The young man can hear his own heart beating, loud, calm and clear. It was strange if he thought about it carefully. After all, when he was sitting here on a dirty bench, hands shackled behind him like a chained beast forced into submission and soon to be executed after the next guy, he would think he would be more panicky. Where was the oh my god, I don't want to die! or the please, I'm so sorry. Please, don't kill me! or maybe even the flashbacks of all the moments of his life up until now? Where were they?

In a way, as he sat there simply waiting with a calm mind and a steady beating heart, he was almost disappointed. After all, just like how you only live life once, you really only die once. If you die, why not go out with a bang full of colors and feelings and excitement? Instead, all he received was this plain apathy and the detachment of a young man about to face death.

This really didn't make any sense.

The guy next to him began to shake as his name was called. Loud cheers followed from the stadium. Ah, ah, did they had to make their death into a spectacle? But of course, in the high class citizens' eyes, guys like him were nothing, wasn't it? Worse than even trash.

The image of a pair of red-painted lips twisted disgustingly into a sneer entered his mind at that moment and ugh, did he have to have such an image in his mind minutes before his own death?

The guy next to him - well, the former guy that was next to him but was currently being dragged into the stadium and soon will be deader than dead was fine before. He was just sitting there, calm and seemingly to be accepting of his death. The young man was actually somewhat impressed by him, because the guy looked like he was sitting there waiting for his dinner to be served instead of waiting for death to be served to him.

Yet, how was it that the moment when that moment actually came, the guy suddenly folded into himself, and gone was the whole attitude before. In face of death, any apathy just evaporated from him.

He watched as the guy froze before the guillotine, legs quivering very apparent to the young man even when he was at least fifteen feet away from him.

No, no, the young man knew the guy was saying even when he didn't know how to lip-read, head shaking as his whole body shook even more. He began to back away, fear etched onto every line of his face, and the atmosphere swelled. The guards holding him forced him forward and the whole crowd, the whole audience, held their breath as they leaned forward, eyes intent and full of fascination.

The guy's legs collapsed beneath him with fear, making it all too easy to force his head down onto the already red-covered board and to snap the wooden piece of the guillotine in place to hold his neck still. Any sound that were previously made were now silent, even by the frightened to-be-executed guy.

The guy squeezed his eyes close and it was all too easy to see that moment when he realized everything was hopeless, to see the shift from wanting to escape to simply hoping for a quick, painless end because it was too late for escape now.

It only took a second for the blade to fall, and off the guy's head went. The crowd let out a ooh and some ladies, some ladies, gasped with fake, fake horror.

It was the young man's turn now, he knew. He wondered if the crowd would do the same, will fall silent as he lay on the board at the blade-hanging-above-him's mercy, will ooh upon seeing his blood split and will gasp with that same fakeness as life slipped out of his eyes.

The young man stood when his name was called, slowly walking towards the metal door as the door swung open. The guards waited by the threshold for him to reach them, a relieved look on both of their faces when they saw they didn't have to drag him out. They stood just outside, not willing to step beyond the door that separated him and them.

Before, the young man couldn't hear anything before, so within his own mind as he was. He did everything automatically, observed everything with a sense of detachment because that made everything easier. All of a sudden, at the thought that they stood just outside, not willing to step beyond the door that separated him and them, sound abruptly rushed to his ears and he startled.

The sound of the crowd's cheering at the sound of his name being announced for execution was just fading and as he listened to that fading sound, something welled within the deep pits of his guts. The crowd didn't know him, didn't give a shit about him because he was even less than trash in their eyes. No, he never existed, not in their eyes, not as anything because he was nothing to them.

The only moment when he was really, really something was when he was about to die.

This revelation did nothing. The young man's legs didn't begin to shake at that moment, he didn't begin to start crying. He did nothing at all but stand there, letting that thought swirl around his head like he was savoring something particularly delicious, teasing and testing out the moment and the taste. The guards were beginning to gesture at him, calling at him like he was a dog, like he was so less of a human that he would willingly walk right into the arms of death, or maybe that they were so superior to him that he just had to comply to their every whim, to their every order. That from the moment he was born, from when he began to live all the way to when he was about to die, that he would have to be led around by their thumb.

The young man's lips parted for a moment and he thought about saying some great speech, blurting out whatever came in mind or just simply curse them out for everything, everything. Nothing came in mind.

He pressed his lips together as the guards gestured at him even more frantically now. The crowd was growing restless and the guards were just that close from crossing through the threshold to drag him out.

The young man paused for a moment, before continuing moving and the guards faces eased out.

You should have just came out earlier like you were supposed to, one of them were saying. Now the crowd's angry and there's only two more prisoners to execute, you know.

The young man didn't glare at them, didn't stare at them like he was wondering if they were speaking a language called inhuame or maybe monster. He just continued walking and when he was about a feet away from the treshold, the guards like out a relieved sigh and turned around, so confident, so sure that he would just follow.

The young man took another step forward, just one more, before he stopped again. The guards paused when they realized he wasn't moving again and turned towards him with exasperation in their eyes.

You know, one of them might have started, an annoyed look on his face.

The young man didn't know. He didn't know what happened next because all of a sudden he was lying on the ground, the bottom half of his body still within the dark and the top half crossing the threshold into the light. Red spilled from his mouth and pooled beneath him and all the young man felt was apathy.

The crowd stood when they realized something was wrong and peered down, eyes widening when they saw what happened. They oh!-ed and gasp-ed in shock and the young man was dying, but the apathy was being pushed aside for something else; not ashamed of his birth or life, not wishing he was never born or god-forbid wishing he was born one of them, but proud that in the last moments of his life he died on his own accord as something perhaps a little more than trash.