursing, and mocking laughter.  The jeers of the crowd.  The voices they jeered, jeered with all the hate they held within them.  And the young woman did watch the crowd torment her in silent despair.  Dark were their faces and filled with hate were their voices.

She look toward the end of her route to see the madam she will meet.  The Madame Guillotine.  She was afraid.  She began to ask herself a lot of questions.  Will the blade of Madame Guillotine be very sharp?  Will it hurt?  Will she have to experience the pain?  She knows no answer.  The only people who know the answers to this are the past victims.  The truly guilty ones.  “But what if some of those victims were innocent?” she thought.  The cart rolls to a stop.  At the center of the mass was the wooden platform that was raised above ground level for all eyes’ visual hunger.

The cart opens and she thrashes around in the back of the cart, screaming, “No!  I won’t go!!”  Tears run down her eyes, pure panic unleashed in her eyes.  She is dragged out of the cart and held by her upper arms.  The large guards violently led her forward, their thick, fatty fingers digging deeply into the soft, bruised flesh of her upper arms and leaving her completely dominated.  The tears run freely down her face as she is led up the guillotine.

She is barefoot, the guards had stripped her of her footwear.  Her bare feet stumble, reluctantly walking.  Fear swells.  Her cheeks turned a scarlet red, as they all gazed at her.  They didn’t show one ounce of respect for a young lady.

She was led through the crowd of peasants who chanted for her death.  Many growl and others howl.  The people curse her and her families.  A commoner spat at her face and shouted, “Wench!”  She was unable to wipe the spit from her face, her hands were still restrained, rubbing red so tightly and continued walking.

Her bare feet padded on the stone-covered ground.  Her feet splashed the cold puddles of water.  The soles of her feet hurt.  Her toes are so cold she could barely feel them.

The girl is led up to the wooden platform.  If they really think she is going to come willingly, they must be kidding.  They lead her up as the executioner pulls up the rope, lifting the blade high into the air, catching it into the red sun.  The sun glints off Madame Guillotine’s knife, the silver glint of death.  How ironic that a blood red sun would show itself today, when it is usually yellow and happy.  It looks so sharp.

She looked up to the sky, feeling in despair, she plead for God’s mercy.  She plead for God to send the angels to whisk her away from Madam Guillotine’s leering gaze.  However, there is no sudden white light from Heaven shining down on her.  There are no white-robed people with halos and wings about her.  As she stared, the sky was turning red.  She is alone.  She should have known better.

The girl is, finally, brought up to the platform.  The executioner is a slightly burly man.  She looked up at into her executioner’s eyes.  All she saw was plain to see, pure hate.  Hate for her being born upper-class.  She started to beg but the executioner won’t hear her plea.  She stopped walking suddenly.  They stop her just ahead of the device, parading the girl before the hundreds of bloodthirsty onlookers.  But now she was to face a man with more power, more control, and with a larger capacity to inflict pain and humiliation than she had ever known.  As the girl is led up to the wooden plank, the man said to the crowd in a deep voice, “Good people of France!  Today, you have come to witness the death of this young woman, who has committed insidious crimes against our nation!”

The man turned to the girl and exclaimed “Margaret Corway, of the Bourneville family, you are accused of high treason, taxing in an unjust manner, and attempted murder against the Great King.  Your sentence: Death.”

At this the crowd roars with satisfaction.  Unprepared to receive pain, she had never dreamt that she would be humiliated.  She had never thought that the sick, perverse excitement would be turned on her so that others could receive that distorted arousal from observing her suffering.  The crowd tormented her horribly, they cursed everything she lived for, everything she believed in, everything.

“Do you have any last words?” The man continues.

Margaret Corway screams, “Everyone!  Please listen to me!”  They didn’t.  They wouldn’t. “Listen to me!  I did not commit treason!  I have nothing against my country!  I am innocent--” The words are lost within the crowds.

“Kill her!” Someone from the crowd shouts.  Followed by hundreds of others ranting in agreement.  The sea of angry people in the square, desperate to see her dead, cry out for her blood.  Her head.  She weep in sorrow.  She can’t believe how much people can hate her simply because they believe her to be a traitor.

Now he ran his calloused hands over the sweet, unblemished skin of her noble neck and shoulders, which were shaking violently with deep-stomached sobs.  His sadistic chuckle grated against her ears as he slid his dirt-encrusted palms down over her smooth back and caught violently at her clothing.  With one rough and unyielding heave, he ripped the cloth of her dress off of her shoulders, exposing the soft, supple skin beneath and completely baring her pale neck.  He jerked the cloth once more for good measure and then released the tattered fabric unceremoniously, letting it slide through his fingers like drought-stricken dirt.  One of his cruel, governing hands caught at her abundant hair and pulled her head back, forcing her to look him in the eye with a sharp twist of her neck before laying the thick locks over her shoulder.  It flowed down over one ample breast and cascaded to her thin waist, a fall of chestnut brown.  With a mocking tenderness, he brushed a few loose strands over her shoulder with the rest, making sure the hair lay smooth and glistering in the hot afternoon sun.

After running his fingers down over her arms, savoring the delightful tremors of fear that passed beneath the skin.  “I swear to God, I didn’t do anything.  Please… let me go.  Tell them I’m innocent.  I want to see my mother and father.  You have the power to end this.”

“Yes I do have the power to end this.  The power to end your life to be cast into Hell.” he laughed.

“But I’m innocent!”

“Maybe you are, maybe you’re not.  But it makes no difference.  Either way, people of France will sleep well tonight knowing a guilty person get what he or she deserves.”

The guards proceed to bind her feet with chains and shackles, but she resists.  Desperate to live, she pushed the executioners and guards with her shoulders, and ran.  But that same peasant tripped her, her face falling towards a puddle and she couldn’t push her hands as they were tied behind her, and the ground rushed up too quickly and she had a face covered in dark mud and dirty water.

She was quite roughly grabbed from the ground and helped to her feet by the guards.

The guards pushed the peasant out of the way.  When he hit the ground with a splat and mud flew onto the peasant around him, Margaret repeatedly kicked him in the stomach and head, until a punch to the stomach brought her down to her knees.  She was brought back up into the gallows, and was shoved down.

She cried out when she was forced to kneel and her knees hit the wooden scaffolding with little grace.  Pain shot through her legs, and her tears flowed more freely.  Before her loomed a wooden contraption that would bring her so much pain and so little forgiveness.  It was menacing.  From behind the executioner shoved her roughly forward and her head unwillingly entered the gruesome machine, resting her head in the indent of the wood.  The executioners closed the two-piece lunette around her neck.  Her throat was resting on a curved piece of wood.  Once it had double padlocked, she began to cry.  Her head is held tight in the hole.  She is hysterical in her movements, tears flowing freely, thrashing despite the iron grip of the guards, her scream of terror piercing the evening sky.  It doesn’t help that all the people are yelling for her head.

The crowd’s screams pierced her ears like a thousand daggers to the head.  She stared down on the floor, can’t bear to look at the people in front of her.  She looked down into the basket where her head will fall.  She closed her eyes, sobbing and sniffing.  Her trembling face was pointing towards Hell. “Oh God, I’m going to die like this!” she thought.

“Comfy you whore?” the man asked in a mocking tone.  So furious at her injustice, she spat some of the murky, cloudy water out of her mouth towards the man.  She turned her head away since she didn’t want to look at him anymore.

For that insult, all being now ready, as the last act, he take the neckerchief from her neck: a blush of maidenly shame overspread that fair face.

“By the powers invested in me: this girl will be sentence to death by beheading, so she will be banned to the fires of Hell!” he concluded.

At this point, she starts to loose herself control.  All she could do is cry her heart out.  Seeing her in tears only aroused the crowd more.  And that put her into much more despair.  She cried out in fear.  She finds herself difficultly breathing, gasping for air like a fish out of water.

The drums roll.  The people quiets down.  A horrible cry echoes throughout the air, as Margaret has realized her fate.  She frantically struggled and tugged at the leather straps.  She started to scream, “God I don’t want to die!”  The tears came flowing forth.  She was still breathing deeply.  Her master’s low, sadistic laugh reached her ears before a metallic clatter began above her pretty little head, signaling the true beginning of the end.  Finally, the drums stop and the executioner releases the frayed rope, the blade falls.  She shuts her eyes to meet her death as she felt tears released once more, dripping down her face.  When it stops, a loud, piercing scream cuts through the sky, only to be cut off suddenly by the sound of a SHIIIIIIIINNNK-CRUNCH! echoes the square.  That was her final cry, and the cheering of the people take its place in all bloodlust.  She is dead.  The blade had cleanly chopped off her head, cutting through her neck swiftly, before a grim, appreciative executioner and much to the amusement of the on-looking crowd.  No one frowned.

The girl’s fresh severed head is full aware of its fate as it fell, thumping into the awaited basket.  With all her head’s remaining effort, her blinks three times.

The girl has died.  On this autumn day, a young woman, beautiful, serene, once so full of life, has been killed, a victim of the fearsome guillotine, a machine of death that will claim so many lives.

Her headless body remained on the board, still twitching.

The cheering rise up when the head of Margaret Corway, dripped with her red blood, is held up for all of France to see.

The cheeks were still tingled with red.  The head opened and closed its mouth several times, taking on an expression of shock or confusion, then of terror or grief; its eyes moved to the crowd of people - direct eye contact, then hazy, then absent and death.  Everything began to fade, until all she could see was black.  She was cast into that unholy inferno known as Hell, forever separated from her family and God.

The executioner takes the headless body and throws it to the side.  Another man places the body of the now headless, dead girl in the same cart that brought her to the guillotine.  The other man stick her lifeless head in a pike and parade it around.  From her severed head, Margaret’s tears, like that of a living girl, did still flow…