The hushed crowd stood under a cloudy black sky staring at the town hall's back door. It opened slowly, a creak issuing from its ancient hinges the only sound breaking the silence, and out stepped three men one after the other. It was the mayor in front, the sheriff at the end, and in the middle was a man with his hands tied behind his back and a burlap bag over his head.
The sheriff removed the bag and the crowd took one step back as a whole. Fear became a scent as they now stared at the unmasked man who stood hunched like he was decrepit and old. The man, his eyes stinging from the small amount of light, blinked twice to get a better look at his gawking spectators. He gave an evil, predatory smile that caused the entire crowd to very visibly shake. The sheriff pushed him toward the steps up to the gallows and without looking back the man walked up the steps taking them one by one as slowly as he could. Finally reaching the top, he looked into the eyes of the only man more terrifying than himself. He was an ominous beast, a man that should deserve the respect of fear; this man was the executioner.
The executioner grabbed him by his tattered shirt and pulled him to the noose where he slid the rough, merciless rope around the man's neck. At that exact moment, before his inevitable death, he realized that he and the executioner were the only people that did not show fear on their faces. The executioner gave an evil, predatory smile and shoved him off the edge of the gallows and the crowd's fear lifted as they cheered for this man's death. However, he was not lucky enough for his abrupt stop to snap his neck, which would have finished him quickly, but rather he was strung in midair.
He kicked and flailed from the pain of his own weight slowly cutting the rope into his throat and closing off the air to his brain while the crowd continued to cheer. The moments passed like hours until the kicking and the flailing ceased, along with the cheering. The limp body swayed from the momentum it created in life just moments ago and the scaffold groaned under the dead weight. Silence and fear seemed to take the crowd again as they looked on the gruesome scene. And so the hangman hangs.